Roswell has promoted defensive coordinator Leo Barker to be its new head football coach, assistant principal John Coen said Monday. He replaces Tim McFarlin, who resigned this month after 10 seasons as the team's coach.

The Hornets haven't hired a football coach from outside the school since 1954 and, with Barker on staff, Coen said they saw no reason to break that trend now.

"You can't lead if nobody's going to follow; the kids and assistant coaches will follow Leo to the fire," Coen said. "He's extremely confident about football, and he's an excellent teacher of the game. A lot of credit goes to Coach McFarlin for bringing him here."

It will be the first head coaching job for Barker, who said he doesn't plan to make too many changes as he takes over the program.

"We're going to do similar things on offense to what we've done in the past," said Barker, who has to replace offensive coordinator Gary Varner, who will start the program at Allatoona. He also plans to hire a new defensive coordinator. "We're going to run the ball first. Defensively, we're going to continue to do what we did when I was defensive coordinator."

He makes the transition to lead a program that advanced to the state quarterfinals last year and shared the Class AAAAA title with Peachtree Ridge in 2006. The bar is high at Roswell, but he says he's ready for the challenge.

"There's a lot of pressure," Barker said. "I know there are things I have to learn. There's no way you can learn some of these things without being thrown into the situation."

The 48-year-old Barker has been at Roswell for two years after a stint as an assistant at Walton. He played college football at New Mexico State and was the first Panamanian to play in the NFL when he played for the Cincinnati Bengals from 1984-91. He is a member of the New Mexico State University Intercollegiate Athletic Hall of Fame.