By tradition, Crystal City High’s preview begins Mississippi Magazine’s coverage of the Dirty Dozen each summer. The Gridiron Geek considers Crystal City football to be the heart-and-soul of local pigskin. We have mourned when we thought the program was kaput, marveled as it strung victories together not long later, and cheered for the best playoff campaigns in school history.
But even without those considerations, Crystal City’s season is newsworthy enough to make the top headlines. 2026 is the Hornets’ centennial year on the gridiron, a celebration of 100 autumns of Varsity competition on Bradley’s Farm. Crystal City is making as much of a big nerdy deal out of its 100th season as you’d hope, putting on a Centennial Concert at the stadium on the evening after Jamboree Friday. There were discussions of organizing a special exhibition game against the DeSoto Dragons, since the Hornets faced DeSoto High School in the inaugural 1926 season. It couldn’t come to pass, but it’s awesome that it went up the flagpole! Crystal City’s 100th campaign is Year 100 of Tri-City football’s beating heart.
The timing of the occasion could prove dicey, however. Crystal City is coming off its worst stretch of performances since the Great Watershed of 2021, and its worst playoff defeat since 2019. Can the brave, resilient Hornets produce a bounce-back year, under the pressure of a centennial gala?
How the Hornets Turned Hapless by Late 2025
There’s no buzzing around it. 2025’s Crystal City Hornets season was a letdown of epic proportions. After reaching two consecutive berths in the state quarterfinals (also known as Class 1’s District championship round in 2023-24) the Hornets limped to 3-7, taking Turbo Clock losses to begin and end the campaign. Crystal City’s defense, a mark of pride not long ago, gave up 20 TDs in Weeks 8-10. Home-field advantage at the Sunken Place disappeared, as the Hornets went 1-3 at home.
What’s the line from “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”: “On offense they were baffled, on defense they shrank away.” That’s a fair description of last season’s worst defeats, in which haphazard mistakes gave too many of CCHS’s opponents too many easy TDs. The defense was capable of making an eight-yard sack on one snap, then giving up 50+ yards on the next two opposing hand-offs. Crystal’s offense simply wasn’t high-powered or smooth enough to overcome the ton of touchdowns that rivals were scoring.
Crystal’s second-year head coach Craig Collins has not been blamed for the setback, nor should he be. Collins, upon taking the job, did the opposite of what the former Power-4 HC Geoff Collins did going into his historically-bad reign at Georgia Tech, which was to degrade the prior coaches while talking himself up. Collins – Craig Collins – did a great job of bringing his own unique traits to a program while also paying respect to the traditions, collegial coaching style, and ingrained tactics of the Varsity Hornets. The worst problems were in the performances, which didn’t improve much after a brief midseason uptick. TGG thought it might’ve helped if CCHS pared down its strategy and tried fewer “Jet” schemes up front – but it wouldn’t have made the defense above-average.
Can Bradley’s Farm pick up the pieces and get back into Class 1 contention? It’s refreshing that the dilemma does not involve a small line that will fall apart if CCHS endures one injury. That’s the scenario for many Class 1 schools coming off a losing season and trying to get back on their feet. But at Crystal City in 2026, we know that the team is hefty, experienced, and capable in the trenches. It’s the skill positions that need to be developed as richly as they were for 2022-thru-2024’s awesome campaigns.
McPherson, Munton, and Eisenbeis Form a Fortress to Build Upon
You have to think 2026 is when Crystal City’s combo of veteran maulers and terrific underclassmen starts making a difference between the hash marks again. We’ve all been waiting a long time for the senior campaigns of offensive-line stalwarts Gage McPherson and Trent Eisenbeis. The younger contingent of big men is led by sophomore Tristyn Munton, who filled out nicely to 5’11” and 236 pounds headed into camp. Sophomore Nick Patton has grown from a Swizzle Stick into a 200+ lb. edge-rusher.
Collins, however, is faced with the conundrum of 6’4” and 325 lb. senior Elias Miller, and what to do about Crystal City’s biggest lineman habitually standing on the sideline on Friday nights. Miller seemed representative of the Sunken Place’s upstart power on the line when he snagged 18 combined tackles in his sophomore year of 2024. Last year, it was evident that Miller had been factored out of Collins’ plans for the starting lineup. Coaches didn’t think his quickness, agility, or fundamentals had developed enough to crack a starting Iron Man line with names like Eisenbeis on it.
No doubt, the Hornets have to get Miller into the action somehow this season. It’s not a good look to be in opposing 4th-and-1 scenarios against teams hoping to hand-off and create a numbers advantage at the point-of-attack, only for your biggest upperclass lineman – who could swallow up blockers and gaps on the inside without having to do too much – to stand idly by watching a sub-6-foot lineman try to fight off the blockers. It makes no sense, and it could leave CCHS’s rivals laughing. If you aren’t going to utilize Miller in those circumstances, have him go sit down, or play cards or something.
