The involvement of the Catholic Church in St. Joe created unique dynamics not present in other schools. Immediately noticeable was the high expectation of discipline and excellence demanded by the priests and nuns.

Con Maloney 

The discipline, you know, came not only from football, but it came from the classroom too, because the nuns and the priests did not put up with anything. I mean, they were tough. They kept destroying. Catholic schools were not terribly bad, except the nuns really knew how to pull hair. We got the guys would always get their hair cut real short, so that they couldn’t get in there. Pull your hair because that used to be one of the standard things that they’d like to do.

Ron “Kowboy” Johnson 

The last man out want to have to go to on campus. For any type of disciplinary situation would be father Tashi, he didn’t care who you were on a football field on the baseball field, a basketball court, it didn’t making a difference. He wants to know, were you doing what you’re supposed to be doing and his teachers classroom,

sam lupe 

You didn’t mess up in his class, in his school.  That’s one man you didn’t want to get sent to the principal’s office. And there’s a big difference when you have nuns and priests running the school, and you have white people running in school.

Narrator 

The strict discipline was not gratuitous, but rather part of an effort to extract academic excellence from every St. Joe student.

Andrew Mattiace 

I can tell you today. The reason I graduated from college with an accounting degree was because of my experience at St. Joe with sister Clarissa, who taught me bookkeeping and accounting. It was a great experience. She taught me the business side of the world instead of science, math, etc.

Bill Raphael 

It was a little challenging because all of the teachers at St. Joe were very credentialed and excellent teachers in their specific subject areas. And it was a challenge, but they did take care and concern about you as a student as an individual student, and would work with you and made sure their presentations reach everybody in the class. If you didn’t get it, it wasn’t because I didn’t try.

Narrator 

Interestingly, the deep dedication to education possessed by the Sisters of Mercy also helps contribute a rather unexpected resource to the school – money.

Lester Diamond 

education has always been very important to the Dominican sisters, who were our sponsor at St. Dominic Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Sister Mary Dorothea Sondgereroth 

We’re the only Catholic health care facility in the state. And also, St. Joseph’s is the only Catholic high school here in this area. And so we have to be stewards of good stewards of resources. And of course, so we share this wealth with the school to help better them.

Lester Diamond 

We’ve donated quite a bit over the years. The sisters want to be humble about that. But we’ve supported St. Joe.

Narrator 

The presence of the Catholic Church provides St Joe with institutional structure, but it also removes a structural limitation that all public schools are subjected to. Unlike its peers, St. Joe is not bound by the lines of school districts.

Sister Mary Dorothea Sondgereroth 

One of the unique aspects of St. Joe’s is that it pulls students from the whole metro area, not just one little pocket is from the whole community of Jackson metro area.

Lester Diamond 

Whereas a lot of schools will have their students coming from a particular neighborhood. We’re fortunate that our students come from all over the metro Jackson area

Greg Frascogna 

That were Moreau, Francis was and North jacks (3:35) and was sort of regionalised that area. We weren’t, we received students from all over, sort of very, very many Notre Dame approach where they receive students from all over the country. We received students from all over Canada, central Mississippi, even

Nick Beasley 

I didn’t think I would go to St. Joe Actually, I thought I would have gone to Canton High School, because that was the district I lived in. But then my parents, they made a great decision for me going to St. Joe because of more of academic wise, and they thought it would be better for me in the future, and which it was a great decision. I want to thank them for that.

Narrator 

Well, St. Joe only service students in grades nine through twelve. Many students arrived already well indoctrinated into the school’s culture. A system of Catholic elementary and middle schools implemented almost identical educational and spiritual curriculum, as well as a hard-nosed gridiron mentality that prepared young football players for the day they would become a Saint Joe Bruin.

