“Ever since I can remember, my uncle played a very big part of my life and really brought me up to really love football. My mom and my grandma used to take me to football games from an early age, and my pride was waiting for Friday nights to see the Loris Lions play. I used to sit up in the bleachers, and a lot of times the teenagers were running around at the
game. I was sitting in the bleachers coaching and really learning the game at a very early age. So, I feel like in my life, it’s always been my calling to coach football, and it’s something that over the last two years, for whatever reason, I have gotten away from, and I am just very fortunate to be back in. But this is a calling that’s been placed on me and my wife to be back in this game, to impact these kids.
The biggest thing is, to let the people that are supposed to be your coaches come to you, the people that love these kids and this community. That’s the biggest thing that I’ve learned over the last 20 years of coaching that we’re bringing in with us to this setting, is bring the people, the adults here
that want to be a part of building something great. It’s our responsibilities as leaders and as a head coach to help bring those people along that fits the mold of our program that we’re building. But most importantly, bring the people here that want to be here and are going to be here for the long
haul. Choosing Colleton was a no brainer to us, and when I say us, I mean my wife and I, because my wife is a very big part of what we do. Colleton County fits Bradley Adams. We work really well with the environment that we have here. We also are very, very much down to earth people like I feel like the people here in this community of Colleton County. We also were very impressed with the leadership that we have in place here, leadership that went along with the same visions and direction that we have in our philosophies, and of that philosophy, the main thing is that we take care of the kids first. The kids come first in our program, and that goes along with the fact that not only do we just focus so much on the on the image of our program, we more we more importantly, focus on the fact of what may be going on behind the scenes with our kids to make sure that they’re provided for in all necessary areas they need be. Our goal this year is to get our program up and running in the format that we are wanting to see to allow it to succeed. And with that, we are going to create expectations, accountability, and an understanding that our players are going to be loved and cared for in a way that we are not belittling them as coaches, but we are preparing them for life.
The biggest thing, is at the last or the few schools that we have been at that we’ve had the most success, we always carry a very simple recipe in and that recipe is not a complicated one. It’s the fact that we’re going to focus on building relationships with our kids, our athletes, our student athletes, all throughout the building our community, our parents and also our faculty and staff. With those relationships, we’re able to build long,
lasting relationships that carry on with these young men after they finish high school, when they go off and start families, and they allow their kids to come back and play for us. The second part of that is that we love our kids. These kids will be loved. They’ll be cared for. We have to understand that with love comes accountability. We tell people all the time a part of our program is, if we let you do what you want to do, then we don’t love you, but if we hold you to a standard, then that shows that much we really care about you, because we want you to be great, and that’s what we’re going to do to get this program going in the right direction. Well, first and
foremost, as I said before, we’re a no profanity staff. We do not understand, or I do not see at all, how degrading the kid is going to make them any better, but it is very clearly stated that when you come to our practices, or come on a Friday night, you’re going to see a very intense football coach, very intense to the fact that every play down or situation matters from within our program. Every step matters. If we ask you to be
behind the line, it’s behind the line for a reason. If we ask you to take a proper step with the play side foot on inside zone, it’s for a reason. We coach that very meticulously to make sure that our players are in the right position to be successful. Most of all is just the understanding that when we do coach, whether it’s intense, or gets to a level of we’re on the verge
of different situations where we have to get ourselves brought back down to Earth we’re going to love them when they leave that field there are our arms will be wrapped around their necks, and they’re noted. They’re going to be loved when they walk off. However, most importantly, please understand we will bring intensity.
We don’t have the staff in place yet. We are currently interviewing and have been interviewing coaches over the last few weeks. We are getting very close to that. We have had a lot of support and are very thankful for that. We’ve had a lot of people reach out interested in coaching, and that has been a huge blessing to us, and it’s a part of our philosophy that we’re bringing into this program again, is that we hire the people that want to be here. What we look for in a coach is, again, we look for people, one, that love this community and are invested in this community. Two, they love the kids, and I’ve said over and over and over, you have to love them. You
have to care about them. You can’t have some type of hidden agenda to why you’re doing this. If the kids do not come first, it’s going to be very hard to coach on our staff.
