Published Tuesday, November 17, 2009

High school coaches under pressure to win

Sports Column by STUART CROSBY

stuart@newnan.com

Prior to the 2008 high school football season in Georgia, there were almost 80 vacancies for head coaching positions for one reason or another.

There were severa who, like former East Coweta head coach Danny Cronic, retired while a number of coaches resigned on their own or under pressure from boosters or simply the school's desire to try someone else.

Prior to this season vacancies, that included Newnan High School after the retirement of Robert Herring, totaled around 50 schools that had an empty seat at the head of their football table.

According to the Monday edition of the Georgia High School Football Daily, there are currently nine vacancies around the state including one at Northgate after Bill Luckie resigned last Tuesday after five seasons.

Over the course of the last few days Redan, Duluth, Calhoun County, East Laurens, Telfair County and Perry have joined Northgate, Southeast Bulloch and Effinghham County in the coaching search dance.

Eight of the nine coaches were at their schools for at least five years and that same number had at least one team go to the state playoffs.

Only Duluth failed to have a season with an 11th game under their coach with Northgate appearing in the playoffs last season while Redan, East Laurens and Perry last appeared in 2007.

I have left out the debacle known as the Valdosta coaching position intentionally as Rick Tomberlin's future was left up to a Monday evening school board meeting, but he will probably be the 10th casualty with the 28-9 loss to the Newnan Cougars last Friday being his swan song after four years.

Also, the Tomberlin saga is a different animal than the others since the Valdosta program has won a national record 618 games and has been featured in a number of media outlets.

The Wildcats finished the season 7-4 and during the Tomberlin era were 22-21 after he succeeded Rick Darlington who was 24-14 in three years and led his 2003 club to the AAAAA final where he finished in the runnerup spot.

What makes the coaching situation in "Winnersville" sad is these two gentlemen replaced current Woodstock head coach Mike O'Brien who had a record of 70-20-1 and a state title in his seven-year term following the death of the legendary Nick Hyder who passed away after the 1995 season.

Prior to the O'Brien hiring, the school had three coaches from 1946 until 1996 including Hyder, Wright Bazemore and Charlie Greene who coached for two years in the early 1970s.

After watching the Lowndes Vikings play last Friday night against East Coweta and looking at their record under their head coach Randy McPherson, which includes three state titles, I keep reaching a conclusion that some followers of the Valdosta program are trying live in the past where their success remains.

Since 1995 the Vikings have not had a losing season and have won at least 10 games in nine of those seasons and have won at least seven in four seasons with four state championships during that time along with several trips to the finals where they were the runnerup.

My point to this is that while I realize firings happen, I still have trouble accepting that coaches are at the mercy of whether a teenager can shoot a basketball or throw a touchdown pass.

We are in an era where we expect our teens to be able to learn about parallelism, separation of an atom or simply reading a job application as opposed to touchdowns and rebounds.

As sports fans, we should be passionate about our teams and hope they win a lot of games and championships, but at the end of the day give me that kid who will be able to run a business, save a life or teach in a classroom.