So far, since the 2022 Georgia high school football season ended roughly a month prior to the time of this writing, there have been 71 – yes, 71 – head football coaches who are no longer at the school with whom they began the season. With another six months of offseason remaining before the 2023 campaign comes around, more head coaches are likely to leave their posts. However, every year for the past 30 high school football seasons, as such coaching changes would be announced, there was one name you never heard: Peach County coach Chad Campbell.
Campbell spent those three decades in the same school system, but he recently announced he is leaving Peach County High to take over the head coaching job at Perry’s Westfield School, a private school and member of the GISA.
Campbell was hired in 1993 to coach the middle school football team in Peach County. That began a long stretch that saw him serve as just about every position coach on the field, culminating in his promotion to head coach of the Trojans in 2007.
Campbell says he never considered leaving throughout those three decades.
“Never once did I go looking for another head coaching job,” Campbell says, stoic as always. “I never felt like I needed to.”
But Campbell admits he never thought he’d spend 30 years at one school, either.
“You saw the coaches all around you at other schools coming and going, so you couldn’t help but think if that was ever going to be you one day,” Campbell says, acknowledging the reality of the situation that comes with coaching at any level.
It wasn’t as if there was no pressure, because as Campbell says, he was at a school where you were expected to win.
“Believe me, the folks here expected to win every game,” he says with a laugh.
He may not have won every game, but he won a lot. Campbell’s record in his 16 years as the Trojans’ head coach was 168-38. That’s more than 10 wins per season and between two and three losses per year.
Yes, that will keep you around for a while.
Under Campbell, the Trojans advanced to the state championship game four times, winning a state championship in 2009. Peach County and Campbell also played for the title in 2011, 2017, and 2018.
Campbell knows that a coach is really as good as the players who surround him, and he says he was blessed to have coached some good ones at Peach County.
“Man, we had some really good players come through the program,” Campbell says, naming a few of the many greats who played for him at Peach. It is an impressive list, for sure. He mentions Randy McMichael (UGA, Miami Dolphins), Jacquez Green, (Florida, Tampa Bay Buccaneers), Chris Slaughter (Auburn), Demarcus Robinson (Florida, Kansas City Chiefs), and those are just a few who come to mind.
“There are so many great ones that played for me here at Peach,” Campbell says.
That’s OK, Coach. Thirty years is a long time.
