Defense the focus of Mountaineers’ hires

Published 11:10 pm Wednesday, June 17, 2015

North Murray High School’s football program has been right around a .500 winning percentage during the past three seasons, but the Mountaineers have never been able to get over the hump and win that sixth game.

In order to do that, coach David Gann knows his team has to be better on the defensive side of the ball. In an effort to elevate his defense’s play, Gann has brought in three new coaches — Franco Perkins, Scott Swantic and Houston White — who bring with them a very strong defensive pedigree.

“I can’t speak highly enough about the experience that these three coaches bring,” Gann said. “Two of them have head coaching experience and they all have coordinator experience. They are very knowledgeable guys who will bring a lot to our football team.”

Leading the defensive coaching staff is new defensive coordinator Perkins, who was fired as the head coach at Rome High School in January. Rome was 29-23 in five years under Perkins, who also served as the defensive coordinator at Rome for several years prior to being named head coach when Sid Fritts left the school to take the head job at Elbert County. Perkins was the defensive coordinator for the 2008 Wolves’ team that advanced to the state semifinals. He replaces Willie Dadaro, who left North Murray to become the head coach at Monarch High School in Coconut Creek, Fla.

Also joining the defensive staff is former Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe offensive coordinator Houston White, who was previously the head coach at Notre Dame and Hixson high schools in Chattanooga. White was the head coach at Notre Dame in 2000 and 2001 before leaving for five seasons as an assistant coach in Dallas, Texas. He returned to Chattanooga to become the head coach at Hixson in 2007, staying there for five seasons. He will coach safeties for the Mountaineers.

Swantic’s hiring was reported earlier this year. He is the father of former Southeast quarterback Will Swantic who has since transferred to North Murray. Coach Swantic has more than 10 years of experience as a defensive coordinator, including the last three at Franklin County, and will coach linebackers at North Murray.

With so much experience joining the staff, Gann, who calls the plays for the offensive side of the ball, says there has been a great deal of pressure taken off of him.

“It always helps to have guys who have been in my seat and understand the things that I have to deal with other than football,” Gann said. “It’s a relief to be able to focus on the offense and know that the defense is in good hands with those guys.”

The offense hasn’t been the problem for the Mountaineers, who averaged 33.5 points per game in 2014 and scored more than 40 five times on the way to a 5-5 record. But in North Murray’s five losses, the Mountaineers gave up an average of 46.4 points.

“Part of that was youth and part of it is that we have had four defensive coordinators in five years,” Gann said. “Hopefully we can get these guys in here and get some continuity going. We’ve been installing our offense at the middle school level for five years now. So they are ahead because they have been running it for years by the time they play on Friday nights.”

The biggest task the new defensive coaches will face is keeping things simple for a defense that lacks experience as North Murray has just two starters returning.

“We are young this year, but we are very talented,” Gann said. “These guys will keep things simple so that the kids can line up and play relaxed and loose. We will be a fundamentally sound defense and slowly will implement more scheme as we go along.”

The results so far have been good, Gann says. He pointed to the recent Cam Newton 7-on-7 invitational where the Mountaineers finished 8th out of 22 teams in a very strong field. And that was without very much instruction from the new coaching staff.

“The new coaches had only been here for three days,” Gann said. “So for us to go out and play that well with so many new faces against that competition tells me things are going the right direction.”