Today’s interviewee is Darius Smiley, coach of defending Class 3A champion Sandy Creek. Smiley was hired to replace retiring coach Brett Garvin. Smiley led Central to its first playoff victory since 2014 last season. He is a Florida native and former quarterback and wide receiver at Georgia Southern.
1. How is your team looking this season? “We are a very young football team. We return three starters on offense and two starters on defense. We lost over 30 seniors to graduation, and half of those guys will go on to play at the collegiate level. My biggest concern is the lack of experience. We have six guys returning from last year’s team who saw significant minutes or started in the state championship game, and there will be a lot of new faces on the field for the first time. We have some talented young players, and our success will depend on how quickly they can adjust to the Friday night lights.”
2. Sandy Creek graduated a two-time first-team all-state quarterback, Geimere Latimer. Who will be the new quarterback, and what’s his skill set? “Losing Geimere will be tough to replace. He is a great young man, leader, competitor and a heck of a football player. Junior Dalen Penson, who is a dual-threat type of kid, will be the starter this season. Dalen was the back-up quarterback last season and saw time in a few games behind center and started in a game when Latimer was out due to injury. Dalen has a lot characteristics similar to that of Latimer as far as him being an outstanding young man, a competitor and someone who can make plays. He was a part of our boys track team who won the state championship. Dalen individually won state in the triple jump with a jump of 45′10″. He’s an explosive kid and will definitely cause some problems for teams this season. Dalen was primarily a receiver and cornerback last season, and he has been good about making the transition to quarterback full time. He currently holds a few offers as an athlete from Vanderbilt, Ball State and Austin Peay.”
3. What does your coaching staff look like? Who did you bring in, and how much of the previous staff did you retain? “I’ve been blessed to be in this situation at Sandy Creek and have the guys that I have on staff. I wanted high-character guys who would be able to make an impact on our kids and use the game of football to mold and shape young men. The guys I will speak about have been all of that and more for me. My initial meeting with the coaches was that I didn’t want to come in and make a wholesale change because I felt like if it isn’t broke, why fix it. Coach Garvin had assembled a really good staff, and I was able to keep five coaches from the 2022 state championship team. Coach Brandon Murphy is our defensive coordinator and strength and conditioning coach and does a great job in both of those roles. It will be a matter of time before he is a head coach one day. Coach Mondez Godfrey stayed on and will coach our defensive line as well as be our special teams coordinator. Offensively, I was able to keep running backs coach and offensive coordinator Bo Heard, receivers coach Karsten Bailey, who handles a lot of our pass game, and offensive line coach Nick Davis, who has done a good job having to replace four out of five starters from last season. We were able to bring in two young, high-energy guys in linebackers coach William Haywood, who comes to us from Creekside and was a coordinator there for the last few years, and our defensive backs coach, Sid Gotell, who comes to us from Lovejoy. I have been very pleased with our coaching staff and their work to continue to keep our program a top program in the state.”
4. What’s it like taking over a program that just won a state title, but also lost some significant talent in both quality and quantity? What’s been your message/approach so far? “Taking over for a program coming off a state championship is tough and has its challenges. This community and school expect to win. The expectations at Sandy Creek are very high and you have to live up to those expectations. Losing as many seniors as we did that provided a ton of production from last year’s team will definitely be one of those challenges. Our message as coaches is simply trying to get our kids to understand we have a huge target on our backs, and we know that we will get everyone’s best shot when we step in between the lines, so we have to be prepared mentally and physically to play as such. We have also been preaching that the 2022 team is out the door, and while we want to always honor that team for their accomplishment, this is the 2023 season and we have not proved anything to anybody yet and the verdict is still out as to how good we will or can be. No one will predict us to do much this season because of what we lost to graduation, but I think as long as we continue to develop our guys and get better each day, we will have a shot to be one of the top teams in 3A.”
[GHSF Daily told Smiley that he might be the first coach in state history whose first two head-coaching jobs were taking over a winless program and taking over a state-winning program. He discussed that.] “I never thought about the differences in taking over for two different programs like that until you mentioned it. I would say the biggest difference is the culture in the two schools at the point of taking those programs over. At Sandy Creek, there was already an established culture in place. Like I said, the expectation is to win at a high level at Sandy Creek, and we will try to continue that. At Central, I had to work to build the winning mentality back within the kids and with the help of the guys on my staff at Central, we were able to do that over the course of my tenure there.”
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