Making his mark: After becoming Northwest leader in coaching wins, Robinson hopes to keep piling them up

Published 8:00 am Friday, September 2, 2022

TUNNEL HILL — When Josh Robinson came to Northwest Whitfield High School as an assistant football coach in 2003, he was content to have a role running the defensive line.

“When I first got here, I wanted to be a defensive line coach. That’s all I wanted to do,” said Robinson. “Then I wanted to be the defensive coordinator. I never wanted to take coach (then-Northwest head coach Mike) Falleur’s job, but I wanted to be the head coach at Northwest High School. That kind of turned into my dream. For me, I’m getting to do something a lot of people don’t. I’ve got my dream job.”

Twenty seasons of football later, 12 as head coach of the Bruins, Robinson has made a mark on the school history books at his dream job.

With a 35-31 win over Coahulla Creek last Friday, Robinson became the winningest head coach in Northwest Whitfield history. He has 78 wins two weeks into his 12th season leading the Bruins. Don Murray, the previous record-holder, had 77 in 13 seasons from 1981 to 1993.

“On a personal level, it’s a nice achievement. But it really speaks volumes to what we’ve had here as football players. We’ve been blessed with really good assistant coaches and really good players, and those combinations generally lead to victories,” Robinson said. “There’s been some successful guys here with really good records. It means a lot to achieve it, but I think it speaks to people believing in the mission we’re trying to achieve here.”

Robinson is proud of the milestone, but he’s not even the most excited in his own household.

“It’s a really big deal to my wife. She’s made a lot of sacrifices to kind of do it all,” Robinson said of his wife, Jennifer. “The achievement probably goes to her as much as anybody.”

Robinson is the seventh head coach for Northwest, which began playing football in 1975. Robinson is the only coach other than Murray to coach the Bruins for more than 10 seasons. Falleur, Robinson’s predecessor, coached Northwest for nine seasons before leaving the job in 2011.

After eight seasons as an assistant — including five as the Northwest defensive coordinator — Robinson took the reins prior to the 2011 season.

Falleur left to take the head coaching job at Villa Rica at that time, and he asked Robinson to go with him.

Robinson may not have known it when he arrived as a Northwest assistant after graduating from Shorter University in 2003, but, by the time Falleur left, he knew he wanted to stay and be a head coach for the Bruins.

“The idea of being able to stay here and become the head coach was just what I wanted,” Robinson said.

Robinson’s a Whitfield County lifer. He’s a graduate of Southeast Whitfield, where he played football under head coach Dwayne Hatcher. He counts Hatcher, as well as Falleur, for helping mold his process as a head coach.

“Probably one of my early struggles is I tried to be too much like coach Falleur,” Robinson recalls. “He was so successful that I just tried to emulate him, and there were things that just didn’t align with what I wanted. When I got more comfortable, there were those adjustments I made over time.”

Robinson found his lane though, and the Bruins have been better for it ever since.

Robinson also has the best winning percentage as a Bruin head coach at 63.4%. The seven straight times Robinson has led the Bruins to the playoffs is also a Northwest record, as is the back-to-back appearances in the second round of the playoffs Northwest made in 2020 and 2021.

Though he’s made his mark at the school in winning football games, Robinson insists wins are a secondary goal for the Northwest program.

“Of course I want to win every single Friday. I’m super competitive, and all my coaches are,” Robinson said. “But, at the end of the day, we don’t really measure our success in wins and losses. Long term, it’s the guys that I see, and they have a job and a family, then they’ve took out of football what football can offer them.”

Robinson’s stated goal for the Northwest program is to build not just wins, but “better husbands, better fathers.”

“All of our kids know that I care about them and our coaches do. If they don’t care about the kids, they don’t last here long, but typically they don’t get hired in the first place,” Robinson said. “Winning is great, but winning just makes that message easier to teach.”

Now that Robinson’s got the record, he doesn’t plan on going anywhere soon. The brand-new win record may continue to tick up, as long as Robinson keeps the Bruins successful.

Robinson and his wife have two kids that are set to attend Northwest. A son, Paxton, is in eighth grade at New Hope Middle, and Anzley, a daughter, is in sixth.

“I would undoubtedly pray to goodness that I at least make it until they both graduate,” Robinson said.

Beyond that, Robinson is about 10 years from being able to retire.

“I’ve been here my whole career. I’m from Whitfield County, and I’ve been with Northwest for 20 years,” Robinson said. “There have been other times when people have reached out to me about other jobs, but I’ve never been interested in them. I want to be here. That’s what I want. I will not leave here until it’s time for me to walk away from teaching and coaching altogether.”