Excitement surrounds Vina football program ahead of second season under head coach Renfrow

The Vina Red Devils, coming off a one-win season in 2023, are looking forward to a new year under second-year head coach Cody Renfrow, returning many starters who hope to turn around a program that hasn’t had a winning season since 1989.

“This is as excited as we’ve been as a program in many years,” Renfrow said. “We have a lot of seniors returning, a lot of juniors; we have a lot of experience returning. They have improved drastically from last season, just from offseason workouts and fall camp. As a team we’ve improved a ton and we’re very excited.”

Talking to the press at the Football in the South Scoreboard Show Media Day in July, both Renfrow and the Vina players who attended were adamant about changing the mindset in the program and its perception from the outside.

“We’re trying to give Vina a better reputation than we have (had) in the past,” senior running back and linebacker Cai Lawler said. “Most teams when they think about Vina think about, ‘Oh, we’re just going to go in there and beat them.’ We ain’t one of them no more. We want to go in there and fight and come out with a win hopefully.”

Vina’s football history, to be frank, doesn’t justify any runaway optimism, but this year’s team is hoping to build off the momentum from its 42-32 win over region rival Waterloo in 2023’s season finale, the program’s first win since October of 2020, and use it as a springboard to success in 2024. This is what senior quarterback and defensive back Christian McCarley emphasized when asked what the team’s goals were for the upcoming campaign.

“Just to be better than what we were last year, and continue that Waterloo victory that we had—continue to play with that kind of fire and that kind of effort that we put into that game,” McCarley said. “A lot of people underestimate us because of how the last couple seasons have went, and we’re just trying to change that.”

It’s that belief in what Vina can do and be, rather than what it has done in the past, that Renfrow said will be critical moving forward.

“That Waterloo win last season was huge for us,” he said. “It really felt like we got the monkey off our back because last year…it was a grind and we finally got rewarded that last game of the year.

“I think the biggest thing moving forward is just confidence. I think we’ve got to believe in ourselves. We’ve got to understand that we are a small school and we’ve got to play both sides of the ball and with that you’ve got to be tough and you have to play with effort every single play,” Renfrow added. “We can’t afford to take a play off here and there—we don’t have the numbers to do that. But I believe in the guys that we do have, and if we can stay confident and play to our potential, I think we can have a successful season.”

Of course, transitioning from a perennial sub .500 side to a winning one takes more than just good vibes. Renfrow, like a couple other coaches in Franklin County, didn’t have much time to implement his own ideas on the players and the program given that he took the job shortly before the start of the 2023 season. Now, with a full offseason to apply his concepts, Renfrow said Vina have made fundamental changes that will, hopefully, prove beneficial.

“The biggest difference between last year and this year is just our weight lifting program,” he said. “It was borderline non-existent last year around this time. From last August when I took the job, through the season last year, and going into our offseason program this year that’s grown and the kids have started to embrace it. I think that’s one of the main reasons why we’re more confident is because they’ve seen the progress from that. We are stronger and we are faster and they’re becoming more confident in themselves because of that.”

That new strength will be crucial for Vina to assert its will on the opposition, especially on offense, where Renfrow said the Red Devils want to gain dominance through its running game.

“We’re definitely going to try to run the ball. That is priority number one,” “We kinda spread it out a little bit, but we’re definitely going to run the ball. I think that plays to our strength as a group. We want to play hard-nosed. I don’t know if I’d say it’s going to three yards and a cloud of dust, but running the ball is our main priority.”

Three players—Trevor Baker, Christian McCarley, and Cai Lawler—will play major roles in Vina’s offense this season, Renfrow said, and will have to be big contributors if the Red Devils are to be successful on that side of the ball.

“Trevor Baker is our workhorse. The offense kinda runs through him,” he said. “As long as we can keep him healthy—he’s had some chronic cramping issues in the past. As long as we can keep him hydrated and healthy, he’s our guy on offense.

