Beyond the Lights, hosted by Hannah Goodin, is a special edition of the Football Fridays in Georgia Podcast. Pulling back the curtain and finding out what really goes on into making high school sports in Georgia special. Today's guest is the head coach of the most dominant program in any sport in the state of Georgia, Southeast Bulloch Head Flag Football Coach Marci Cochran.

 

SE Bulloch

Southeast Bulloch won its third straight flag football state championship.

 

 

Hannah Goodin: And the last time we talked, you told me that most of your athletes play other sports. They do other things. They excel in their grades. How do they juggle it all and compete at this championship level? 

SE Bulloch Head Flag Football Coach Marci Cochran: It's been challenging for our girls. One that just how to deal with the pressure because as a teenager, and the more we win, the more publicity we were getting. All eyes are on you, and people are wanting to beat you and just to hold it together on the field when there may be roughing you off or when they're playing, you know, a little opposite of the way they're supposed to be, play in that kind of thing. And then you got throw in their school. They gotta keep their grades up. A lot of our kids are in Honor or AP classes. We have a lot of dual enrollment students that actually had to get, you know, permission to go to the championship game from Georgia Southern because they are dual enrolled and they were going to miss class that day. They're having to juggle all that. We have kids on the bus doing homework all the time because they are they are so involved in so many activities. And then we have kids that, go from softball to flag football to basketball, and then they're fixing their soccer. So they're constantly moving since, you know, actually all year long, because we're doing it constantly. So they have to juggle a lot of things. But it does, us as coaches help them as well. If they need help with extra things or they need to do, you know, help with time management, we are very good on their side helping them with that. But, it does teach them a life lesson. They've got to be able to juggle all this and still continue to be successful so that, it's very good lesson that they are teaching them. So yeah, it's it's crazy what they, what they've done. And we do have a lot of kids do a lot of things, and to keep it all on the same page is really hard sometimes, but they do a great job of it.