Whomever coined the phase “You Can’t Go Home Again” probably knew someone who tried it and failed, but they never met Carl Kearney. Kearney grew up in Spalding County and attended Griffin High School. It’s the home of one of the storied programs in Georgia high school football. Kearney is back in Spalding County, landing at Spalding High School in 2020 and he couldn’t be happier.

“It’s been a blessing.” says Kearney. “I’ve been blessed with a great coaching staff. I sat down and I prayed about who to pick. I have an unbelievable staff and I have been surrounded by those guys for four years. They have all bought into the process and bought into my vision. When you have a staff that follows your vision, it’s a lot easier to get the kids to buy in”

Spalding

Excitement is high at Spalding, which prepares for this week's game with West Laurens.

So, the Griffin grad, who played college ball at Georgia Southern before a stint with the New York Jets, came back home not once but twice hoping for a chance to mentor the youth in the community he grew up in. Things didn’t work out at Griffin, but Kearney got a call from the school across town. Yes, he now gets to mentor young folks at a school that didn’t exist when he was growing up.  

“I found out that Griffin kids are still Griffin kids,” says Kearney. “The city of Griffin is one of the most unique towns in the country. When I got there some things had transpired and the kids had several coaches in two years. Initially it was hard for the kids to buy in. If you have had two or three head coaches and you get another head coach … ‘Why do I trust you, why should I believe in you?’”

The Jaguars went 1-9 the season before Kearney took over and went 1-9 again in his first season. The program turned the next two seasons going 8-3 in 2021 and 7-5 in 2002. Both seasons ended in the second round of the state playoffs. Now that the program had experienced success, the coach felt it time for a new message.

Spalding

Spalding was tested by a tough non-region schedule to prepare the Jaguars for their difficult league games.

“We lost seven or eight seniors from last year,” says Kearney. “So going into this off-season I was able to communicate with them every day that going to the second round wasn’t good enough. In the past, going to the first round or second round may have been OK. But for me the second round is not good enough. I wanted them to see that if they bought into the process, we could go 15 games. And that’s our goal.”

The Jaguars are one of seven teams that make up Region 2-4A, which includes Baldwin, Westside-Macon, Perry and Howard, who went 6-4 last season and failed to make the playoffs. With that in mind, Kearney and his staff had to be strategic with their non-region schedule selections.

 “I thought we did a very good job in choosing and selecting the teams,” says Kearney.

“You want to mix up the games to make sure you are not making it too hard for the entire season, but you also want to make sure that you have some success. We had non-region games with Eagles Landing, Fayette County, Dutchtown and Mary Persons. They all were very good football teams.”

Kearney’s team started the season 6-0, with shutout wins over Fayette County, Baldwin and Griffin. Last week the Jaguars looked to improve their record to 7-0 for the first time in school history. They would have to get past a challenging Howard squad.

“I told my kids all week long that I knew what we were going to get from those guys,” recalls Kearney. “We are cut from the same exact cloth. They are going to be scrappy, and they are going to play for four quarters. Ironically, we got up 28-7 and some of our kids were thinking about what coach Kearney said, but subconsciously they are thinking ‘We’ re up 28-7 and this game is done.’ That team that I told them about last week came back and smacked us in the face, gave us everything they had in the second half. It was a test. We found out who we are made of and what we are made of. It was a challenge. It really was.”

Kearney says the 42-34 victory over Howard was the result of winning the battle in the trenches on both sides of the ball. Quarterback Cur’Tavian Clark turned in another consistent performance, while the versatile Robert Henderson rushed for 150 yards, two touchdowns and recorded two tackles on defense. The coach who attended the school across town has brought a formula for consistent winning that is infectious. It has spread from the practice field to the locker room into the hallways and beyond.

“It has been so different from year one,” recalls Kearney. “The kids didn’t know how to interact during a pep rally when I got here. They were not used to a winning culture. Now that we are winning, it has changed a little bit. We have had two hometown rappers come in and perform at our pep rally. I look up and the kids are all over the place. It’s amazing, the pep rallies my first year looked like a funeral. It’s so different now. It’s just amazing.”

Spalding

The pep rallies have a different feel at Spalding these days.

Now off to a school’s best start, Spalding can focus on other goals, like winning the school’s first region title since 2003 and playing that fifteenth game. This week there were other concerns, like being in fall break but still having a game to prepare for.

“This is the part that scares me to death,” says Kearney. “We are in fall break and the kids are out of school, so we will have morning practice at 8:30. We are playing West Laurens this week. We can’t have a week off. We will have to work and bring the pain Monday through Thursday,”