In the 2025-26 season, Panther football took home the Conference Indiana championship and ended their regular season with a record of 8 and 1. Football players have shared their thoughts on why South football has had a successful season so far.
Senior Thomas Gill believes the reason for success is “definitely the O line and how they approach practice and how we get the ball running on different defenses.”
Were the athletes prepared differently this season? Gill said, “I feel like compared to last year it’s a little better. We’ve done a lot more physical stuff throughout the summer, and our mental prep for games and stuff seems better.”
Gill thinks South is going to do great in the post-season. He said, “we’ve gone off two years of losing Semi-State, so thinking of that will probably bring a lot of anger to players and [we’ll] win State.”
Senior Breyton Mellor thinks the team has been doing well because the “defense has really been stepping up recently. They’ve been doing a good job of not letting teams score a lot of points, and we’ve been able to run the ball and pass the ball pretty well this season.”
Junior Brady Adams said, “we got a couple of new coaches which brings in more ideas and combines already good coaching with even more good coaching, so it adds up to be even better.”
He added, “we were already good, but we got a couple of new better players that came in. We were a pretty strong class [but] missing depth in a couple of spots, and that’s really filled in and made us a complete team.”
Adams said the preparation hasn’t changed much: “we try to keep it consistent and lift the same and have the same practices every week, mentally and all that, just keeping it simple and the same consistency.”
About the post-season Adams said, “we’ve beat all the teams in our Sectional but that doesn’t mean they won’t be better than they were when we beat them. We just have to keep playing better than we did. We have to keep focusing in the way we have and keep playing well.”
Senior Gabe Taylor said, “I think from the get go our team has just been really good at playing as a unit, and we’re really good at building each other up when we make mistakes, especially in big games and big situations. Also, I’d say we’re good in clutch situations and not getting down on ourselves if we make a mistake. We’re also good at not getting too over our heads if we play really well.”
Taylor said the great thing about South is that “it’s always consistent no matter the possible potential of a team…They want everyone to be at their best and the coaches want to get the players to their max potential.”
When asked his opinion on how South football will do in the post-season, Taylor confidently said, “we’re going all the way to State. We’re winning, finally State champs.”
Senior Blake Azcui believes the team’s work ethic has led to their success. Azcui said, “I feel like we all know that we have a talented team, obviously that makes a difference this year, but because we’re talented we know that we can accomplish a lot more, so we’re all working a lot harder to try and get to that goal.”
Referring to the preparation for players, Azcui believes that mental preparation has changed slightly. He said, “we’re always a pretty physical team. We always have hard practices and hard weights, but mentally I think we know games mean a lot more now, especially now later in the season. We want to execute as much as we can.”
Junior Charlie Morris said, “I definitely think our physicality in practice has helped us beat teams physically on the field, and I think our camaraderie has been really high.”
Morris said the preparation has been the same since his freshman year. He said, “even with a couple changes in coaching and stuff like that, everyone’s adjusted to it well, and we’ve still been on an upward trajectory.”
South will play Terre Haute South, a 7-2 team this season, on Friday October 31 for the Sectional Semi-Finals. The Panthers are hoping to make it far this year and they believe the team is capable of a successful post-season.
