All right, Coach, you win a state championship last year and a lot of coaches want to win the last game of the year.

Not a lot of them do.

What are some of the lessons and other things that you might have learned about the season and being a champion that you're bringing into the 23 season with you?

Well, one thing is you get out of your returners in five, five more weeks of practice.

It's like having a spring practice and you know, we don't have a spring.

We do.

The two fall scrimmages.

But you also learn some hard lessons to where you know, you think you're going to come in in January and everybody's going to be revved up coming off winning the title.

Then, and you kind of spend that first month and I don't know if it's because you you practice so much longer than everybody else.

You know, the January was kind of a low for us.

And, you know, we really kind of had to get on our kids a little bit about, hey, you know, it takes just as much hard work to try to repeat and go do it again.

It's actually going to be harder to go do it again this year than it was a year ago.

And just getting that effort up.

But after about a month, you know, our effort in our weight room work, you know, got where it was supposed to be, where it was a year ago.

But there's a transition of just kind of going that deep in the year that your kids have to get out of before they crank it back up for that next year.

Coach, we've had coaches call in from their car, from the field, from their office.

You are calling in from your closet.

You're the first one.

So you set your house.

You'll be moving during football season and your kids are napping.

So there you are in your closet.

Are you watching film in there or do you have a projector That's, you know, there's no film.

We did you know, I'm I answered two of them questions here in just a second.

You know, the first is there's seven of us.

We have five kids.

We have a basketball team.

So we're crammed five we're crammed in a rental house right now.

And they have a lot of people call me and say, oh, you know, you won a title and now you're going to get a raise in the house.

But it's kind of obviously you got to win.

So they're not going to fire you and run you out of town.

And then you can set land and build a house.

But so So we're building then?

Yeah, I'm in the I'm in the the only quiet place in the house is this closet with that that many kids and the fan watching is actually pretty cool because I've got two kids, my own kids, my stepsons are in the program now, so I get to watch film at home and watch pull up film and watch it with them.

And man, that that's that's an incredible feeling that something is very fun for for any coach.

And it's my first time getting to experience that.

So I'm excited about that part of Sam watching.

Now you've got a schedule coming up this year and you're in Region 72 and it's you.

Mount Zion and Christian Heritage.

And it's a mini region.

And I mean I mean, I dash region.

It is a mini region you got to come up with eight non region games.

We chronicled how difficult it was at one of those times last season.

When you look at your schedule this year and how crazy it could be, I mean, what do you what do you see what that schedule and the only two region games that you have?

Well, I thought our schedule was one of the toughest in class AA D2 last year and I thought by the time we got to the playoffs we were a battle tested football team.

But we were a veteran team.

You know, we had 18 seniors and kids who had had started for two or three years or more.

And we're a little different make up this year.

We do have some returning players and some good ones returning.

But at the same time, we've got a lot of young kids that did not play a whole lot a year ago.

So the tough schedule is going to be a challenge.

You know, we open the season with with Manchester.

I think they'll be a top five team, so we'll have a top five matchup in the opener.

Of course, we scrimmage a really good Hurt County and a really good racing county team.

Then we turn around and play for a school Central Carrollton.

Then we turn around, play Ravel Braman and then we turn around and play a semifinal Desert school, Paterno Square.

We've got another semifinal team on the schedule.

Saint Francis Legendary Frank Barden goes to the Christian heritage.

We have a58 school for Starke and we actually do have eight non region games.

A year ago we had seven.

We kept having some cancellations.

We added Dade County.

So we're going to make a three or four hour trip up to the Tennessee border to play that.

And then we end up we've got our big rival game, game ten, you know, possibly for a region championship against Mount Zion, who will probably be better that they've got a lot of their good players back.

So very, very challenging schedule.

And again, if we get through that healthy, then we feel like, you know, we've kind of been battle tested to go make another run.

One of the hot offseason topics is recruiting.

