Etowah coach returns to face program he built. ‘I never really foresaw this’

Brett Vavra returns Friday to the place he called home for the last eight seasons.

But he will be in an unfamiliar position when he leads Etowah into Sprayberry’s Jim Frazier Stadium to coach against his former team.

“It’s going to be weird being on that visitor sideline and coaching against the kids that I helped develop and have such a good relationship with,” Vavra said. “And, yeah, I don’t know. I never really foresaw this.”

Vavra’s second game with the Eagles is against the program he helped build into a playoff contender, facing a talented group of seniors he started coaching as freshmen.

“It’s definitely an awkward and weird feeling that we have to go back over there,” Vavra said.

Vavra, who led Sprayberry to its first region championship since 2008 last season, made the decision to leave his alma mater back in December. There were several factors at play including working closer to family.

Vavra cut his round-trip commute from roughly an hour to under 10 minutes.

“I had to look at it as a long-term decision from a big-picture standpoint,” Vavra said. “My daughter is 15 years old, so she’s attending Etowah High School. She plays volleyball.

“It just felt like the right time. You know, I wasn’t really looking, to be honest with you ... to go anywhere, but they called me about the job and spoke to me a little bit about it, and I thought a lot about it and prayed about it.”

Vavra has plenty of history at Sprayberry. He was a four-year starter for the Yellow Jackets as a fullback, tight end and linebacker from 1996 to 1999.

He also had two stints as an assistant, including the 2008 region championship season that snapped a 26-year drought.

Sprayberry went 2-8 in Vavra’s first year as coach in 2017. The Yellow Jackets improved, though, leading up to last season’s 11-2 record with a state quarterfinals appearance.

Vavra’s former cornerback, Jorden Edmonds, became the program’s first AJC Super 11 selection earlier in August.

But Vavra also shares history with Etowah. Former Eagles coach Dave Svehla hired Vavra away from his assistant role at Sprayberry for his first coordinator job.

Svehla and Vavra led the Eagles to four straight playoff appearances from 2013 to 2016, including an 11-3 season that ended in the 2014 state semifinals.

Etowah finished 2024 with a 2-8 record, going 1-5 in region play. Vavra aims to rebuild Etowah on the same principles he established at Sprayberry.

“I feel like we can really instill that tough person’s mindset and develop our kids to really be able to handle and cope with any kind of problems or stress or just develop them to be physically and mentally tough,” Vavra said. “And so I think you can kind of see that in my approach and the way that I coach.

“The way that we work in the weight room, schematically what we do, we’re pretty aggressive.”

Vavra says he’s already seen it from his team twice this season. The Eagles showed their toughness in a resilient scrimmage win over River Ridge on Aug. 7, but Friday night’s 38-31 win over Woodstock meant more.

The Eagles beat their crosstown rival in overtime. Vavra brought up a play from much earlier in the game when discussing his team’s toughness.

“From the first series, we botched a punt and gave them the ball on the 20-yard line going in,” Vavra said. “You’re thinking, ‘Oh, here we go. This is not the way we want to start.’ And then three plays later, our kids were able to pick off a screen pass and take it back for a touchdown from 75 yards to flip the game completely.

“That’s a pattern you’re starting to see.”

That pattern will face a tough test on Friday. Sprayberry returned a lot of its top talent and is led by another renowned coach in Pete Fominaya.

Fominaya turned around two high school programs in Florida before taking the head job at Hiram, which had just one winning season in the previous five years. Fominaya’s Hornets made four playoff appearances in seven years, including a 9-3 record in 2023.

Fominaya also knows Vavra and has enjoyed taking over a program in a healthy position.

“This is my first experience as a head coach where I’m taking over a program that was really successful, you know, to come off an 11-1 season and a region championship, the foundation was laid,” Fominaya said. “The kids were really strong, the kids are disciplined, they’re respectful, so I just had to kind of come in and put a fresh set of eyes on it and really try not to reinvent the wheel, but just to keep building on what him and the previous coaches had done here before.”

Sprayberry has its eyes set on a deep run in the state playoffs, while Vavra said he’d be happy to make the postseason.