Without great academics, obviously, our athletes cannot go off and be successful in college. That doesn’t mean that you have to go to college. You can be successful without that, but I do believe that when you’re looking at the fact that nearly every one of these kids probably have goals and dreams to play some college sport, we have to have them prepared for
that. We do that by tracking their grades every week. We have a coach that will be in charge of academics. If at any time they drop below a certain average, they will be placed in a study hall. That will be a study hall that happens in the morning or after practice. We need parent support on that. It’s very important that their academics are by far at the at the top and forefront.
From a character standpoint, there is nothing more embarrassing than someone acting up or doing things out of out of the ordinary in front of other people. I always tell people, you can win the game but lose it with the community. What I mean by that is, if we win the game, but we’re
getting penalized 12 to 15, times a game, we’re getting unsportsmanlikes [unsportsmanlike penalties], and our coaches are acting out of control, then I am not doing my job as the head football coach. One of the biggest things we do this will be a process, as everything here is going to
be a process. We can’t expect things to just happen overnight. When it comes to leadership, we will start a program in January of next year, and we do that during the off season, because it’s a time that we can actually spend really developing our kids’ character, leadership traits, also how
to handle mental pressures, and adversity. We do that every Thursday. In the off season, we don’t actually lift weights. On Thursday during the off season, we spend our day on that mental preparation. What we’ll do this year is we will work on that, but it won’t be as in depth this during the
summer. Thursdays, after we get done with actual weight training and actual practice, but that’s a very important part of getting this program where it needs to be. We have to learn how to be leaders, and people often say we don’t someone doesn’t know how to lead. Well, it’s our responsibility to teach them how to lead, and that’s going to be a program that we take them through. We expect our standard in our program, is the PAW standard, built off long, lasting relationships. What that means is preparation, accountability and work ethic. We expect our players, our coaching staff and our families as a group to collectively have our athletes
prepared on the field and off the field. On the field, it’s our responsibility as coaches to prepare them each week, starting on a Sunday afternoon meeting all the way to a Friday night game. It’s also the responsibility of the parents to help us have these athletes here where they’re supposed to be, support us, and allow us to do what we need to do to get them
in a situation where they’re prepared on the field. Off the field, we want to
prepare them for life. We prepare them by holding them accountable, by teaching them the true understanding of what leadership is. Parents and families can help us with that also by helping us to keep these young men
out of harm’s way off the field. For example, in the middle of a football season, we shouldn’t be playing other sports. Playing other sports leads to injury, and that injury impacts what happens to us on a Friday night. Accountability.
We’re going to hold our kids accountable, as we said, as I mentioned before. I firmly believe if you love someone, you’re going to hold them accountable. We’re going to do that from within our program, and with that, accountability is going to help us to where we have the discipline that it takes to withstand the adversity on a Friday night and to cut down on our penalties. Parents and the community can help us with this. When we
know athletes are doing something wrong, we hold them to a standard. We are more than welcome to step in and help with those situations. Work ethic. Everybody in life can be successful if you work hard. It doesn’t matter where you come from, doesn’t matter what your demographic is, if you work hard, you can become successful. Within our program, we
will have a very strong work ethic. Our kids will understand and be able to appreciate the importance of seeing what hard work does for them. They’ll see a change in their body from the weight room, they’ll see a change in their speed from how much they either are lifting or how much weight they’re dropping, or how much weight they’re adding. They’ll see a big difference in spending time on the board or going through film work, learning the game, and they’re going to be able to play the game at a much fast, faster pace. But we have to work hard in our program, and that’s something that our coaching staff will do. Again, our community can help us with this tremendously by when we have the weight room open, or
when we have meetings with individual players, or when we have film sessions. Sometimes days get a little longer, please understand the big picture that we are preparing these young men to be successful as a worker, also in life. This is not just something here that Bradley Adams does, or this is not just something that our coaching staff does. This is a community effort. The community is just as important as the head football coach or this football program, and the moment that we unify great things can happen. That’s all we’re waiting for, is unification to see this thing flourish. We’re looking for our young men to just give us their very
best effort. Be here every day when we ask you to be here, bring your A game every day. As we all know, even as grown men or women, we understand that every day is not our best day, but we still prevail. We still find a way to be here, even in those tough moments, to be to be a part of what we are doing to allow us to keep growing on a daily basis. We ask that our young men understand this is a process. We tell people all the time, look, we’re not we’re not running a sprint here. We’re in a marathon. We will not be where we need to be, so everybody understands, until about week three or week four of this football season. There’s a lot that has to be done, a lot of different things that the athletic director and I are discussing to help get this program back going in the right direction. Most
importantly, trust the process. Trust what we’re asking you to do, and believe, as we said the first day we met with these kids, these young men. If you don’t believe you can win, we ask that you remove yourself from what we are doing. You have to believe in what you are doing, and you have to know that it is possible. Those that I have come across, I’ve
seen some players that look good size and build wise. I’ve seen some young men that look like they could be very good football players. I would not be doing justice by mentioning the names of anyone just yet, because I haven’t been able to fully grasp what their talents or their talent level is. So, I don’t feel like I would be speaking correctly and saying that.
