The parents of Holly Springs High School football players bought the stencils to paint the football field and do the labor work each week, using their own money and time.

The students turn out every week, lining the entrance to the football field before players run through.

The community has gathered around the Holly Springs football team the past two years, coach Jim Hynus said, and last week it finally paid off.

The Golden Hawks grabbed their first win in school history, with a convincing 35-14 performance over Panther Creek High School.

The students, who stood on the same field just before kickoff, joined their team in celebration after the whistle, able to celebrate for the first time ever.

“Last year we were outmanned every week. We were out there to just try to survive,” Hynus said. “Hopefully we’ve gotten past that and this is a step in the right direction. Now we just gotta learn how to play with the winning feeling.”

Holly Springs used its option veer attack to run up and down the field all night against Panther Creek, racking up 320 total yards while not attempting a single pass. Running back J.J. Graves led the way for the Hawks, grabbing 136 yards on the ground, while running back Eric Champion and quarterback Mark Collins had 97 and 83 yards respectively.

“When we run the veer, if J.J. is running hard and they’re diving on him that lets Mark get free in the secondary, they jump on Mark, we pitch it out to Eric,” Hynus said. “We don’t really have true superstars, we have a group of guys that have to play together to win.”

As painful as the loss was for Panther Creek and coach Wayne Bragg, it served as a reminder of their own first win as a program last year — against those same Golden Hawks.

“I know what that feels like — it was me last year,” Bragg said. “They deserved it, they’re playing well.”

The Catamounts took an early 7-0 lead on the first drive, led by quarterback Gray Mazzone who finished with 83 yards rushing and 78 passing. But the Holly Springs defense shut the Catamounts down the rest of the game, allowing only one other score.

And after two narrow losses in the two weeks before, Friday’s win has Hynus feeling very optimistic.

“Our goal is still to make the playoffs,” he said. “It’s going to be tough, but we’re capable of doing that if we play games like we did tonight with no big catastrophes and just playing hard-nosed football.”

Panther Creek had two starters out with injuries and plans to use its off week this week to heal and work on stopping the run.

“Physically they pounded us. [Graves], he ran the heck out of the ball, he’s been doing some squats,” Bragg said. “We have a saying that you get what you deserve. They got what they deserve and we got what we deserved.”

For Hynus, the team’s play on the field typified the kind of win it is for the program.

“We had to have the full game effort,” he said. “We didn’t want to leave any doubt that this was our game because it was our field.”