South Warren Returns Veteran Core in Pursuit of a 2026 Kentucky Class 6A Championship

The defending Class 6A runner-up returns an experienced roster led by quarterback Camden Page and one of Kentucky's top defensive units.

South Warren High School celebrates a victory over Barren County during the 2025 season. The Spartans look to make it back to the 6A state title game in 2026. | South Warren Football

Few high school football teams in Kentucky return as much proven experience as South Warren.

After finishing as the Class 6A state runner-up in 2025, the Spartans bring back the core of a veteran roster on both sides of the ball. Coach Brandon Smith believes that continuity gives South Warren an opportunity to make another championship run.

South Warren (6A) Head Coach:
Head Coach: Brandon Smith
2025: 13-1 state runner-up

Familiarity provides any football program an advantage entering a new campaign.

For South Warren, a lack of attrition from the 2025-26 school year should serve them well. Perhaps help the team return to the state championship final and capture a 6A title.

Experience Returns Across the Roster

“We're 6A school, larger school. We had a small senior class last year,” said Smith. “We probably had 15 kids. And really probably about half of them played…on paper we have quite a bit of guys with experience returning.”

In 2025, the Spartans had several new faces on the field where adjustments and a learning curve to overcome were the reality.

“This year, that's not the case,” Smith said. “There's a lot of experience.”

On offense, the Spartans lost their Class of ’26 go-to guys, which was their top receiver, tight end and running back.

“There's three or four guys that were dudes in that class,” Smith said. “One of them was the running back. One of them was our best receiver. And then we had a tight end…hat was a good player as well."

Now some of that returning experience has to become the situational go-to options.  

“What we've talked to the team about is we have a lot of these guys coming back with skins on the wall. But the dudes we depended on in the big moments…aren't here. So somebody's going to have to step up and kind of fill those alpha male roles.”

Familiarity in the South Warren program can go a long way in field competency and execution. The Spartan system isn’t football 101.

“We're pretty complicated in our schemes on offense and defense,” Smith commented. “So I think the strength would be that we've got a large portion of guys that know what to do already. So we can kind of expand on some of the things we were doing early on and feel comfortable that they know what's going on. There's nothing like a year of experience for a high school player.”

Defense Leads the Way

The Spartans certainly aren’t sparse on defense. They didn’t lose a triumvirate of key players to graduation, and the 2025 unit is still intact in 2026, except for 6A lineman of the year Malik Butler.

The returning group of starters is chock-full of stellar players that combined for 13 picks and 92 tackles for loss last season.

“We have JaQuise Smith (39 tackles, 14 TFL, four sacks) who will be a three-year starter,” Smith said. “We have Khysen Buford (21 tackles, eight TFL, one sack), a defensive end. Will Mayes (41 tackles, 16 TFL, two sacks) plays defensive end as well. We have Cole Kuzma (59 tackles, 14 TFL, one sack) who was our Mike linebacker. And returning our nickel, Ryley Oller (65 tackles, 10 TFL, two sacks, two interceptions).”

The Spartans also bring back three of their four starters from last season’s secondary: Safety Isaiah Bridges (45 tackles and five interceptions) and  corners Joseph Fentress and Corbin Logan. 

Page Guides Veteran Offense

Offensively, senior quarterback Camden Page will lead the squad. He threw for 24 TDs against eight interceptions in ’25, raking up  2,343 passing yards and posting a 70.1 completion percentage.

Junior running back Jamir Boards will lead the ground-game charge and three of their five linemen from last year are back.

Receiving-wise, senior Justin Capps tops the list along with senior Tucker Sears and Bridges. 

And tight ends, a position that is important in the Spartan schemes, is stocked well.

“A really nice stable of tight ends,” Smith said. “We’ve got some good ones. One of them's a senior (Mayes) and then two of them are juniors, Clay and Cole Helton.”

Key Game

vs. Manual-8/28