So, last Friday night was Pascagoula High’s first football game of the 2026 season, versus arch rival Moss Point at War Memorial Stadium (Pascagoula won, 44-0). We were there.
“We” is a group of guys that have been attending Panther games together for quite some time. This noteworthy band would include Roy Myers, Gary Stevens, Leslie Thompson, and your columnist. We all grew up together in Pascagoula, we all attended PHS together, and we all enjoy watching football. We’re often joined by others—Martin Hegwood when he’s in town, Gary’s son Brett, Georgia transplant Tommy McCauley, and various additional ladies and gentlemen. The core group listed above, however, has been making these autumn (and late summer) treks to War Memorial for decades.
In each fellow’s case, our fathers started taking us to PHS games as kids in the 50s. My first event to attend in person, when I was six, was the Pascagoula-Moss Point contest in 1954. It was played on Thanksgiving Day (literally, like at 2:00), it was clear and cold, and Pascagoula won 12-7. The other guys (and many of you, too) would have similar stories as to how their football spectating journeys started. Roy’s dad Mac was actually a local high school referee back at that time.
Thus began a lifetime of following and cheering for the Panthers, then later adding our college team—once again, bonded together, all four of us are Ole Miss guys. As far as hitting War Memorial together, Gary, Roy, and I started doing that in high school (I’m sure Les was a few rows/seats away).
Eventually, after college, military service, and so on, we all converged back in Pascagoula to begin our careers and raise families. One of the first orders of business upon returning to the old home town was to secure season tickets to Pascagoula High football games. Our seats have moved around a couple of times, but for the last 20 years or so, we’ve been holding forth in Section C, row 17,seats 1-7 (we get extras for the occasional joiners).
Good gosh, we’ve seen some ball over the years: two state championship teams (1976 and 1987), one 1-10 team, star players—too many to try to name—and so many memorable games. Pascagoula High’s cumulative football record in its history is a quite sterling 604-475-28, so we’ve been blessed with mostly good play by the lads on the field.
Obviously, it has been a fun deal to watch the Panthers excel much of the time, but the real joy in our trips to the stadium is in the gathering of four lifetime friends. Five or six Friday nights in the fall, we get together to check out the old alma mater’s team, talk about the Ole Miss and other college games coming the next day, discuss what books we’re reading , inquire about family situations, and just visit, just to be together. It’s good.
If you do the math, the four of us have probably seen over 400 Pascagoula games each over the years, with at least a couple hundred of those sitting together.
One might wonder if, after all this time, we still get excited about football season starting and going to the games. For me, and I’m sure I’m speaking for all of us, the answer is a resounding yes. Certainly college ball comes into the equation as well—maybe I’ll write about our passion for following Ole Miss later on—but it all kind of starts, literally and figuratively, with the Pascagoula High games.
Again, it’s not about the number of games of we’ve seen or how good the teams are (that does help), it’s about the camaraderie of four old Pascagoula guys getting together to do something they truly enjoy. So, if you drive down Market Street on an autumn Friday evening and it’s game night, glance off to the east at the lights and crowd at War Memorial Stadium, and there’s a pretty good chance that Roy, Gary, Leslie, and Richard will be right there on the forty yard line, Row 17, smiling and talking.
Richard Lucas may be contacted at [email protected].
