STARTING FROM SCRATCH: 12 new programs getting off the ground in Georgia

by Alex Ewalt

As high school enrollment numbers across Georgia have skyrocketed over the past few decades, so have the number of high schools.

This year, 12 new public schools opened across the state, 10 of them in the metro Atlanta area and two outside of it. Fulton (Johns Creek, Langston Hughes) and Gwinnett (Archer, Mountain View) each have two; Cherokee (River Ridge), Walton (Walnut Grove), Henry (Locust Grove), Clayton (Drew), Murray (North Murray), Columbia (Grovetown), DeKalb (Arabia Mountain) and Forsyth (Lambert) each have welcomed a new addition to their school systems this fall.

What do all of these schools have in common (other than that new-school smell, of course)? They all have brand-new football teams fighting to build tradition and gain experience alongside plenty of established and distinguished existing programs.

One of those programs, Lambert, has a coach that knows what it takes to build a successful football program from the ground up. Sid Maxwell began as an assistant at Sequoyah in its first year of existence in 1990, and four years later took the head coaching job at the school. For the past 16 years, Maxwell has enjoyed the success that he helped build at the Cherokee County school, most recently leading the team to a 10-2 record. But it always takes time, as Maxwell notes, to gain enough momentum as a program to become competitive.

“I think the biggest thing is to have the patience just to take it each week and keep adding a little bit more to the system and the program,” Maxwell said. “Don’t try and give them too much at one time.”

BEEN THERE  

Maxwell isn’t the only coach of a new program with experience in leading a start-up into the unknown. Johns Creek’s Mike Cloy started the Centennial program in 1997 and coached the school during its most successful stretch, the early 2000s, before leaving to become the AD at Alpharetta (also a new school at the time) in 2004. Jarrett Laws of Drew just finished a successful stint at Mt. Zion-Jonesboro, also a Clayton County school, but cut his teeth getting Freedom High (Tampa, Fla.) off the ground earlier this decade.

Grovetown’s head man, Rodney Holder, stayed in Augusta to get the Warriors program off the ground after coaching the Greenbrier baseball team for the past two years (they won a Class 4A state title in 2007). However, it is his father’s experiences which have given him the framework for how to start a program; Terry Holder was the first coach at Greenbrier back when it opened in 1996, and he took the Wolfpack to the playoffs in the school’s very first year.

Other coaches at new programs have impressive pedigrees as well. Willie Cannon of Langston Hughes comes from nearby Creekside, where he served as defensive backfield coach. Cannon personally groomed former Creekside stars Eric Berry, now an All-American at Tennessee, and Terrance Parks, now a contributor at Florida State, during his time at the school. Robert Braucht of Pine Ridge turned around the program at Pine Ridge (Deltona, Fla.), leading the team to a 9-2 record last year. And Christopher Beal, Arabia Mountain’s head man, was the defensive coordinator last year at a resurgent Johnson-Savannah program which made the playoffs after some down years.

READY FOR THE CHALLENGE  

Though all of the new programs but Grovetown are playing JV or sub-varsity schedules, Holder’s Warriors have jumped right into a non-region varsity slate (the school inherited a decent amount of upperclassmen from Greenbrier, Harlem and Evans), and have wasted no time in getting out and playing some top competition. The Warriors opened with none other than state superpower Buford (a 51-0 defeat) and met a quality program from South Carolina with Fairfield Central (a 50-0 loss).

Said Holder to the GHSF Daily in a summer interview, “I’ve had people say, ‘What in the world are you doing?’ But it’s going to help our kids, and it’s also going to give our program a vision of where we want to be.”

Where all these programs want to be is in the state playoffs and contending for titles. And with the quick success of several startups in the last decade or so, it isn’t all that farfetched. Nationally ranked Grayson came into existence in the first year of the current decade, and made the Class 5A state semifinals last season in solidifying itself as a state power. Peachtree Ridge shared a 5A title in 2006 just four years into its existence as a program, and both Flowery Branch and Creekview have been successful 3A teams soon after starting their programs (Flowery Branch in 2002 and Creekview in 2006).

However, such success, while very attainable, cannot be expected. Perhaps Maxwell sums it up best for coaches trying to build programs from scratch. Said Maxwell, “Always expect the unexpected and don’t take anything for granted.” But if recent history has taught us anything, Georgia high school football fans can expect several of these now-unknown programs to be household names sooner rather than later.

Ewalt can be reached at aewalt@scoreatl.com.