“We’ve got Christian McCarley returning at quarterback. He’s very experienced and very confident as a leader. He distributes the ball very well,” Renfrow added. “And Cai Lawler is another senior who also plays running back. He’s like a utility guy. He’s good at just about anything you ask him to do. He’s very gritty and very tough.

“I’d say those three—that’s our offense.”

If Vina can maintain and control possession on offense, that will likely prove profitable for the Red Devils defensively, as well. Vina allowed over 42 points per game last season with depth on defense being a weak point. The depth issue on that side of the ball, Renfrow said, hasn’t improved much this season, but this year the Red Devils are taking a different approach.

“To be honest we don’t have much depth, and we didn’t have much depth last year,” he said. “We’ve got guys playing both sides of the ball, and last year we kinda took the approach of we really don’t want to get these guys hurt hitting Monday and Tuesday in practice.

“Don’t get me wrong—we taught tackling and we hit but we didn’t do it nearly enough, and that showed on Friday nights. We weren’t physical enough,” Renfrow added. “So far this year that’s all we’ve done. We’re full pads every single day, there’s contact every single day. They’ve really embraced it and, personally, I’ve seen them grow and just be more tough. More mentally tough, more physically tough and I think that’s going to go a long way.

“Our practice emulates how we want to play, how physical we want to play.”

Similarly to the offensive side, the defense will look to a couple of familiar names.

“Cai Lawler has been our most consistent defensive player. He’s led the team in tackles the last two years,” Renfrow said of the linebacker. “He’s our most consistent guy there and he’s probably the one guy we’re going to lean on on defense.

“Christian McCarley, also, has grown a ton and he’s consistently getting better,” Renfrow added. “He provides that leadership role and I think he’s the guy the others on defense can look to.”

Vina’s relying on a handful of experienced senior players on both sides of the ball points not just to its size as a Class 1A school but also, as Renfrow says, to its lack of depth. The Red Devils have around 20 players on their roster, and a third of them are seniors.

“Outside of our juniors and seniors we’re extremely young,” Renfrow said. “We’ve got nine starters on defense, for example, that are seniors and juniors, so we’re going to have to plug and play eighth- and ninth-graders.

“Depth is our biggest issue, so we’re going to have to make sure we’re conditioned well and play tough,” Renfrow added.

Vina received an extra week of work and conditioning to get ready for the season. Looking at the schedule, the Red Devils will host Brindlee Mountain to open the campaign on August 30th, and then they jump right into region action, traveling to Phillips Bear Creek before hosting Shoals Christian. Vina will then play Cherokee, Hackleburg, Waterloo, Addison, and Meek with non-region rival Tharptown thrown in the mix and Belgreen serving as the regular season finale.

Renfrow said Class 1A Region 7 is top-heavy and believes Vina can compete with a lot of its region mates. The Red Devils shouldn’t play for the last place.

“Hackleburg is the standard of our region and has been the standard of our region for a long time. They’re going to be good. And then you go to Addison, who is always a solid program. Meek, too, is a very solid program, very physical,” Renfrow said. “Then you get to the Cherokees, who I know is improved this season, and the Shoals Christians. I think you can fit us in there with those guys and Waterloo and Bear Creek. I think we can be competitive with those guys this season, and that’s exciting. I don’t think we should settle for being the bottom feeders of the region.”

Should Vina manage the break the trend of the last few decades, break into the pack, and potentially put together a winning year, Renfrow said it will be off the back of the program’s core principles.

“On day one we laid down two non-negotiables about how we’re going to play: those two things were toughness and effort,” he said. “If we can apply those two things on the football field then that’s going to give us the best chance of being successful.

“This year, being very senior-heavy, we added leadership to that. That’s one area in the past that we’ve really lacked in,” he added. “If we play with toughness, if we play with effort, and if we have leaders that step up, those are the most important things and if we get that then I think we have a good chance at having a successful season.”

Vina hosts Brindlee Mountain for its season opener on Friday, August 30th.