According to Mathis, the team’s seniors have really stepped up. “I believe some of them have seen how quickly thing can be taken away,” he says. “When that happens, you receive a different perspective on stuff like summer workouts, summer practices, and just the little things that we take for granted. So, when those things were taken away, it lit a fire under some of them. Our seniors have been great, our senior leadership has been particularly good. We have several that play multiple sports and they saw how quickly those sports were shut down and know it could happen in football. There is some pep in their step when it comes to practice, and the weight room and those things.”
It’s the start of a new era for Coosa High School football, on the field and off. “We are in the business of raising young men. In high school football, we just use that as a tool to create these young men and to shape them into husbands, fathers, employees and community leaders,” Mathis says. “We want to be known as a hard working group. The fundamentals of our football program is based on relationships between coaches, between players and hopefully between the community. We can win the community over by the way that we play, the way that we conduct ourselves and the way that we go about our business.”