Today’s interviewee is Long County coach Michael Pfiester, whose team beat Tattnall County 28-22 as a 12-point underdog last week to clinch its first playoff berth in history. Long County, a southeast Georgia school in Region 1-3A, was 0-10 last season but 5-5 now. Pfiester was hired in the offseason. A Michigan native, he had been South Effingham’s assistant head coach and strength-and-conditioning coordinator.
Michael Pfiester, Long County head coach
1. What did Friday night’s win mean to your team? “Friday night’s win was obviously special for our program for a number of reasons. We secured the 3 seed. We beat Tattnall County for the first time ever. It marked the first time that Long County has ever finished .500 in the region. Those are all great, but the thing that stood out to me was that there wasn’t a crazy, wild celebration. Our players went into the game believing that they were the better team and that they were going to win. Winning is not a surprise or shock to them anymore.”
2. What has been the reaction of the community and school to making the playoffs for the first time in history? And your own reaction? Did you really think 5-5 and the playoffs were realistic in the first season? “Folks in town are pretty happy with the progress we have made. The administration, teachers and other students at school are very excited for our players. We have several programs in our school that have had significant success, so I think the school community is glad to finally be able to celebrate that type of success with our football program.
“My reaction is kind of an ‘I told you so’ type feeling. I fully expected our team to be able to be competitive within our region. Our players believed it, and they performed well in our region games. When I looked at our schedule when I took the job and watched the film, I felt like we could win multiple games and be in the mix to make the playoffs. At that time 5-5 was probably the ceiling in my mind.”
3. Long County has been 0-10 eight times in the past 20 years, including last year. What attracted you to the job? “I had to double check your work on this question because I honestly was not aware that there were eight 0-10 seasons in the past 20 years here. I did know that Long County had never made the playoffs. I knew that they had only one .500 season in history and that the previous five seasons they went 2-45-2. Those are all the things that attracted me to the job. A great lesson I learned from one of my mentors, Steve Hamilton, who I worked for at Woodland [of Cartersville] was that if you want to be a head coach, one of the best ways to do it is to take over somewhere that has nowhere to go but up. Long County was that place for me and my family. I also had to be able to go somewhere that was willing to embrace a unique system because what we do offensively is definitely out of the ordinary and would not be accepted everywhere.” [Long County runs out of the Power-T formation with two tight ends and no wideouts. “As far as I know, we are the only team in Georgia running it,’’ Pfiester said.]
4. What did you and your staff do that made the biggest difference in getting you to where you are? What are some specific things that you tried that worked? “Our staff has done a great job on a few fronts. First and foremost, we have established expectations for our players in terms of our routines and how we are going to work in the classroom, weight room and on the practice field. Our guys know that each day has a purpose in the weight room and on the practice field. The consistent expectation of giving tremendous effort and pushing themselves physically has been big for our kids. We have also been able to establish an identity for our program, which was of paramount importance for me. Our staff has been able to get our kids to embrace that identity and not apologize for it. We are who we are. We don’t look like everyone else. We don’t throw it much. We don’t have a bunch of formations or motions. We are going to do what we do and try to execute at a high level and give us a chance to win some football games.”
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