Mary G. Montgomery football coach Zach Golson has a message for anyone who assumed the Vikings’ six-game winning streak last season was a fluke: get ready to see more of it.
MGM’s starting offense put a Mississippi playoff opponent on its heels early and the backups piled on in the second half as the Vikings beat Hancock, Miss., 28-14 in a spring game on May 19 in Poplarville, Miss.
For Golson, the performance was proof his second season leading the program is shaping up even better than his first, which pushed Mary G. Montgomery into the playoffs for the first time in 20 years.
“I think we’re way ahead and we’re in a really good place,” Golson said after the win. “We challenged our kids to show up and go to work and they did.”
Quarterback Jared Hollins and receiver James Bolton, both all-state selections, showed no signs of slowing down what was already one of the state’s top passing combinations in 2023. On the game’s very first snap, Hollins found Bolton for a 40-yard gain, the opening play of what became 40 offensive snaps for the Vikings’ starters in the first half alone.
“We played really fast,” Golson said. “We’ve still got work to do but our coaches did a good job of emphasizing playing fast at each position and we did a better job of teaching it this spring. We were very fast and very physical on both sides of the ball. Our conditioning looked really good. You could tell (Hancock) was starting to get fatigued by the third drive and it looked like we hadn’t even gotten started yet.”
The numbers behind the statement
Hollins finished 14-of-16 passing for 245 yards in his half of work. Bolton, who led Class 7A with 1,304 receiving yards a season ago, caught six passes for 140 yards, including a 45-yard touchdown from Hollins. Running back Troy Flowers added a 3-yard touchdown run.
“Jared was super-efficient and I thought we played well up front,” Golson said. “James and Jared picked up where they left off and Troy had a good night too.”
Golson said Hollins, who threw for 2,152 yards, 21 touchdowns and just two interceptions last season, continues to sharpen his game heading into his junior year.
“I thought one of the things we’ve been working with him on and we want to see is continuing to get his footwork cleaned up, which will make him more elite,” Golson said. “He did a good job with it. And his presence and his poise — he’s got that demeanor the guys look to.”
That combination of production and polish is what has college recruiters watching the Semmes school’s quarterback situation closely. A 13-to-2 touchdown-to-interception ratio as a sophomore is the kind of line that travels, and spring performances are where rising juniors convert buzz into momentum. Hollins’ efficiency against a Mississippi playoff program — completing 14 of 16 with no reported turnovers — fits the trajectory Golson described.
How the night unfolded
The Vikings’ first live action of the year began with a statement: a play-action pass to a post route that Hollins delivered despite good coverage.
“Right out of the gate, it was right on the money,” Golson said. “There was good coverage but Jared made a great throw and James made a contested catch.”
MGM’s starters didn’t score on that opening drive, but Flowers capped a nine-play march with his touchdown run on the second series, and Hollins’ 45-yard scoring strike to Bolton put the starters up 14-7 by halftime.
The 14-7 margin understated the control the Vikings’ first unit showed. Forty snaps in one half is a heavy workload for a spring game, and it reflected Golson’s decision to treat the night as a true conditioning test rather than a scripted exhibition. By the third drive, he said, the fatigue on the Mississippi sideline was visible while his own offense still looked fresh.
Golson said this year’s team is developing an identity built around toughness as it tries to reach the playoffs in consecutive seasons for just the third time in school history, following an 0-8 postseason drought.
“This team is going to be physical,” he said. “Our coaching staff has challenged our guys to play that way. As fast as we are getting to the point of attack, it allows you to be more physical. The defense swarmed to the ball all night. Hancock is very physical and bigger than us and I was worried about how we might match up.”
Depth on display
The Vikings’ depth showed in the second half, as backup quarterbacks Brandon Smith and Dane Saucier threw touchdown passes to help MGM’s reserves match the starters’ effort and beat Hancock’s backups 14-7 in that half.
“We had 105 kids and everybody got to play at least one drive,” Golson said. “Our twos played very well.”
For a program coming off a two-decade playoff absence, the second-half performance may have been the most encouraging sign of the night. Spring games are where rosters are won, and the fact that two different backup quarterbacks moved the offense to touchdowns — against an opponent’s second unit, but still — suggests the pipeline behind Hollins is not empty. With 105 players in the program, MGM is operating at enrollment numbers that many Class 7A schools would envy, and Golson’s staff got every one of them into live game action before the pads came off for the summer.
