When Mineola celebrated its 2016 state football championship, fans raced to beat the team home, lining the streets to cheer the boys on as they rolled by in jeeps and trucks. Coach Joe Drennon arrived at the MHS football stadium by helicopter. A celebration rally welcomed the champions home, complete with a speech from state representative Bryan Hughes, now a state senator. The whole town turned out to celebrate their Cinderella season.
Author Lorrie Drennon wants readers to see everything that came before it.
Her new book, We Ready, is set for release Aug. 4, and tells the story of the Yellowjackets’ historic championship season, as well as the years of sacrifice, character-building and faith that laid the foundation for the program’s success.
“I wanted them to know they didn’t just go in and win that championship game,” Drennon said. “There were a lot of groups before them who gave their hearts, their time, their sweat and their tears to build that program.”
For Drennon, the project has been a long time in the making.
In 2015, just before Mineola’s championship season, she was involved in a devastating head-on collision that left her with years of surgeries and rehabilitation. The crash required neck, shoulder, foot and eye surgeries, followed by more than six years of physical therapy.
While the football team was making history on Friday nights, Drennon was fighting a much different battle.
“Everybody else was winning and celebrating,” Drennon said. “I was going through physical therapy.”
Drennon did not initially intend to publish the story. She envisioned putting together a simple keepsake for the players and their families to hand out at their 10-year reunion.
“I was just going to Xerox it and give it to them,” Drennon said with a laugh.
Life had other plans.
When Drennon began publishing snippets of the manuscript online, her publisher’s interest was piqued. He said, “What about this football book? Do you have anything?”
Drennon then sent him the manuscript and he said, “Can we do a rush job?” Drennon explained then that she had just been waiting until the 10-year reunion to give it to them.
The book became much more than a season recap.
Drennon and her husband, longtime coach Joe Drennon, watched many of the future state champions grow from young athletes into young men. The players spent countless hours at the Drennons’ home, swimming, studying the Bible and building friendships that extended far beyond football.
Drennon said she believes one of the team’s greatest strengths wasn’t simply athletic talent.
“I think one of their success stories is their parents,” Drennon said. “I’ve never seen parents who were so supportive—not helicopter parents—but loving parents who expected their kids to do things the right way.”
Drennon remembers a team that held one another accountable, studied Scripture together and valued discipline as much as victories.
The championship, Drennon said, was built through “years of culture change.”
When her oldest son transferred into Mineola’s football program his sophomore year, the team struggled with discipline. After one particularly disappointing loss, Joe Drennon gathered the players for a difficult lesson.
“If we’re going to change the atmosphere of a program,” Drennon remembers him saying, “everybody has to be part of it.”
Even players who had done nothing wrong shared in the accountability, running alongside teammates and accepting the consequences of others’ mistakes.
Watching the transformation from a struggling program to state champion is one of the central themes of the book.
Drennon also said that she hopes readers recognize that every championship season has unseen stories behind it.
“It looks really fun when you’re winning,” Drennon said. “But there’s real life behind all of this.”
Her own life changed dramatically after the accident. Doctors told Drennon she would never run again. Steroid treatments and limited mobility led to a weight gain of 102 pounds. Yet Drennon credits her faith with helping her move forward instead of giving up.
“I believe it could have gone one of two ways,” Drennon said. “I could have shut down. Instead, God’s taken it and used it.”
Instead of shutting down, she chose to walk seven miles each day as part of her daily prayer routine.
The experience also reshaped how Drennon spends time with her family. Unable to attend her daughter’s graduation or help her get ready for prom because of her injuries, Drennon and her daughter began taking an annual mother-daughter trip each September. Drennon beamed as she described the two weeks a year she now gets to spend exclusively with her daughter. They have spent that time to travel throughout Europe, including Belgium, Holland, England, France and Scotland.
“It drew us even closer,” Drennon said.
Writing has always been part of Drennon’s life. Long before publishing books, Drennon wrote Bible studies for middle and high school students, coached youth athletics, and often hosted Bible studies in her home.
But the football book remains especially personal. Before finishing the manuscript, Drennon reached out to former players, asking each to share a lesson they still carried from their playing days.
Though the wording varied, one message surfaced again and again.
“They all remembered something my husband said,” Drennon said.
The phrase, repeated by player after player, captured the culture the Drennons had worked to build.
“Do hard things.”
For Drennon, that lesson extends far beyond football. It’s about championship teams. It’s about faith. And it’s about finding purpose even when life takes an unexpected turn.
Former players and fellow coaches from the 2016 championship team gathered at the Drennons’ home Saturday, July 11. It was no longer a place filled with boys splashing in the pool while chasing a championship, but one filled with grown men reflecting on the journey that changed their lives. Drennon said it filled her with pride to see how those boys have grown into men with families of their own.
This fall, two more books are scheduled for publication, one centered on faith and another chronicling her health journey after the accident. Drennon also has another book in the works. Copies of her new release will be available for purchase on Aug. 4 at all major retailers. Locally, The Page Turner in Mineola will carry the book.