CALEDONIA — Michael Kelly is officially a part of it all now.
Kelly has been hard at work at his new job at Caledonia High School football coach ever since the middle of June, when he accepted a job offer from Andy Stevens, the school’s principal. Kelly’s hiring didn’t become official until earlier this month. On July 13 the Lowndes County School Board approved his hiring. Three days later, the Columbus Municipal School Board allowed Kelly to get out of his contract as a teacher and a football coach at Columbus High.
Now that all of the details have been settled, Kelly and the rest of his coaching staff are focused on finalizing plans for the 2018 season.
“It feels good. We are hitting the ground running, which we have been doing for the past month,” Kelly said. “We’re looking forward to it.”
Caledonia and the rest of the Mississippi High School Activities Association (MHSAA) teams officially kick off practice Monday. Mississippi Association of Independent Schools (MAIS) football teams opened practice last Monday. While other programs have had plenty of time to evaluate players and to tweak formations and plays, Kelly and his coaching staff have tried to “keep it simple.” He said the coaches don’t plan to install every facet of the system in an attempt to get more things done. Kelly feels the Confederates will be able to execute a game plan that will feature a ground-based attack on offense and a three-man front and a 50 defense.
Christopher Harlow, who was the defensive backs coach at Columbus High, also submitted a letter that was accepted July 16 at the regular meeting of the Columbus Municipal School Board. Harlow will be defensive coordinator, secondary coach, and wide receivers coach at Caledonia High.
Jason Forrester (offensive/defensive lines), former Hamilton High football coach Ray Weeks (offensive coordinator, quarterbacks/fullbacks coach, and secondary coach), Darius Wren, who also worked at Columbus High last season, will coach the inside receivers and slot backs and the outside linebackers. Kelly will coach the offensive line, the inside linebackers, and the defensive line.
“Coach Weeks jokes with us all of the time about all of this RPO stuff these days,” Kelly said. “We had a joke about making a shirt the other day that we’re going to run RPOs, too, but we are going to run people over. We have some kids who can run the football. They’re probably not going to be able to take it 80 yards, but they’re going to be able to get us first downs and to be able to move the chains. We’re going to try our best to put them in one-on-one matchups where they can be successful.”
Kelly said he has been impressed with the work ethic of the 50-55 players who were part of the program’s summer workouts. Even though was named head coach late in the process, Kelly feels that mind-set will be a staple of his program. He also is excited about the versatility of a number of players and how that will increase the team’s depth.
Kelly served as defensive coordinator for Randal Montgomery for the past three seasons at Columbus High. He served as defensive coordinator at Northeast Jones High for two years, as linebackers coach for two years at Laurel High, and as offensive line/outside linebackers coach at Newton County High for five years.
Kelly said he had talked to Stevens about the job opening at Caledonia High before Stevens nominated David King to be the school’s new coach. But the Lowndes County School District Board of Trustees voted not to hire King.
King has worked as assistant football coach and driver’s education instructor at Biloxi High for the last three years. D’Iberville police arrested King at 3:40 a.m. March 2 when he refused to take a DUI test during a traffic stop off Interstate 110, according to a report from The Biloxi Sun Herald. King pleaded not guilty to the charges.
LCSD board members delayed voting on his hire pending his court date at D’Iberville Municipal Court, but they went ahead with the vote after King’s court date was continued from May 22 to July 31.
Kelly hopes to bring stability to a program that has seen plenty of change in the last few months and throughout the last 10 years. Ricky Kendrick resigned as Caledonia High’s football coach following a winless 2017 season. Tim Nickens, a former assistant football coach at New Hope High, was hired to replace Kendrick, but Nickens resigned midway through the spring football season. He declined to comment about the reasons for resigning. Caledonia then attempted to hire King.
Kelly said he realized people in Caledonia supported the high school’s athletic program before he arrived. He said he met with 125 parents in the first month and has had numerous calls from well wishers and people asking how they can help in his first month. Kelly said the help of all of those individuals will make his job easier.
“I think at the end of the day you find out what they’re good at within our system and you focus on those things,” Kelly said. “We aren’t asking them to do things they can’t do within our system until we have trained them and developed them a little bit more.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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