We spoke with Rome football head coach John Reid about his history of success with turning football programs around and what we can expect from the Wolves this fall.
Q: Coach, you have a reputation for coming in and turning football programs around. You’ve built successful programs wherever you have coached. What do you attribute your success to?
A: Study the situation that you are taking over and have a plan. What are you going to do in the first 100 days? Who was the coach? Who did they play? What region? What is the team’s offensive scoring average? What are the defensive averages? Who is returning? What position do they play? Study the town, research the school. How do other athletic teams at the school do? Ask questions. Listen, people are going to tell you about the program. Hire the best coaches that you can find—not as many as you can, just the best you can. I always coach a position. I am currently coaching defensive line. Roll up your sleeves and start working with your kids. In the weight room, through conditioning, find out who can move. Have a message and get it across every day, every chance you can. For example, “We are going to be mentally and physically tough.” Live the message. Set standards for appearance in practice, in the weight room and in games. Put time and effort into your players as a person. The list goes on and on. This is just a start.
Q: Which school/football program presented the biggest challenge in your career?
A: None of the situations have been easy obviously. All teams present different challenges. It is interesting to note that I have never taken over a program that has had a winning record or even close to winning. I am very proud of all of the programs that we have rebuilt. We took Alcoa from 1-10 to back-to-back state titles. Many people will say the job we did at East Paulding is the best rebuild or turnaround ever, but I would have to say taking over the Tift County program, when you consider the region, the schedule and how low the program had dropped. In our third year, we took a very poor program from the bottom of the region and beat Camden and Lowndes on the road to put Tift in the playoffs and knock both Camden and Lowndes out. I believe the work we put in really got that program on track for many years.
Q: That pattern of success includes your current school, Rome High School. Two state championships in your first two seasons was quite the accomplishment. How is the team looking so far this spring?
A: We started seven freshmen and numerous sophomores in a second round playoff game in 2020. One of the freshmen was quarterback Reece Fountain. Our coaches and players did an absolutely phenomenal job all season long. We ended up tying for the region championship with Carrolton (lost on a tie breaker). I believe that the grind of last season, considering how young we are, gave us some belief and energy coming into this season. We will still be very young, and we have a tough schedule, but I like what I see in this year’s team.
Q: You guys just completed a major football/athletic facilities upgrade there at Rome recently. What do the new upgrades include?
A: We are so fortunate to have a superintendent, school board and community that are willing to invest in our kids. We have completed a fantastic facility. The biggest and most important thing about our new building is that it contains over 20 career pathways for our students. We not only built a state-of-the-art facility for athletics, but we built a building in which kids can take anything from law to auto tech. The athletic part was much needed, and it features an indoor football field, weight room, training room and locker rooms.
