“It’s not just one thing; it’s everything.”
During the month of February and into March, six Florida high school head football coaches left behind winning programs for the opportunity to coach elsewhere. Eric Lodge left Seminole for a school in South Carolina, and the other five headed to schools in Georgia: Travis Roland left Mainland for Camden County, Aaron Sheppard left Ocoee for McEachern, Dustin Adkins left Hawthorne for Ola, Robert Paxia left Flagler for Winder Barrow, and Jay Walls left Navarre for Bainbridge.
Why are they leaving? Roland, who walked away from a state-championship-winning team to take over at Camden County, said the perception from the outside looking in is that it’s about money.
“The salary is obviously important, but it’s just one of the many parts that make up the differences,” Roland said. “People think it’s all about the money, and, yes, that is important. But there’s a lot more. It’s not just one thing; it’s everything.”
Here are the top reasons high school football coaches gave for leaving Florida to take jobs in Georgia.
Overall Resources
Every coach that I spoke to said the same thing when asked about the biggest differences between coaching in Florida versus Georgia: resources.
Now, that can mean a variety of different things, but Travis Roland said that he needs all available resources at his disposal as he and his Camden County staff prepare to play in Region 1-6A (formerly Region 1-7A), which had long been considered one of the toughest regions in Georgia high school football.
“I told the (search) committee here at Camden that we – me and my staff – want to see how we can do if we have the best resources available to us,” Roland said. “A phenomenal weight room, a certified strength and weight coach, a phenomenal booster club. We want to see how well we can do with those and other resources available to us.”
After all, Roland and his assistants did well with back-to-back state championship game appearances at Mainland, but it was tough.
“It was back-breaking work in Florida,” Roland said. “We were the strength and conditioning coach, and we were the booster club, and we mowed the grass. If it needed to get done, somebody jumped in and done it, but that’s not ideal or efficient.”
Training Facilities
Several Georgia high schools offer top-of-the-line training facilities for their athletes, including indoor practice facilities, spacious weight rooms, and outdoor turf practice fields.
One of those schools is Coffee High School in Douglas, Georgia, which is where former and longtime Florida high school coach Mike Coe landed two seasons ago.
Coe spent 28 years coaching in Florida, including a 19-season stint at Madison County. He won five state titles with the Cowboys, serving as offensive coordinator for the 2007 state championship and as head coach for 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021 state championships.
Coe was 136-27 as a head football coach in Florida before deciding to take over the Coffee program in Georgia in 2022. He led the Trojans to an undefeated 15-0 record and their first-ever state championship this past season in 2023.
Coe talked about the training facilities at Coffee as one of several reasons why he decided to come coach in Georgia.
“Our weight room here at Coffee is unreal, and we can get so much done in there and get a bunch of kids working at the same time,” Coe said. “Then later this month, our indoor facility will be ready to roll, so no more missed time because of the wet bulb or lightning. That is a huge deal.”
Coe said the Trojans’ field house offers the team several amenities that simply weren’t available during his time coaching in Florida.
“Our field house allows us to watch film as a team, as group units,” he said. “We have a full kitchen as well (to serve the nutrition program). It is a dream come true.”
The top-of-the-line athletic training facilities at McEachern played a part in attracting longtime Florida coach Aaron Sheppard to the Peach State.
Sheppard spent the last six years coaching at Ocoee in the Orlando area, building a winning program out of a team that had finished 1-9 the year before he arrived.
“I felt right at home, and I enjoyed my time there at Ocoee,” he said. “My roots were in Florida.”
Sheppard said he wasn’t really looking to leave, but when friend and McEachern head football coach Kareem Reid called, Sheppard accepted his offer to move to the Atlanta-area school, and right away Sheppard was impressed with his new surroundings.
“The facilities here at McEachern are unmatched,” Sheppard said. “It has everything we need here.”
Financial Resources
Greater financial support for high school football programs is another reason Aaron Sheppard made the move to coach in Georgia.
“I had always wanted to coach in Georgia because I knew the financial resources were so much better than what we had in Florida,” Sheppard said.
He pointed out one major example of how his Ocoee team’s success didn’t help the team’s financial resources at all.
Despite leading the Knights to their first ever Final Four appearance in the Florida high school football state playoffs in 2022, the travel accommodations that were required to shuffle the team to their playoff games each week completely wiped out their budget.
“We spent our entire budget making sure we got the team to the playoff games, which was renting the buses, feeding the players,” Sheppard said. “We had to travel for every playoff game.”
Instead of celebrating a milestone achievement for the school and the football team for making it to the semifinals for the first time in school history, Sheppard was staring at a zero budget.
Workload
Aaron Sheppard said the ability to just coach football was a major reason he came to McEachern.
“Here at McEachern I just get to coach football,” he said. “Coaching football was just one of many things I had to do there at Ocoee.”
Sheppard pointed out the many hats he wore while at Ocoee. He recalled many seasons spent on supermarket sidewalks hawking discount cards to raise funds.
“I was front and center with the fundraising, whether it was standing on the sidewalk at Publix selling value cards, or cookie dough, or whatever it took,” Sheppard said.
He said that as tough as coaching football was, one of the toughest responsibilities he had at Ocoee was rebuilding the football budget from the ground up every year.
“We started every year with a net budget from zero,” he said.
Like it was for Sheppard, coaching football was only part of Dustin Adkins’ duties at Hawthorne High School in Florida.
Adkins spent the past 14 years coaching in the Sunshine State, serving as athletic director and offensive coordinator at Hawthorne for the last seven seasons. He worked alongside friend and head football coach Cornelius Ingram at Hawthorne, helping lead the team to four state championship appearances and two state titles.
