By: Shayla Terry

On Tuesday, the Luverne Kiwanis Club hosted the Crenshaw County head coaches at their monthly meeting to speak on their plans for the upcoming season.

Newcomer to Crenshaw County, Highland Home head coach Phillip Coggins introduced himself to the group. Coggins comes to Highland post a coaching position in Wetumpka. Coggins says the first thing he wanted out his guys was to be more physical.

“Our philosophy this year is we want to be more physical, and play faster,” Coggins said. “We want to dictate the tempo of the football game, not have the other team do that for us.”

This year’s senior players at Highland Home have a very important goal that they have vowed to work hard to attain.

“Their goal this year is to make the playoffs, as it is every year,” Coggins said. “They’ve never been to the playoffs before. It would be an honor for me to have them work hard enough to get that opportunity.”

Brantley head coach Ashley Kilcrease said one of his hopes for this season is to win the region.

“We gave up a lot of points last year and we scored a lot of points last year,” Kilcrease said. “We want to buckle down on defense going into the season so we can secure wins.”

With hopes of a region championship, Kilcrease says one of the Bulldogs’ biggest games of the season will be against Georgiana.

“They won the region championship last year,” he said. “So to get back where we want to be, we’ll need to get past them. We love to play county rivals, but to win a state championship, we need to win our region.”

Luverne head coach Scott Rials said he is fortunate to have some really good guys return.

“We didn’t have to battle it out,” he said. “I’m fortunate our quarterback Tay Brantley will be back and he’s a junior this year. He’s a very good athlete and he leads our team.”

Rials said the key to success is to work with the process.

“People don’t understand the time and effort put forth by these guys,” Rials said. “When we lost playoffs last year, we took up our equipment on Monday and started working out that next Tuesday —that’s in November. It’s a long process. It’s not an easy quick fix to have a success team. The kids have to work year-round.”

Crenshaw Christian head coach Mike Sims could not attend due to preparations for the Cougar season opener on Friday.

For more information on this year’s football team in Crenshaw County, be on the look out for Greenville Newspapers’ Playbook. Copies will be available next week.