Allatoona coach re-hired, ready for new challenges

By Bill Sanders

For the AJC

Allatoona High School football coach Gary Varner had no idea he’d be teaching Life Lessons 101 last spring and this summer.

Part civics, part economics and part psychology, Varner’s classroom had no walls, no pre-planned curriculum and was a position no teacher would want.

Varner and four of his assistant coaches were among the dozens of Cobb County coaches who were told last spring they would be laid off as the school system wrestled with budget woes. Allatoona was hit hardest, initially losing all of its head coaches, which sparked protests, rallies and pleas from students and parents.

With Allatoona only in existence since 2008, very few of its coaches -- many of whom were recruited from other school systems -- had significant “continuous service” years in the Cobb schools, so they were first to get cut.

Varner, a long-time assistant coach, had enjoyed the relative obscurity of such a position. Now though, he was the face of a football program. Others -- especially teenage players -- looked to his reaction to determine how they should respond. For better or worse, he was sending a message by how he handled the unsettling times.

“It was difficult for everyone,” Varner said. “There was a feeling of the unknown during the spring and into the summer.

“We told the kids there’s a lot worse things that will happen in life than losing a football coach. We told them that they’d be fine, and that even though the staff had worked hard, things happen. I wanted to stay here, and the others did, too, but we had to prepare the kids for whatever and let them know how important it was for them to keep at it.”

Varner kept at it as well, showing up day after day for summer conditioning workouts with his team, assuming he wouldn’t be around to see the fruits of their labor.

“We had coaches who were having to coach in the spring and look for jobs at the same time,” Varner said. “By time summer came, none of us knew that we were going to be hired back, but none of the coaches missed a single day here in workouts, and that said a lot.”

The character Varner displayed did not go unnoticed. Administrators were already among his fans. Parents who thought they had a good man leading their sons were now convinced of it.

“He couldn’t have handled it better,” said Touchdown Club president Phil Sherer. “He never said anything negative about the situation to the players, and that said a lot to us. We were all hurting from this, but through it, he taught his players that when they faced challenges in life, like when a boss they liked got fired, they’d have to get up the next morning and go back to work.”

Still, the prospects of Allatoona having to start over again with its football program were daunting, Sherer said.

“As far as the business side of it, yes, it would have been difficult to start again,” Sherer said. “There would have been a real impact. . . .Would it have discouraged kids from playing or cause them go to other schools? I don’t know, but it would’ve been a challenge.”

Varner’s former coaching boss, Roswell High School’s Tim McFarlin, said it would have set back the Allatoona program for years to come.

“It would have been devastating; it could have killed the program,” McFarlin said. “In this day and age, on the northside particularly, people move. They say, ‘Heck, if they aren’t going to do it right here, we’ll go elsewhere.’ I’d bet you that that was what a lot of parents were thinking.”

McFarlin talked to Varner many times during the ordeal, sometimes counseling him, but mostly being a friend.

“I encouraged him to hang on as long as he could and hope for the best,” McFarlin said. “But when your wife doesn’t work outside the home and you have two children, you have to look at the reality of the situation and put a deadline out there. The fallback was that I’d try to get him back at Roswell if I could, but he loves Allatoona and he wanted to be there.

“The thing that stood out to me during this time was his concern for his assistants,” McFarlin added. “It weighed on Gary heavily. He felt a tremendous sense of responsibility, even guilt that he’d pulled them from a secure job to one they might lose.”

It wasn’t until mid-July that Varner and the other coaches learned they were getting their jobs back after the Cobb system found money to rehire hundreds of laid off educators.

Now, Varner can focus on preparing for Allatoona’s first-ever region schedule. The Bucs will play in AAA’s Region 7B. In their first two seasons, the Bucs played a mishmash of smaller, mostly private schools, amassing a 7-9 record. Varner views this as Allatoona’s first real varsity season. And he’s much more at ease talking about the future than he is the past.

“I was kind of told it would be five years before a school is acclimated to a new system and really ready to compete,” Varner said. “I was quietly hoping it’d happen quicker, hoping it was good that we played a varsity schedule the first two years, hoping we’re closer to being ready because of it.

“We’ll find out, because we’re playing in a region where we’ll be playing teams like Dalton and Cartersville. These schools don’t even know who Allatoona is, much less are they worried about us.”