“I wore so many hats,” Adkins said about his duties at Hawthorne. “I was part of the school’s administration team as business manager. I also served as the athletic director, the defensive coordinator, the weightlifting coach, and I taught math,” he said.
Adkins decided to come to Georgia, where he was hired at Ola High School in McDonough, which is just south of Atlanta.
“Here at Ola I am the football coach, and I teach PE,” Adkins said.
Nutrition Programs
Many Georgia high school football programs offer a wide range of nutrition programs and services for players, like the full-service kitchen at Coffee that Mike Coe mentioned earlier.
“The nutrition available to the kids is great here at Coffee,” he said.
Aaron Sheppard praised the nutrition program at McEachern.
“The nutrition program here at McEachern is second to none.”
Micheal Martin, the director of football operations at McEachern, said the importance of the nutrition program is paramount to the football team.
“The team eats a hot breakfast together every morning,” Martin said. “We also have a protein shake machine that the players have access to after workouts as well as readily available access to Muscle Milk and protein bars.”
Dustin Adkins said he is rolling out a new nutrition program at Ola.
“We are on a mass gainer and protein powder that we have put all the kids on,” Adkins said. “We just started that when I got here (to Ola).”
Adkins said it is an improvement over what he was able to offer in Florida.
“At Hawthorne, we weren’t really doing anything special,” he said.
Support
All coaches expect support from their school boards and administration, but not all coaches receive it. That’s one huge difference between coaching in Georgia and Florida that Mike Coe has noticed since arriving at Coffee.
“The support from the superintendent and school board (at Coffee) were two of the biggest improvements,” Coe said. “They appreciate what I and our staff are doing with the program and our young men.
“The professionalism and teamwork has been so refreshing.”
James Thomson also saw the lack of support for Florida high school coaches, and at one point tried to do something about it.
Thomson is currently the Director of Internal Scouting for the University of South Florida, but he spent many years coaching high school football in Florida with stints at Gainesville and Deland. He too made the move to Georgia, serving as the head coach at Northview High School and Tucker High School.
In 2021, Thomson co-founded the Florida Coaches Coalition. Thomson said he wanted to put together an organization that could serve as an advocate for high school coaches and provide them with support.
“Your goal is to become a high school football coach, but you see how hard it is to make a living as a coach in Florida,” Thomson said. “Then you quickly see that it’s not like that in Georgia. The difference is like night and day.”
Thomson is no longer with the organization, and he isn’t sure if his work or the work of the coalition is making a difference.
“I’m just not sure if it’s making an impact,” he said.
Financial Compensation
Yes, for the majority of coaching positions, Georgia high school coaches make more in base salary, bonuses, and other financial incentives than what they are paid in Florida.
James Thomson recalled an experience he had as a high school coach in Florida trying to make ends meet that many other Florida high school coaches can probably relate to.
“I was the head coach at Gainesville, Florida, in 2012,” he said. “We were 14-0 and ranked No. 6 in the nation and playing for a state championship that year. We lost to Miami Central that night 37-14.”
Instead of being able to look at game film or just relax at home the day after playing for a state championship, Thomson had more work to do, but not as a football coach.
“I had to wake up the next day and go to work at the luau at Seaworld,” Thomson said. “Think about how that played out. Not too well.”
When Travis Roland was announced as the new head football coach for Camden County, a tweet posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, by @FL_coaches encouraged coaches in Florida to make the move to Georgia too: “Young coaches: I would cross the line sooner than later- years toward retirement matter.”
🚨Florida Coaches🚨
If you want to coach in Georgia, I would reach out to @COACH217ROLAND as he builds a staff.It’s to your benefit to get to know @CoachLamb1 believe me.
Young coaches: I would cross the line sooner than later- years toward retirement matter.
— FL☀️COACHES (@FL_Coaches) February 28, 2024
Mike Coe reposted the tweet and added his own two cents to further encourage coaches to join the ranks in Georgia: “Best decision I’ve made in a long time. It’s apples & oranges & I loved my time at MadCo and especially those kids and community, but the struggle to pay bills, be told good job or thank you, and appreciated by those in charge…Nawl..it’s night and day.”
Best decision I’ve made in a long time. It’s apples & oranges & I loved my time at MadCo and especially those kids and community, but the struggle to pay bills, be told good job or thank you, and appreciated by those in charge…Nawl..it’s night and day. https://t.co/T6z8m0I2yF
— Coach Coe (@ZacBrayLex) February 29, 2024
Aaron Sheppard said that his coaching stipend, which is paid to coaches as part of their annual financial package, is now more than double what he was getting in Florida.
“Coaches in Orlando make a stipend of around $2,000 to $2,500 (annually),” Sheppard said. “Here in Cobb County (Georgia), it is around $5,600.”
Sheppard said he’ll also receive playoff incentives at McEachern, yet another upgrade of sorts compared to his time as a high school football coach in Florida.
“And that’s as a coordinator (at McEachern) compared to a head coach (at Ocoee),” he said.
Open Enrollment
Jay Walls, who has coached high school football in both Georgia and Florida, said that while financial compensation is one reason coaches are leaving Florida to go to other states, another factor forcing Florida high school coaches to leave for greener pastures is open enrollment in Florida.
“Players can pretty much go anywhere they want to go (in Florida),” Walls said. “Kids can pick up and go to any school they want, and that makes it tough to plan on the makeup of your team from one season to another.
“I think this is a big part of it, especially in the metro areas and the bigger cities: Jacksonville, Tallahassee, and Orlando, and other bigger cities where the schools are located close together. The players can move around easier than, say, in the rural areas.”
Walls previously coached at Suwannee and Navarre in Florida and at Tift County in Georgia. He was recently announced as the new head football coach at Bainbridge High School, marking his return to Georgia.
