“I always knew I wanted to be a coach. From the first day I registered for college, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I guess you could say it’s in my blood,” says Tift County head coach Ashley Anders. The first-year head coach has been at Tift County for three years; he came to Tifton in 2013 as a defensive coordinator from Murray State University.
Coach Anders grew up in Hampton, Arkansas, where his father coached football at Hampton High School. When Anders was in the eighth grade, his father left the coaching profession for administration at the high school. Anders played football, baseball, and basketball at Hampton High. He earned a scholarship to Arkansas-Monticello, at the time an NAIA school, where he played baseball. During his four years at Arkansas-Monticello, the school transitioned from NAIA to Division II.
Following graduation, Anders took a job with a 3A school in Arkansas, where he was an assistant head coach for the football team and head basketball coach. When Tommy Tuberville took over as the head coach at Auburn University, Anders secured a graduate assistant’s job on his staff. Earlier in his career, Tuberville had been an assistant in Arkansas under Anders’s father. “While I was coaching at Auburn, I finished my master’s degree,” recalls Anders. From there he served as defensive coordinator at Holmes Community College in Mississippi, defensive coordinator at Valdosta State University, defensive coordinator at Georgia Southern University, and defensive coordinator at Murray State University. “I had decided that when I turned 40, if I had a job at a Division I school or if I was close to landing one, I would ride out that dream. But if I wasn’t there, I would return to Georgia and try to get a head coach at the high school level,” he says. When his 40th birthday rolled around, he wasn’t a Division I head coach and it didn’t look like an opportunity was coming any time soon. So he started looking for a job in Georgia.
Why did he want to come to Georgia to coach? Anders recruited the South Georgia area during his years as a college coach. He knew how important high school football is to Georgia and he was also well aware of how talented Georgia’s players are. He also wanted some stability for his family, and he realized that high school offered the best opportunity for a stable coaching career. “I’ve got three kids. Coaching is very time consuming and you don’t get a lot of time to see your family. I had moved around a lot and I wanted to settle down. I could have gone anywhere, I guess. There’s some good football in Texas and a few other states. But I remembered how big football is down here and how hard the kids play. Plus my wife had 10 years teaching experience in Georgia so that’s where we looked,” he says.
Through a few connections from former college coaches, Anders learned about a defensive coordinator’s opening in Tift County. He didn’t know then-head coach John Reid but he did know former offensive coordinator Chris Bowden, with whom Anders had coached at VSU. Anders made a few calls and ended up getting the job.
And now, just two years later, he is head coach in Georgia’s highest classification.
Anders missed the really lean years of Tift County football. When he came in, two dreadful losing seasons – including a 2-8 campaign in Reid’s first year – had already passed. The program was on the way up and things were looking good for Tift County football. The Blue Devils were 5-5 in Anders’s first year and 7-4 last year. The 2015 season marked Tift’s first playoff appearance in six years. When Coach Reid left Tifton for Rome, Ga., earlier this year, the Tift County Board of Education didn’t hesitate. They named Anders head coach the same day Rome hired Reid. “It’s been a change, being a head coach. When I was a defensive coordinator, I had tunnel vision. I just looked at my side of the ball. Now I have to look at the whole program, the locker room, the weight room, everything. There is so much more responsibility,” he says.
Anders doesn’t plan on changing much as head coach. He says the biggest changes will come with terminology. The schemes on both sides of the ball will remain nearly the same. “You’ve got be able to run the ball down here. But at the same time, you also need to throw well. Defensively, we have an answer for anything an offense brings. We base out of a 4-2-5 but we have multiple packages based on what we see,” says Anders.
As the 2015 season nears (at the time of this writing, it was still July), he believes his experience at the college level will help him tremendously at Tift. “It will definitely help with the X’s and O’s. I’ve also coached in some big games and faced some excellent coaches. The biggest thing is it taught me to have set rules as far as defense is concerned. We’re able to teach a true defensive system,” he says.
Sidebar:
Coach Anders readily admits he wouldn’t have this opportunity if it wasn’t for his family. His wife, Sheri, played softball and basketball in college. Now a special education teacher at Tift County, she knows exactly what it means to be a coach’s wife. “She knows what goes into the job, all the off the clock work. She knows the profession and she’s very supportive. She’s the best coach’s wife in the world,” he says. Together, they have three children: Mary Alex, a sophomore, who plays basketball, volleyball, and runs track; Cade, an eighth grader and a football, basketball, and baseball player like his dad; and Camden, a fourth grader who plays basketball, softball, and swims.
Coach’s Corner/South Georgia/September 2015
Ashley Anders
Tift County High School
Tifton, Georgia
Robert Preston Jr.
Photography by Micki K Photography
