What made you want to go into coaching high school football?
"Giving back to the community, helping raise young boys into men and then just being able to be around the game daily. I think all of us that are former athletes, there's a competitive piece that goes with that. It [coaching] kind of keeps you in the fire without being in the fire. And I think football is the ultimate team sport, which links to building society."
What excites you most in going to work every day?
"I love that I have an opportunity help build young men. I think that in our society today, what's missing is structure. What's missing is a drive to put it all on the line, laying the groundwork brick by brick, see something all the way through and experiencing the fruits of your labor. Watching the house be built daily is probably my biggest thing. In the end, it's seeing young men get the opportunity to go to college and better themselves and kind of lay the groundwork for the next 40 years of their lives. I think that's what I love most about going to work."
What's been one of your proudest moments since coaching at Henry A. Wise?
"I think my proudest moment is, in the 12 years I've been at Wise, we've had over 100 kids go to college to play football. We've had the most scholarship quarterbacks at of any school in the DMV. And I would say another one is, I have two former players on my staff that I coached and one of them is one of those quarterbacks, Quintin Williams, who started every game at Howard. Now he's back and coaching the quarterbacks here. It's like a proud friend, a proud father moment. Same with my defensive coordinator, Tre Sullivan, who played at Shepherd University and for the Philadelphia Eagles for three years, won a Super Bowl there, started at safety. I coached him as well, and he's my D coordinator now."
What impact do you feel like high school football has on the kids you work with?
"I think it teaches them life, how to be a team player, how to trust the process, how to handle success and downfalls, how to work your way up from the bottom to the top."
What's the biggest life lesson football has taught you, and how do you pass that lesson on to your players?
"Personal accountability. It's huge for us, and I think it's huge in life. Let's put it this way, nobody comes late to our practices, but I'm not going to go into detail about that. Again, personal accountability is something huge I think that's missing from society. Everybody wants to blame the next person for whatever it is. We'll start being better as people, as a team and as a society when we each take responsibility for what we do wrong."
What advice would you give to newer coaches or aspiring student-athletes?
"Listen twice as much as you talk, be a sponge, be active and then formulate your own plan."
What does it mean to you to be named a Commanders Coach of the Week?
"It's the first thing I've won as a head coach. It's amazing. It's like when you open a business, and you get your first dollar, you put it up on the wall and it's there forever type deal. It's an amazing opportunity, and I'm super excited about it."