The summer ahead
With spring football behind them, the Vikings will spend the summer on the 7-on-7 circuit, with stops at the University of South Alabama and the University of Alabama before wrapping up in mid-July at the National 7-on-7 tournament in Hoover.
“I’m excited to see this group up there,” Golson said.
The circuit matters more for a passing-oriented team like MGM than for most. Seven-on-seven strips away linemen and running games and reduces football to coverage, route-running and quarterback play — the three areas where the Vikings are strongest and where Hollins and Bolton can sharpen their timing against elite competition from across the Southeast. The Hoover tournament, hosted each July amid the state’s football infrastructure, draws some of the best talent in the region and gives rising programs a measuring stick no fall scrimmage can provide.
The stops in Mobile and Tuscaloosa carry their own value beyond competition. Camp settings at South Alabama and Alabama put players in front of college coaches, and for a junior quarterback with Hollins’ statistics and a receiver with Bolton’s production, exposure is part of the summer’s work. Golson has framed the program’s development in those terms — building a roster that expects to compete in the postseason and players who expect to play beyond it.
What the playoffs would mean
The stakes for the fall are historical as much as competitive. Reaching the postseason in consecutive seasons for just the third time in school history would confirm that the 20-year drought Golson ended in year one was a turning point rather than an anomaly. The program’s 0-8 stretch through the postseason — a run of futility that hung over the roster for two decades — has been the benchmark every MGM team since has been measured against, and last year’s six-game winning streak was the first sustained evidence that the baseline has moved.
Spring results never guarantee fall standings, and Golson’s own comments — “we’ve still got work to do” — reflect that. But the components a coach wants returning are all back: an efficient junior quarterback with a season of varsity starts behind him, the state’s most productive Class 7A receiver, a running back who scored in the spring game, two backups who each threw touchdowns, and a roster of 105 players who got live reps in May.
The Vikings will open fall practice in August with the Poplarville performance as their proof of concept — a 28-14 win in which the starters outscored their counterparts and the reserves did the same, on a night when the opponent got tired first. If the summer circuit goes the way Golson expects, the program that waited 20 years to return to the playoffs will arrive in the fall expecting to stay.
The passing game that drives everything
The Hollins-to-Bolton connection is the engine that makes the rest of MGM’s plan possible, and the spring game’s first play showed why. Play-action works when defenses fear the pass; the 45-yard touchdown strike works when a receiver can win a contested ball; and everything underneath works when both are true. Bolton’s 1,304 yards led all of Class 7A last season despite opponents knowing where the ball was going, which is the statistic that should worry future defensive coordinators most.
Golson’s staff spent the spring on footwork and timing — the unglamorous repetitions that separate a good high school quarterback from an elite one — and the coach’s evaluation of Hollins centered on traits that do not show up in box scores: pocket presence, poise, the demeanor teammates follow. A 14-of-16 night against live coverage suggests the repetitions took.
Flowers’ role deserves note as well. A 3-yard touchdown run is a modest line, but his nine-play march on the second series showed an offense capable of grinding when the big plays are taken away — the kind of balance a passing team needs when October defenses stop conceding deep shots.
Building through depth
The backups’ 14-7 second half did more than pad the score; it validated the roster-building Golson has emphasized since taking over. Programs that collapse when starters leave the field rarely sustain playoff runs, and injuries across a Class 7A season are a certainty, not a risk. Having two reserve quarterbacks who can each deliver scoring drives is a luxury few Alabama high school programs enjoy.
The 105-player roster also signals something about the program’s direction. Participation numbers tend to follow winning, and MGM’s turnout suggests the first playoff berth in 20 years recruited the halls in a way losing seasons could not. Depth at every position gives Golson’s staff options the previous regime lacked — the ability to play fast, substitute freely and survive the region grind without a talent cliff behind each starter.
Summer will determine how much of the spring’s promise carries into August. The 7-on-7 stops in Mobile, Tuscaloosa and Hoover will test the Vikings’ passing game against defenses better than Hancock’s, and the fall camp battles those events set up will sort the depth chart Golson will carry into a season with real expectations for the first time in a generation.