How important is community support to you and your
team?
100% the most important part of building a great program, we all have to be together. We all have to put whatever our differences are, whatever our philosophies that may not come together we have to do what’s best for the kids. Our kids are our future. Our kids are what can make a difference, not only in our community, but in this in this entire world, and
this entire situation of different things that may or may not fester around us. So, my strongest attribute, I feel, is to be able to bring people together. We do that through the two combinations I said before, love and relationships. We ask that you please support us and allow us to love these kids and build relationships with them so that we can impact them for
the longevity of their lives. When we play, our goal is to play intense. Our goal is to be physical. When I say that, for those that don’t know football,
that doesn’t mean that we’re trying to harm anyone. It means that in this game of football, we have to be aggressive. We have to play physical in order to be successful at it, and in order to do that, we have to get our kids to understand the physicality and the aggression of the sport of football. We’re going to do those things. We want to place our emphasis on defense. In our philosophy, defense is what wins games. If we are able to have a successful defense and control the clock on offense to keep our defense off the field, we feel like we can be successful. We will give our very best effort as a coaching staff every single day that we step onto this campus, and our work ethic will be unmatched. That is one thing that I can say.
We will work hard every day to be the very best that we can be on a Friday night to give you the very best product that we can put in front of you.
We want you to come to a football game and we want you to see high character young men. We want you to see high character coaches. We want you to be able to feel and see that we love our kids and we love our athletes. Winning is important, but without those things that we just discussed, winning doesn’t happen. So winning is something that we will see, and it will be fun, but it’s got to be done the right way, and we want to do it the right way at Colleton County.
What challenges do you expect and how do you plan to
handle them?
The biggest challenge that I think is the expectations that we’re going to have here with the athletes. I don’t know that they’re going to know the expectations, such as the amount of film work, the amount of studying that they’re going to have to do to, the amount of workouts they have to make to be a successful football player, the true understanding of time
management, the fact that they’re going everyone’s going to be held accountable if we’re not on time, if we miss practice, we’re going to be held accountable. That’s the biggest thing that I that I would say is something that I know is going to be a challenge early on, but it’s important that if you want to win and you want to be successful, there has to be a standard put in place, and once we get that standard in place, then I know that we will be successful. But in the beginning, it’s the fact is,
does everyone, athletes, parents, everyone buy into the fact that there has to be a standard to be great. You can’t be excellent and put average work in, or average time or average way you do things, excellence meets excellence. The next three years, I expect us to be competing for region championship, and the next five years I expect us to be competing at a very high level, on the state level. What I mean by that is we’re making
deep runs in the playoffs, we should be easily set deeper into second round. We should be pushing more into third round of playoffs by our fifth year.
I just want to let everybody here know for myself and my wife and I that we are so thankful to be a part of this community. This is a huge honor to us. We want you to know that, as I mentioned before, we are going to be a part of your community, and we are going to give you our very best effort
every day of our lives. It’s important that you know that over the last few years, I have been currently just an athletic director, and in those last two years, I like to say it’s been like a sabbatical to me, if you if you’re into ministry. My energy and my fire and my passion is back stronger than it was when I was a young man starting off at 23 years old. So, I say that to
you to know that what you are getting is a football coach who is going to be very passionate and very excited to get back on the field and bring what everyone here is expecting, which is a championship caliber football program.
