In February of this year, Justin Brown resigned from his position as Trion’s head football coach. He held that position for eight years and had been a member of the coaching staff for 12 years. He was also a Trion High graduate. “In the football world, 12 years is a long time,” he said. “Now is a perfect opportunity to go look around and see what other opportunities are out there.” His departure also meant Trion had to look for someone to fill their newly opened position.
Enter offensive guru Sean Patrick coming recently from Bleckley County, where his offense averaged 30.9 points per game. He plans to bring a completely new offensive look to Trion High School to help create successful athletes. Patrick has also coached at Lincoln County and Houston County as offensive coordinator.
Patrick is excited for the opportunity. “Trion is a place with a rich history and tradition. It is an honor to be the head coach here. There has been a lot of good coaches and players to come before me and I am just honored for this opportunity. I hope to live up to the expectations and standards set before me.”
On the field, the team will be inexperienced. “We are a young team,” Patrick says. “It is hard to say what we will look like. We have 62 kids on the roster and only five are seniors. They graduated 18 players last year (nine on offense and nine on defense), so we are just a really, really young team with a lot of kids that have not been put into the fire yet. They are working really hard though, and they are eager to play. I’m anxious to see them when they get to the grass. There are a lot of unknowns though.”
Having five seniors can be concerning, but Patrick is getting good work from his group. “My seniors have done a great job,” he says. “They have done everything that we’ve asked them to do. They’ve been to all of the workouts. They’ve done a great job of leading. It’s been a good group, it is just extremely small.”
Patrick wants the community to know it’s not just about football with him. “I want to have a program that makes the community proud, both on and off the field,” he says. “We have a huge responsibility as coaches to not just building great football players but also building great young men, and that’s something I feel really strongly about. We share the gospel here, and I feel that that’s important because at the end of the day when I die and go to Heaven, God’s not gonna ask how many football games I won, he’s gonna ask what I did in the name of Jesus. We do a good job here of trying to develop the whole person.”
“On the grass, we have to be hard-nosed and physical,” Patrick believes. “That has to be our M.O… We’ve got to outwork people and our kids are kind of seeing some of that now, we get after it. We don’t have any dead time, it’s go, go, go, go. And hopefully that bleeds over to Friday nights. I genuinely believe that if we lift fast, practice fast, and then we’ll play fast on Friday.”
