OLIVE — Before Olive’s 5-1 football season produced a school record, it produced an attendance figure.
Eighty-eight percent. That was the turnout for summer weightlifting, according to coach Shane McKinzie. No touchdowns to celebrate. No opponent to beat. Just the work that comes before anybody really knows whether the work will come with dividends.
For McKinzie, now in his third year at Olive, it was the best summer attendance he had seen.
For a football program accustomed to measuring progress in smaller increments than victories, it was an early indication that something was shifting.
“I really think over the summer when guys really bought in to weightlifting, we knew this year would be our chance to break some school records,” McKinzie said.
By early October, they had. The summer’s work was paying off A 48-0 victory over Wilson-Henryetta on October 2 gave the Wildcats five wins in their first six games — more victories than any previous Olive team had managed in a season.
The accomplishment carries more weight when placed beside what came before it. Olive went winless in 2019 and 2020. The Wildcats won twice in each of the next two seasons, four times in 2023, twice in 2024 and four times last fall.
Those years belong to the story. So do the athletes who kept playing when a winning season became something for another October.
This year’s Wildcats have given Olive a reason to look ahead.
“The community is fired up that this team is breaking history,” McKinzie said.
“The boys are bringing the pride back.”
One of those boys had not played football since little league.
Bryer Maxville returned as a senior, leaving himself one high school season to discover what he could do.
Turns out, he can do quite a bit.
Through the first six games, Maxville led Olive with 41 tackles. He had five and a half tackles for loss, a sack and two interceptions, including one returned for a touchdown. On offense, he caught seven passes for 140 yards and three scores.
He began the season at linebacker before moving to defensive end, part of an adjustment that helped the Wildcats regain their footing after a difficult night against Bluejacket.
A senior returning to football could reasonably have spent the season learning one assignment. Maxville has learned two while becoming one of the team’s most productive players.
McKinzie described him as “a force on defense, as well as a valuable weapon on offense.”
His contribution also offers an appealing thought for any student wondering whether it is too late to try something.
Sometimes a final opportunity turns out to be enough.
At quarterback, Gavin Nickell has taken a different route. A junior, he has started on both sides of the ball since his freshman season, acquiring experience through the tough years when Olive’s numbers weren’t nearly as shiny.
Now Nickell directs a tripleoption offense that suits his ability to run, improvise and make a defender’s decision often times unfortunate.
“Gavin brings some moxie to this team that infects others,” McKinzie said.
The coach sees it in Nickell’s ability to rescue a play that appears headed for a loss.
The six-game figures give that description substance: 382 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns on 50 carries, an average of 7.6 yards per attempt. Throwing the ball, Nickell completed 19 of 37 passes for 339 yards and another 10 touchdowns, without an interception.
Twenty touchdowns accounted for, with much of the regular season still ahead.
Beside him is freshman fullback Brody Maxville, already handling the responsibilities of a twoway starter at fullback and linebacker. Brody rushed for 278 yards and two touchdowns on 42 carries, averaging 6.6 yards.
He also contributed 18 tackles and a forced fumble.
On a roster where seniors are trying to leave something lasting, a freshman is helping make sure the work this season is not in vain.
The Wildcat offense has other ways to hurt a defense. Junior River Stonecipher, a 6-foot-3 target, supplied 95 rushing yards on 12 carries and 66 receiving yards. Senior Alex Williams caught two touchdown passes. Kellson Peveler added two more, while Kellen Peveler caught a 38-yard touchdown pass.
But McKinzie is just as interested in what happens when those receivers do not get the ball.
In an option offense, their willingness to block can determine whether the team gets the yards on any given play.
Kellen Peveler has done that work on the edge, McKinzie said. It is the sort of contribution a box score walks straight past.
Up front, senior TJ Cotton gives the Wildcats their most substantial presence: 6-2, 280 and, in McKinzie’s assessment, their strongest offensive lineman.
On defense, Cotton occupies running lanes and draws double teams. His six-game totals included four tackles for loss, a forced fumble and a recovery, but the coach knows those numbers are not the full account.
“We would not be in the position we are in without him,” McKinzie said.
Senior Tim Pierce supplies a different kind of example.
Listed at 6-1 160, Pierce moved to offensive guard this season. The assignment asks him to do a job usually associated with considerably more body weight.
“He is undersized to play guard, but what he lacks in size he makes up for with his physicality,” McKinzie said.
At noseguard, Pierce recorded 31 tackles, six for loss, and a sack. Senior Cody Cohen added four tackles for loss and a sack of his own.
Olive uses a four-man defensive front in its eightman game, relying on quickness and aggression to disrupt larger offensive linemen and make quarterbacks uncomfortable.
The approach requires players to trust their assignments and to trust one another. That trust received a test at Bluejacket last month.
The Wildcats surrendered a touchdown on the opening kickoff, then fumbled their first two offensive plays deep in their own territory. A rapid 21-0 deficit became a 45-0 loss.
It was a rough evening against a highly regarded opponent. It was, however, just one evening.
McKinzie reviewed the mistakes with his players, changed some defensive positions and watched how they responded.
“The kids did a good job that week of fixing their mistakes in practice,” he said.
The next two games produced victories over Midway and Wilson-Henryetta by a combined 980.
More revealing to the coach was the acceptance of those new assignments. Players understood why they were moving and went to work learning the positions.
Earlier, against Beaver, Olive had confronted a different problem. The Wildcats jumped ahead 16-0, then encountered an opponent that kept answering. Until that game, Olive had not allowed a point.
The Wildcats won 5532. McKinzie valued what happened between the early lead and the final score.
“It was good to see guys not panic, listen, and solve some of the problems Beaver was presenting us,” he said.
That is part of learning how to win: discovering that difficulty does not require surrender.
McKinzie credits the tough years in Class B-II with helping prepare this group. Games against established eight-man programs such as Cherokee, Covington-Douglas, Davenport, Waukomis and Coyle demanded lessons that were not always pleasant to receive.
The move to Class C gave Olive an opportunity to reset. Better summer participation gave the players a stronger foundation. Experience gave them something to apply.
“I don’t believe there is any one thing that has changed,” McKinzie said, describing the improvement as the culmination of several things.
He has a team with room for both intensity and laughter. About half the group consists of serious competitors, he said. The other half leans toward class clowns.
Together, they have made a district title a subject worth discussing and a first-ever playoff appearance a realistic ambition.
“This team is capable of winning a district championship,” McKinzie said. “We still have some tough games to go, but this team is capable of whatever they set their minds to.”
There is work remaining before those possibilities become accomplishments, but Olive already has something that cannot be undone by the next difficult quarter: a school record, players growing into unfamiliar responsibilities and a community with a reason to care about what comes next.
A senior came back to football. A freshman stepped into the lineup.
And in the summer, before any of them could know how this would turn out, they kept showing up in the weight room.
They will play 5-3 Bowlegs, at home, Thursday.