Monroe football team looking for improvements in 2022

ALBANY — The Monroe Golden Tornadoes will open the football season Thursday evening at Hugh Mills Stadium against the Mitchell County Eagles, who are expected to be one of the top teams in Class A Division II and who also have two of Monroe’s coaches from a year ago.

The Tornadoes are looking to improve on last year’s 3-7 record in head coach Lacey Herring’s first season at Monroe.

“It is going to be a dog fight every week,” Herring said. “This region is like the SEC of Georgia high school football. Everybody is tough.”

Herring is referring to a region schedule that includes Thomasville, which finished 13-2 last year and lost in the state championship game; Carver of Columbus (ranked No. 3 in the preseason poll) which finished 12-2 and lost in the Class AAAA state championship game; Crisp County (ranked No. 2 in the preseason poll) which finished 9-4 after losing their first three games of the year and made it all the way to state semifinals; and of course, crosstown rival Dougherty (ranked No. 9 in the preseason poll) which went 10-3 a year ago and made it to the state quarterfinals. Both Monroe and Dougherty have moved down to Class AAA this year. Thomasville moved up from Class AA and Carver Columbus dropped down to AAA.

Still, Herring is optimistic that his Tornadoes will be competitive.

“We have told the guys the competition level has been raised very high but we have an extremely young team with only five seniors this year,” said Herring. “We graduated 24 seniors last year, so we are really young. But the guys have grown this year. They are bigger and stronger than a year ago. We have set some goals and put those goals around the weight room and locker room so the boys can see them. We told them if we can reach these goals, we can put ourselves in a position to win these games. We did that in the Turner County scrimmage last week and we did that in the spring when we beat Westover.”

The offense again will be led by Corey Randle, who started as a sophomore last year for the Tornadoes.

“We’ve been getting Corey more into the film room and he is getting more confident in seeing the defenses,” the coach said. “I think he will have a stronger offensive line this year to give him better protection as well. The offensive line is getting stronger and they will be better this year, led by Demontriel Price.”

The defense should be one of Monroe’s strongest areas, especially the defensive backs.

“We’ve got three division one defensive backs out there — Andrico Jackson, Johnny Cauley (Murray State commit) and Janorris Winkfield are all very talented. Our linebackers are solid and the defensive line is getting better, anchored again by Demontriel Price and Christian Price.”

While this is his second year at Monroe, most of Herring’s assistant coaches are new. Derrick Greene is the new offensive coordinator. Former Westover coach and college coach Sidney Powell is the new defensive coordinator; Chartavious DaniPels is coaching the offensive line and Cletus Hopkins, Jr. is coaching defensive backs. Hopkins, Sr. used to coach at Dougherty and now is at Westover.

Joe Whitfield