Sister Paulinus Oakes, RSM 

We had a little bus that went out there and brought people in. But that was an interesting phenomenon back in back then because most schools were just a little parochial schools in the neighborhood like St. Mary’s drew youngsters from the neighborhood, St. Teresa’s from the neighborhood. St. Richard From the neighborhood, we got him from all of those schools in Rankin County. And all these eventually became feeder schools for the sports program

Al Nuzzo 

Before going to St. Joe, I attended St. Mary’s. And there were other Catholic schools in the area. We played Holy Family. We played sanctuaries, played St. Richard’s. And what was unique was in grade school, those were your enemies. And you wanted to be from.

Leonard Thomas 

Being a Catholic school. And being the majority of our students came from St. Teresa, St. Richard St. Mary’s, the Catholic Church isn’t there yet. So you’re going to get a mix of Lebanese families, Italian families,

Andrew Mattiace 

St. Mary, St. Richard, St. Teresa was the melting pot, St. Joe was a melting pot.

Al Nuzzo 

But what was great when she got to St. Joe, you were a freshman. All those people that you’ve played against and knew and were your rivals, were now your teammates. And it was wonderful, because you already knew them.

Narrator 

While Bill Raphael was the unquestioned coaching patriarch of the Catholic school system, young football players within the St. Joe watershed were also exposed to a unique assortment of equally passionate coaches prior to arriving at Raphael’s locker room.

Mark Girard 

st Treece was was fun, it was awesome. my seventh and eighth grade years we were undefeated. Tommy Audrey was our head coach or the coach. Extremely memorable. I still use or steal Tommy Audrey story sometimes when I’m coaching. Once in a while, Coach Audrey come flying in on two wheels, get out of his car, roll up the sleeves on his dress shirt because he’s selling insurance, then loosen his tie a lot of cable no filter in that we get to practice.

Mark Frascogna 

Well, I played at St. Mary’s, for Coach Finnegan, maybe one of the toughest coaches, I can recall having encountered you know, from the fourth grade to the 12th grade, Coach Finnegan struck fear in the hearts of just about everybody that that got close to the team. I think maybe even the parents were a little bit scared of him. His claim to fame was I’m gonna run you until your Tom belly hangs out, he would line us up and blow the whistle and make us run sprints. And, and he had run us until we literally dropped.

Narrator 

St. Joe’s Catholic identity coupled with its ability to draw its student body from a wide geographic footprint resulted in an unusual student body. The collection of students was both tightly bound emotionally as members of Mississippi, small Catholic population, and yet economically and ethnically diverse.

Andrew Mattiace 

We grew up in South Jackson and we were a little bit of an outcast. I always felt that way. But man when I hit my campus, it’s St. Joe. It was very special. Very special.

Leonard Thomas 

Another thing about St. Joe, is you look at the diversification of the students, and we had people that didn’t make a lot of money. We had good medium income. We had some families that were you know, pretty wealthy.

Andrew Mattiace 

My father was a great Catholic, Italian immigrant, and he could not pay tuition. So he would paint the school in exchange for tuition. And it was fine. It went on we did that at St. Teresa. He thought that was a great deal.

Ray Coleman 

I’m not Cathlic, I’m Baptist, made no difference. You know, some people may look at Madison St. Joseph as a white school. Obviously, I’m not white, didn’t make a difference. You know what I mean? I was able to come there as a country boy from Fort Gibson, Mississippi, didn’t know anyone where people may have already had friends because they grew up at St. Richard together. And I made friends within a week. I never one day felt like I was out of place. I always felt like there was somewhere or somebody that I could go to and be able to express myself and not be judged. There was always someone that I could go to, adult or kid.

Andrew Mattiace 

For me, what made St. Joe so special was the absolute camaraderie. My friends that were in public school, that graduating class of 300 400 did not have that intimate feeling about their classmates.

Sister Paulinus Oakes, RSM 

The old St. Joe was like one big family. Everybody knew everybody and everybody was supportive of everybody. And if somebody’s grandmother died, a mother, dad or father or whatever. We were all there.