So tell me about some of your top playmakers that have gotten offers and made commitments if they have and then a player that that needs an offer.

Okay, well, I've got some of both of those.

Jordan Beasley He was a two way starter for us last year.

He a committed to come to Charleston Southern I think about three weeks ago.

He's been a really good player.

He's had a really good summer and just came off a really good padded camp the Thursday before the dead week.

We've got a junior Jaxon Edwards who has he's got two offers.

They're small school offers right now, but that he's just a junior, so he's going to have a few more of those come.

We have a kid come back from an injury.

He's our he's our kid that that needs an offer in and he has no film from his junior year He tore his ACL a year ago and we really thought he was going to be one of our top three football players.

On last year's team and we played the whole season without him.

His name is Chris Wyatt.

He plays receiver and safety for us.

You know, he's a he's a big receiver.

He's probably 6162, right, about £185.

So we're looking forward to a really big year out of this kid who didn't play much last year.

We've also got a sophomore, six, six receiver who played both ways for us last year, who's probably got the biggest offers on our team right now.

He's been offered by App State, UAB Marshall.

He's kind of in that that small Division one FCS range right now, but he's got two years of, you know, football playing to go.

So he'll be a big time kid.

He's visited Auburn, Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, Ole Miss all this summer.

So we're expecting, you know, a big, big season out of him.

And so right now, those are those are all for kids.

And then we actually have a kid that's been offered by Ron Howard, our our quarterback taken over for Robert McNeil.

His name is Callum again, and he'll be a senior.

And I think he's the kid that once he gets a lot of Hudl film under his belt, he's going to kind of get some offers on that FCS level too.

So.

So we've got a couple now.

Let me ask you this.

You've mentioned the rivals that you have there on the schedule and you know, the Bowden Bolden in game.

I know a lot of folks are just they they that is a must watch game.

I don't care where you are in the state of Georgia Baton BREAM And for me as a must watch game, you mentioned the rivals that you've at the Mount Zion Carroll game to wrap up the season for someone who has never been out there to Bowden has never seen a game there in West Georgia.

How would you describe what football means to the Bowden community?

Well, the community reminds me of football in the in the 1970s and eighties when I grew up.

It is an old fashioned place.

And when Friday nights rolled around, it shuts down.

The entire community is going to be there.

The crowd was enormous in the semifinal game against Lincoln County.

Of course, there another storied small school program that that has a lot of following to the brim and game.

I think it's been played 75 years in a row.

So that that game's huge.

Every year, the Mount Zion game has gotten a lot bigger because we're in the same region now and really have played for a region title several times in the last four years.

And then we also have in county rival Central and Temple on the schedule.

Got one more question for you, Coach, is our bonus one.

Do you have a bonus funny coaching moment or a coaching memory, a game day tradition or superstition?

Any kind of funny story that you want to share with us?

I was down at Hurt County one year and Coach Baron decided he was the head coach, Tim Beyer, and he's not going to record that.

We were going to wear we were going to wear black pants.

So I didn't have black pants.

I'd go out by some black pants.

I was I was low heel him and making me go spend money for Africa.

And then for some reason, it was a hot, hot pre-season.

Of course it was a game.

So he said, you know, we're going to wear black shorts.

Well, now I had to go out and buy a pair of black shorts and I didn't have any black shorts, so I tried to cut my my pants off and make them into shorts and I didn't know that my pant legs were not even so not in the down the backside in the front they were, but on the back it was little short on one side.

So I went out and coach in those pants and Coach Bear and he was kind of mad at me.

He was like, Man, you can look hard or you can say your pants are buying the saying and your pants.

So I think we had another pre-season scrimmage the following week and he had he had talked all the coaches in the curtain there.

There you go, everybody had crooked shorts on and they all had them in the face.

We didn't wear them out, the coach in it, but just just to get at me.

And that's just one of them.

Them funny stories and staff where it was great to coach on.