Is Miller a big softy who won’t lift weights or practice hard? That’s probably not the case, since no one earns significant Varsity minutes as a sophomore by having Jell-O biceps, or a lazy attitude. That goes double on a Hornets team that was often in tight games, and hence enjoyed little garbage-time. In fact, in 2025, Miller matched his 2024 total of 8 solo tackles, despite riding the pine most of last season. He’s not a 300-pound buoy. Miller can contribute, and we hope to see him in action soon.
In any event, the OL-DL combination will be a strong suit on Bradley’s Farm. Eisenbeis and McPherson form a duo which finished 1-2 in total tackles last season, a rare MSHSAA feat, while Munton’s 18 solo tackles as a freshman is one of the team’s best frosh stat-lines of the decade.
As for the blocking effort, one thing the Hornets did pretty well last year was run the rock, shown by the fact that every Crystal City rusher who took 30+ carries averaged at least 5.6 YPC. RB Skyler Fowler ran for 115 yards and a TD on just 12 attempts. CCHS didn’t get many chances to get its RB1 going in 2025, but it’s good to know that there was daylight to be found.
Crystal’s QB Hopes to Stop Spraying, Start Slaying this Year
Sophomore QB Kolton Adams’ 2025 season was as scattered as you would expect from a freshman backup whose offense was always stressed. Adams, more of a passing specialist than a rusher, was accurate against Bayless in Week 3, then blew a gasket and tossed 5 INTs in one midseason game against Gateway STEM. He returned with a somewhat better performance against Grandview in Week 9, then showed legit promise by throwing for 148 yards on 19 attempts against Van-Far in Crystal’s only playoff tussle. But the youngster threw interceptions in the latter two games too.
Oh, Mister Adams – But Mister Adams!
CCHS has no question marks at running back and wide receiver. Or, CCHS has only question marks at RB and WR. It depends on how you look at it! Alex Parham had a successful freshman season as a wideout, snagging 11 catches for 185 yards and a touchdown. If Parham, who was clocked as one of the fastest Junior High track stars of his 8th Grade class in southwestern MO, develops into a rusher from scrimmage this season, that makes other RB1 hopefuls like Evan Morgan more likely to take snaps at WR. If Parham remains on the outside as a deep receiving threat, the No. 1 running back slot is open.
Are the Hornets getting spoiled by improving numbers faster than their numbers improve? The Geek was surprised to hear senior Talon Clayton tell MyMoInfo that the team’s latest lineup has to succeed “without depth,” given that the Hornets appear to have around 25 players out for Friday Night Lights. That’s as many as they’ve had in a while – it’s a bigger roster than 2024’s.
In fairness to Clayton’s remarks, Bradley’s Farm does have a numbers dilemma that’s … weird. Fowler is sitting out the 2026 season due to off-the-field concerns, which meant that there were no juniors in CCHS’s training camp, just seniors, sophomores, and freshmen. It adds pressure to the senior efforts of Clayton, McPherson, and five other student-athletes from the Class of 2027.
The Geek’s counter-argument to Talon’s take is that it’s better having a full roster than to have a starting lineup of veterans who don’t get any backup from the underclass ranks. Herky tried that in 2022 – recall what happened to Herculaneum at the Sunken Place that fall? Crystal City turned that fourth quarter around on a Kanden Bolton TD which had freshmen blocking for it. Herculaneum, with its roster of 15-seniors-and-nobody, couldn’t cope with its late-season injuries.
Crystal City’s 2021 team remembers slugging St. Pius in the mouth in the first quarter of its District quarterfinal, then becoming tired and losing at Hill Valley, due to the Hornets’ horrible roster numbers that year. In 2022, about 10 freshmen showed up to give Crystal City’s starters a breather once in a while, and Crystal City’s expanded lineup went unbeaten in the ’22 regular season outside of one referee’s controversial call. It doesn’t matter if some of the freshmen aren’t very good yet! They’re there to fill in the cracks. There’s few ways to contend for titles without hitting that magic “22+” roster line for 11-man scrimmages like the Hornets can have now.
Crystal’s late-summer schedule of Winfield-Affton-Bayless felt like a groaner when it came out. “Great, more dates versus Class 3 and Class 4, without any Class 1.” But look at the schedule again, and the Hornets are set to welcome several fresh Class 1-2 opponents later on, such as Malden and Salisbury. For a bonus, this year’s kickoff at Winfield could produce a fantastically fun, fair, and educational clash between C1 and C3, due to the matchup’s potential to provoke a crazy game.
What kind of “crazy game” is that? You’ll have to wait for the Week 1 Friday Night Predictions to find out. Let’s just say we’ll learn a lot about 2026’s Varsity Hornets while they’re learning on the job.
Photo Credit: Crystal City Football Facebook