JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The 14th annual Baker’s Sports high school football media day has come and gone, which means one very important thing.
Football season is officially under way.
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Routinely held as fall practice opens, Tuesday’s event, the first held at the University of North Florida, shifted the 2019 season into first gear. Preseason games in Florida are Aug. 16 and the regular season the week after that.
News4Jax sports editor Justin Barney tracks some of the sights and sounds of media day.
• Jackson endured the heartbreak of the season in 2018. The Tigers finished 4-5 and all but wrapped up a playoff spot with a 33-27 OT win over Stanton in Week 11. But due to a clerical error during points totals tabulations,
Jackson actually tied with Gadsden County for the sixth and final playoff spot in Region 1-4A. The tiebreaker? A coin flip. That resulted in a winless (yes, winless!) Gadsden County team reaching the playoffs while Jackson stayed planted at home for the postseason.
How did coach Antione Atwater turn that disaster of a finish into a launching pad for 2019?
“Use it. What we end up doing is using it as motivation and try to get them guys to push themselves harder,” Atwater said. “It was a terrible feeling. You got guys crying. You got the community behind them, but for us, it was trying to get those guys to understand that you don’t ever want to feel like this again. You don’t ever want to feel like this again? Don’t let it happen again.”
Translation: Close the deal, on the field, and leave no room for interpretation.
The Tigers have momentum for the first time in years.
“We tell the kids all the time, there’s like a little buzz around us right now,” Atwater said. “Even
with the buzz, you still have to go out and produce.”
• It was the offseason of 2013 and Raines coach Deran Wiley was at his breaking point. Scratch that. His breakdown point.
The Vikings had just lost a 35-28 heartbreaker to Bolles in double overtime of the regional finals and Wiley was crushed.
“That game kind of changed my world as a coach because I had to make a decision, whether I was going to give up or continue,” he said. “For some odd reason, it hurt me hard, hurt me very much. Took me some time to get over it. But what I did, I told myself, ‘it’s worth it.’ You got to go through something to get to something.”
Two seasons later, Raines reached the Class 4A state title game.
Two seasons after that, the Vikings won the 4A championship. They added back-to-back titles last year. An unprecedented three straight would put Wiley in a class that few coaches on the First Coast are in.
Only three area coaches, Union County’s Robby Pruitt, Suwannee’s Mike Pittman and Trinity Christian’s Verlon Dorminey, have won three or more consecutive titles.
“I made a pact to myself and my coaches [in 2013] that I would go even harder because I thought greatness was on the horizon and we just had to stick to it,” Wiley said.
• Matt Toblin’s first task at Bolles was a simple one.
Find good football minds and put together a staff that could help keep the Bulldogs as one of the state’s top programs. Under iconic coach Corky Rogers, Bolles had the best of both coaching worlds. The Bulldogs not only had Rogers walking the sidelines for 28 seasons, but kept the same coaching nucleus intact all that time, too.
“Coach Rogers’ staff, it was a dream staff, not only in a talent level but because he got an opportunity to share his career with his best friends every single day for [30 years] …,” Toblin said.
Among some of Toblin’s hires were men who he worked with during his coaching career, either at Clay or Ponte Vedra. Among some of the new faces on Bolles’ staff: Josh Hoekstra. Aaron Avery. James Pye. Travis Bradford. Glenn Amerson. James McVeigh.
“The big part is the legacy that Coach Rogers left,” Toblin said. “People want to buy into that. It’s an easy sell when you say, ‘let’s go try to chase and build [on] what Coach Rogers did.’ Knowing that we’re probably not going to be able to do it, but let’s go chase and try to do that. Most coaches are up to that challenge and we’re excited about the opportunity.”
• Fred Davis knows that Trinity Christian’s football schedule, which includes 10 playoff teams from last season, is daunting.
So, too, is what Davis has faced on a daily basis during his career with the Conquerors.
Consider Davis, a Clemson commit, unfazed by the beefed up schedule.
“I go against the best players every day so I don’t see nobody better than the people I’m going against every day,” Davis said. “So, I mean, it’s good competition but we’re really taking [every week] just like a regular game. We’re really not worried about anybody [on the schedule].”
• The First Coast’s Elite 11 history had been a brief one before this year, with just two locals, Nease’s Tim Tebow (2005) and Bartram Trail’s Kyle Parker (2007), earning the prestigious accolades.
How about a Duval two-fer this year with Sandalwood’s Jeff Sims and Mandarin’s Carson Beck, the state’s reigning Mr. Football, to headline the preseason.
“I feel like me and Carson are representing well, I mean we just got to keep it up, can’t get bigheaded,” Sims said. “We got to stay humble and keep working like we always do. And we’ve got to have good seasons.”
While it hasn’t been officially announced by the network, those two will likely face off in a nationally televised game on one of the ESPN channels on Oct. 18.
When asked about the possibility of meeting in a district game on television against his friend and training partner, Beck, Sims said there’s certainly an element of raised stakes.
“I can’t lose that game,” Sims joked. “I just don’t want to lose on TV.”