Calhoun County’s Detrich Wadley ready for the challenge

EDISON — The Calhoun County High School Cougars football team will be taking orders from a familiar face with a new title as former defensive coordinator Detrich Wadley will be the head coach starting this season.

Wadley has 13 years of coaching experience under his belt, three as an assistant at Calhoun County, and is up for the challenge. Former head coach John Williams said after 18 years of being a head coach, he felt like it was time for him to step aside and allow someone who’s proven they’re capable to lead.

“He’s young, he’s energetic, he’s a real good help,” Williams said. “If you want to keep good people around, you give them some responsibility, some major responsibility and that’ll help keep him around.”

As a defensive coordinator, Wadley helped the team do a complete 180 last year. They went from missing the playoffs in 2013, to making it to the Georgia High School Association Class A public school quarterfinals in 2014 while holding teams to around 11.5 points per game. Williams said it was Wadley’s defensive adjustments that helped make last year a success.

“It set us up in situations where we were able to get some offensive things going simply because our defense put us in great positions,” he said. “And even when we didn’t do as well offensively, they [the defense,] were able to capitalize on those situations as well, and that’s been one of our strong points.

Williams said his call to ministry is taking up a significant portion of his time and rather than trying to juggle both, he felt it was best to step aside and allow someone who can dedicate the amount of time necessary to be the head coach. He said that ultimately, he wants to see the people around him come up and take the program to the next level and believes that Wadley will be able to take the same mindset he had as a defensive coordinator and keep the team moving forward.

After Calhoun County’s impressive 5-2 start last season, Wadley said he saw something in his players that made his job easier.

“I see a lot of hunger in the kids,” he said. “They’re very hungry. They definitely work hard on and off the field. That’s part of the success we’re having this season, the kids are working a whole lot harder.”

He was able to tweak their daily routine and do “some different things as far as conditioning, different methods of weight training and different techniques and more skill related stuff,” to maximize their efforts and utilize their talents.

Having to pay that much attention to detail in every aspect of the game and not just on the defensive side of the ball is new territory for him.

“Being involved in a whole lot more,” Wadley said.

He noted that Williams remaining on staff as an assistant coach will help to make the transition an easy one.

Wadley has his work cut out for him this season as he begins his head coaching journey with just a handful of starters from last year’s 8-4 team. Despite his lack of veterans, he feels the team has kept that same hunger from last year and they’ll have a chance at another successful season.