Football coaches are like a second father

MADISON – Every high school football player has a head coach. Many of those athletes have a head coach who is more in their lives than just a man who gives instructions, forces discipline and watches your every move on and off the playing field. That type of coach-player relationship is special and that special bond can change the life of a student-athlete overnight, but the change will last a lifetime.

Slate Glover, senior three-year starter offensive lineman and long snapper for the Madison Academy Mustangs, would love to earn a degree in business when his education is complete. He realizes his playing days are numbered and his success has come through the words of Mustangs’ head coach Bob Godsey who always treats his players as if they were his own. Glover knows first-hand what his coach means to him.

“He’s a great role model. He teaches us every day of what a man supposed to be and he always puts the word God in there, too, which is another thing about Coach Godsey that makes him special,” said Glover, who stands 6-foot-2 and weighs in at 192-pounds.

Godsey, in his eighth season as head coach at Madison Academy with 30 years in the public school system where he has been head coach at Madison Academy, Hartselle and Brooks High Schools, and with one victory this season will notch his 250th win of his career, said of his longtime student-athlete, “Slate is a football player. At long snapper, he works through any circumstances that may arise and he makes it work. He is the only player remaining who played in our state championship game three years ago.”

“I wouldn’t be the same young man without him,” added Slate of Godsey.

“A good head coach is someone who buys in with the team and doesn’t put himself over us, as players, and is very personable with us and is very deliberate with what our goals need to be and how we need to execute to achieve those goals,” said Brayson Albin, a tight end and long snapper at Bob Jones, and will have a new head coach on the sidelines with Seth Parker at the helm.

Albin is rated the No. 4 long snapper in the country and being heavily recruited for his talents amassed from his 6-foot-3 frame. He’s well aware of the discipline it takes to become an elite football player and how a good coach understands what it takes and watches over gifted student- athletes such as the Patriots’ senior. “He’s like a second father to me. He’s very much as leader in my life and helps me in situations I talk to him about concerning football and recruiting. He offers advice over all in everything I talk to him about.”

Two of James Clemens’ most elite players, both All-State selections in their junior seasons a year ago, know very well what a coach can mean to any student-athlete and how a head coach can groom boys to men.

M.J. Gideon, a Vanderbilt commit and regarded as one of the best players in the state at running back, has his father, Anthony Gideon, on the staff at James Clemens as defensive coordinator and they speak every day about the game where the younger Gideon stands. But, it’s a head coach that’s there for the young athlete in other ways.

“He means a lot as being a leader and showing other people, other coaches how to lead,” said Gideon, of second-year head coach Juan Johnson. “I look up to him.”

Malikai Cooper is a two-sport athlete by being an All-State offensive line man and heavyweight wrestler, has committed to The Citadel and undecided on which of the military branches he intends to serve once graduating from the military school. He’s looking at his senior season with the Jets to be even better than last year’s squad, which fell in the first round of the state playoffs. The 6-foot-2, 280-pound physical force easily understands what Johnson means to the team and how he influences his own shape of life.

“He’s a great example of a man in my life and how he lives with his family and holds himself up is a great example for me and the remainder of the players,” said Cooper. “He helps me be a man. Coach Johnson is always well dressed and even has us wear our team polo shirts to make us look a little more formal. He’s a good man.”

When the games are played and players and coaches stand shoulder- to-shoulder on the sidelines, the closeness and relationship is more than an authority figure giving instructions for play on the field. The real relationship is how a coach molds the lives of young people to make each of them outstanding members of the community today and for years to come.