Today’s interviewee is Tim Barron, coach of Region 6-5A champion Villa Rica. In his first season at the Carroll County school, Barron has led the Wildcats to a 7-2 record, their first region title since 1998 and their first winning season since 2011. Barron spent the previous 19 seasons at Heard County, where he won seven region titles and the 2018 Class 2A championship.
Tim Barron, Villa Rica head coach
1. You inherited a team that had gone 4-5, and you won the school’s first region title in 23 years. Surprised? “We knew there was enough talent here that if the kids would truly buy in, we could actually make a run for a region title year one. However, we are surprised on the path we took to get here. After our second loss of the season, we told the kids if they would truly trust in the coaches and their teammates we wouldn’t lose another regular-season game. The question we had was will they truly buy in. They began trusting the coaches and started seeing results, and then about game seven, they started trusting in each other. We had four region games that could have gone either way, but they stuck together and found a way.” [Villa Rica started 0-2 and finished the regular season with seven consecutive victories.]
2. What did you like about the Villa Rica job? “If you coached in the West Georgia area, you always looked at Villa Rica and said, man, they’ve got some talented kids. That alone didn’t make it appealing. There are lots of teams in the state of Georgia that are talented and not successful. What made it so appealing was Villa Rica checked a lot of boxes for a coach to have success. For guys looking to become head coaches, you must understand that to build a program, you have to ask a lot of questions on the front end. Is it important at the top end? Is it important to the board members? Is it important to the superintendent and central office? Is it important to the administrators in the high school? It is important to the feeder schools? Is it important to the community? Is there consistent talent? Villa Rica checked every box. If yes would have been the answer to most of those questions, then it would still be an appealing job. The fact is that the answer at Villa Rica was yes to every one of those questions.”
3. At Heard County, you had a similar quick turnaround, even more profound – from 0-11 to 10-2. Do those situations have commonalities? “The two commonalities between Villa Rica and Heard County are players and staff. To have quick success you have to have talent and a good staff. The administration at the central office and the administration at Villa Rica High School worked so hard to allow us to build a quality staff. They moved a lot of pieces to make that possible. We knew there was talent, and we quickly found out that the admin would do whatever it takes to build a sold staff. Anybody that truly knows me and my coaching philosophy is to surround yourself with great coaches and get out of their way. I was able to do that at Heard, and now we are doing that at Villa Rica. If you have good players and you have the right staff, good things happen.”
4. What are the most important things that you and your staff did? “This is the easiest question to answer and the most challenging task we had to do. It was to build trust and build relationships. There had been such a turnover in coaches at Villa Rica that there was little trust amongst staff in the building and little trust between players and coaches. To truly build a lasting program, you have to build trust in the school and community and you have to build real relationships with your players. The parents must truly believe you care about their kids. If they have trust in you, they will allow you to give their kids the tough love. Without that trust it is hard to coach them hard. As far as relationships with the players, you have to be open and honest with them. You can’t fool kids. They will see right through you. You can’t fake it, and it takes time. We are honest with our kids. When we make mistakes as coaches, we tell them. Our kids know we are In It together. We have a motto that we clock in and we clock out. When we step on the field, we are the coaches and you the players. On the field, we are going to work you, correct you and discipline you. When we step off the field, we will put our arm around you and love on you. They have to believe in their hearts that it’s not just about football. It has to be a family atmosphere. Are we a perfect family? No, but we are our family.
“The other thing was to combine the two middle schools for football. We had two middle schools that feed into our program – Villa Rica Middle and Bay Springs Middle. They were rivals. We’re going to play together in sixth, seventh and eighth grade. We met with everybody in the spring and said this is what we’re going to do. Everybody is going to be a Wildcat. Everybody is going to be purple and gold. Everything we’ve been doing is to bring this community together.”
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