Citronelle High School’s football program spent decades stuck in neutral, cycling through coaches who came in with big promises and quietly moved on when the wins didn’t follow. This fall, something different is taking shape under second-year head coach Jason Rowell, and the buzz has spread far enough that locals have given it a name on social media: #NewCitronelle.
The Wildcats opened the 2024 season 3-0, outscoring opponents by 63 points along the way, the best start in program history. That includes a 40-8 rout of Faith Academy in a driving rainstorm, the second straight week Citronelle topped 40 points, something the program had done in back-to-back games only once before, during its celebrated 1991 playoff run under longtime coach Ronny Massey, the winningest coach in school history with 17 seasons on the sideline.
A turnaround decades in the making
For a town tucked into the northern reaches of Mobile County, near the Mississippi state line, Friday nights at Wildcat Stadium have long been as much about community ritual as about football. The program’s modern history, however, has been lean. Citronelle hasn’t won a region championship since 2004, and under the Alabama High School Athletic Association’s current blue map playoff format the Wildcats have never made a deep postseason run. Seasons of promise tended to dissolve by October, and coaching tenures tended to be short.
Rowell isn’t shying away from big talk, even knowing that history. He has laid out an ambitious set of targets for his program and made clear he measures himself against them.
“Our three goals are to host a home playoff game, win the region and compete for the state championship,” Rowell said. “When those stop being our goals, it will be time for me to step away.”
A brutal test arrives next
At the same time, Rowell is quick to temper expectations before the Wildcats face a brutal two-week stretch against undefeated Williamson and Vigor, two of the Mobile area’s most storied programs, teams that have combined to outscore opponents 279-19 this season. Williamson, a longtime power in Mobile, and Vigor, the Prichard program with a tradition of producing college and NFL talent, will give Citronelle a sharply different level of competition than it has seen in its first three games.
“We’re nowhere near where we want to be,” Rowell said.
That mix of ambition and caution has become the defining note of Rowell’s second season. He speaks about the Wildcats the way a builder speaks about a house under construction: proud of the foundation, unwilling to declare the roof finished. Players and fans, meanwhile, have treated the hot start as something worth celebrating in real time, with the #NewCitronelle tag spreading across local social media as each lopsided win has piled up.
The contrast with recent seasons could hardly be sharper. As recently as two years ago the Wildcats were winning a single game, and the conversation around the program was about keeping the roster together. Now the conversation is about seeding, home playoff games and a region race that runs through Mobile’s inner city powers. What has not changed is the schedule’s difficulty, and Rowell has been careful to remind anyone listening that September records fade quickly in a region as demanding as Citronelle’s.
Still, the early returns have given the town something it has not had in a generation: a team worth talking about in the grocery store aisle, and a coach who talks about state championships without flinching.
Deep roots in Wildcat country
Rowell’s connection to Citronelle football runs deep. His father, Tommy Rowell, played linebacker on the 1969 team that closed the season with three straight 40-plus-point outings, an early high-water mark for a program that has always measured its best seasons by offensive outbursts. Jason Rowell himself was a team manager under Massey during the historic 1991 season, sweeping the fieldhouse and cutting grass in exchange for lunch at a local burger joint.
When Rowell took over the program in 2023, he hung a photograph of Massey near his office door as a reminder, he said, “that there are no shortcuts.” The gesture is both homage and standard. Massey’s 17 seasons produced the school’s most cherished football memories, and any coach who follows him at Citronelle ultimately answers to that memory, whether anyone says so out loud or not.
The results have arrived faster than even optimists expected. Since Rowell’s arrival, Citronelle has climbed from a 1-9 season to 6-4 and now to a 3-0 start in 2024, a trajectory that has transformed the mood around the program from resignation to anticipation.
“I think there’s a feeling of pride being restored,” Rowell said. “You see a lot of Wildcat shirts and hats around town.”
Keeping talent home
Part of the turnaround comes down to keeping talent home instead of watching it transfer elsewhere, a chronic problem for small-town programs within driving distance of larger schools. Rowell said no player has transferred out of the program since he took the job, while the team has actually drawn in new talent, including quarterback Daylon Edmunds, a transfer from Millry with All-State caliber skills, and Sye Byrd, who has given the offense a boost at running back and receiver while also playing defensive end.
In an era when Alabama’s transfer rules make roster retention a season-long battle for programs of every size, holding a roster intact is itself a competitive advantage. Rowell has treated it that way, arguing that the relationships built in a small school setting are worth more than any single recruit.
“It’s relational,” Rowell said of building and keeping a roster together. “It’s loving on them. It’s not just football. They’re a close bunch. If you’re in town, you usually see three or four of them together.”
That closeness shows up on Friday nights in ways that do not appear in a box score. Edmunds, the new quarterback, has stepped into the huddle as an outsider and quickly become the offense’s engine, while Byrd’s two-way workload — carrying the ball and catching passes on offense while lining up at defensive end — reflects the kind of do-everything role small-school standouts have long embraced on the Gulf Coast.
The influx of talent, combined with the retention of players who might once have looked elsewhere, has given Rowell a deeper rotation than Citronelle has fielded in years, and it has allowed the coaching staff to scheme around playmakers rather than around limitations.
Ground game and takeaways
On the field, the Wildcats are leaning on a ground game that is averaging 250 yards per game behind a young offensive line, while Edmunds has protected the football, with the offense committing just one turnover through three games as the defense has forced 11. That 10-takeaway margin is the single clearest statistical explanation for the 63-point cumulative scoring margin that accompanies the 3-0 start.
Rowell credits an emphasis the coaching staff placed on takeaways starting back in February workouts, including a recurring session the team calls “Turnover Tuesday.” The drills have become a fixture of the weekly practice calendar, and the results have followed.
“What we’ve focused on since February is turnovers,” Rowell said. “We want to take the ball away.”
Defensively, Citronelle has also flipped the field position battle in its favor, with the offense starting most drives near midfield through the first three games. Shortened fields have meant easier scoring opportunities, and they have helped a young offensive line find its footing without being asked to drive the length of the field week after week.
“That’s hidden yardage,” Rowell said.
Rowell said he expects Edmunds and the passing game to be tested more as region play intensifies. Opponents who cannot stop the run will load the box; opponents who load the box will dare the Wildcats to throw. Rowell wants his quarterback ready for both.
“As we get deeper into region play, we’re going to have to throw the ball and take our shots and get our playmakers in space,” he said.
Building for more than one season
With Citronelle’s lopsided early wins, Rowell has also been able to get backups meaningful playing time, which he considers part of building a program built to last beyond one strong season. The philosophy reflects a hard-earned lesson from the program’s own past, when thin depth charts turned promising seasons into losing ones the moment injuries arrived.
“I don’t worry about records,” he said. “It’s getting the young kids experience so they’ll know what to do when their feet are in the fire. That’s how you build a complete program.”
Citronelle will get its clearest measuring stick yet over the next two weeks against Williamson and Vigor before turning attention to the postseason chase in Class 5A, Region 1, a region whose Mobile-area membership means the Wildcats must go through some of the state’s most athletically gifted rosters to reach the goals Rowell has set. A home playoff game, the first of those goals, remains well within reach if the Wildcats keep pace in region play.
For now, the plan is deliberately simple, and Rowell has repeated it often enough that his players can probably recite it by heart.
“We just want to add one more week to our schedule every week,” Rowell said.
Whether that schedule stretches deep into November is a question the next two Fridays will go a long way toward answering. But for the first time in a generation, Citronelle enters the toughest part of its schedule believing the answer could be yes, and a town that has spent decades waiting for a fall like this one is finally letting itself believe.