Today’s interviewee is Georgia Military coach Lee Coleman, whose team clinched the Region 7-A Public championship last week with a victory over ACE Charter. The title is Georgia Military’s first since 1960, and the 10-0 finish represents the most victories for the Milledgeville prep school since 1934, when Wally Butts was the coach. A Gainesville native, Coleman had been Georgia Military’s junior college wide receivers coach when he took the coaching job at the prep school.
Lee Coleman, Georgia Military head coach
1. First region title since 1960. First 10-win season since 1934. What do those accomplishments mean to your school? “This means everything for our school. Football had been a lost cause and pretty much an afterthought. Football was somewhat just a leisure sport. Now that our team has won the school’s second-ever region title, the school spirit has been phenomenal. The school pride is back in the building, and now football means something to the student body.”
2. One thing that those achievements do is make people want to know more about your school. What is GMC Prep? Where are you students from, how many live on campus, etc. Why do students come there? “GMC Prep is a K-12 preparatory school. We often get mixed up with being a two-year prep school and are sometimes mistaken for being the junior college football program. Our students are all commuters who are from Baldwin County, with a few from Jones, Hancock and Putnam counties. No high school students live on campus. Only the junior college Cadets live on campus. People send their kids to GMC for the academic rigor and the discipline aspect that we offer. Our JROTC program is phenomenal, and our academics are second to none. The school really prepares you for college.”
3. What is a quick scouting report on your team? What’s your team’s style, and what are the strengths? “We are a small, gritty team who plays extremely hard in all three phases of the game. Offensively, we run multiple formations to catch opposing defenses off balance. The strength of our team this year has definitely been our defense. Those guys do a tremendous job getting to the football and tackling the football.”
4. What do you feel that you and your staff did that has made the biggest difference since you took the job in 2019, and how did you do it? “I believe that it was the way we believed in the kids. We stayed positive and taught fundamentals daily. When we took this job, the kids did not know what winning looked like. It almost felt as if the kids expected to lose. My staff and I did a great job of believing in them as well as motivating them to believe in themselves. Last year, we saw a glimpse of what success looks like when we made the playoffs for the first time in 18 years. Now, we have a group of guys who believe that they can win, and it shows on Friday nights.”
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