By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

It’s been a busy and productive week for Bibb County public high school athletics programs, with two more head coaches being named.

The county Board of Education approved new head football coaches, Paul Carroll at Howard and Jeremy Wiggins at Northeast, on Thursday night.

That came two days after approving Joaquin Sample as head football coach and Tamara Bolston-Williams as head girls basketball coach at Central.

The Northeast job opened when Ashley Harden quietly resigned a few months ago. Howard has been open barely a month, vacated when Barney Hester was approved on March 15 as Bibb County athletics director.

Wiggins, like Sample, is now the head coach at his alma mater. He was a multi-sport standout with the Raiders, earning a plethora of postseason honors, especially in football.

He then was a major impact player in Appalachian State’s run of domination on the FCS (formerly I-AA) level in the mid-2000s, helping the Mountaineers to two national titles and earning a spot on the Southern Conference all-decade defensive team.

“Then I spent a couple seasons in arena ball, before I got serious about teaching and coaching,” the 32-year-old said.

He worked as a parapro at Southwest, moved to Ballard-Hudson for two years.

Wiggins then spent five seasons working with Bruce Mullen, an assistant during Wiggins’ Raiders’ career who retired after the 2016 season, coaching offense and defense at different times.

He coached wide receivers in 2017 at Warner Robins, helping the pass-oriented Demons to a 14-1 record and trip to the GHSA Class 5A title game when they lost at home to Rome 38-0.

“It was a lot of fun,” he said. “It was a lot of fun until we ran into Rome.”

Northeast went 5-4 in 2017, with one game cancelled because of weather. The Raiders finished sixth in a tough region, 3-AA, where it was one of five teams with a winning record.

Wiggins doesn’t have the most extensive resume, but he has been around success. He was a coach on the field during App State’s run – the Mountaineers went 26-4 his final two seasons, and won at least 10 games the next four seasons - and was a Buck Buchanan Award finalist in 2006, and was a two-time all-conference and all-American pick.

That playing experience, having coached at his alma mater, and spending a year at a tradition-rich program like Warner Robins that had a monster year, gives Wiggins confidence.

“I think the main thing is knowing the type of kids that you’re dealing with, knowing the community,” he said. “That’s one of the advantages. (It) gives me the upper hand on a lot of (adjustments), and playing at Northeast and then going off and doing a lot of things.

“The kids kind of look up to that as a role model. I think that’s one of the upper hands I’ve got.”

Northeast has been a roller coaster since going 0-10 in 1999 under Carror Wright. The Raiders have made the playoffs nine times in that span, with a stretch of four straight and three straight winning seasons along the way, struggling with declining enrollment.

Wiggins wants to strengthen the focus on academics with athletics to rebuild.

“A lot of times, Northeast had a lot of (potential), but the grades and the athletics have got to match up,” he said, noting times when academics may have kept key players or potential players from the field. “That’s going to be the biggest task right there, getting those two to match, and then putting a quality program (together) and a quality team on the field.”

Carroll joined the Howard staff in January of 2017, and there was speculation that he would be a prime candidate to replace Hester whenever he decided to retire.

Alas, Hester was named to the county athletics director post on March 15.

Carroll, a Hardaway graduate who played linebacker at Georgia Southern in the early 1990s, came to Howard from Warner Robins, where he had been since 2010, and was the assistant head coach, defensive coordinator, and linebackers coach.

He has also coached at Tift County, Thomas County Central, Griffin, Northside-Columbus, McIntosh, Jones County and Greene County.

Carroll has served as interim head coach and athletics director since Hester’s departure.

Carroll said Hester left a Howard program on the rise. The Huskies made the playoffs for the first time in program history in 2017, going 6-5, with quality losses to Westside, West Laurens, Spalding, Mary Persons, and Americus-Sumter. The Huskies’ biggest loss was by only 17 points.

The Huskies return a fair number of regulars on both sides from a team that lost to Mary Persons by only three.

“Coach Hester set everything up to be successful,” Carroll said. “They have so much respect for him.”

Carroll came from a program of statewide renown to one that was set to begin its 10th season in a county filled with public school programs battling problems with consistency, a lack of success and a lack of game-night and financial support. But he saw a Howard program that felt familiar, in a good way, and was countering perception.

“The administration at Howard is just like the one at Warner Robins,” Carroll said. “There are a lot of people that don’t think that, but football is important here I Bibb County. They want athletics to be successful, academics and athletics. They do set it up for you, just like at Warner Robins.”

When Carroll first took the job, he saw little difference in the personality between the Demons and Huskies.

“We had a little bit more athletic kids at Warner Robins, but like now, our kids work just like the kids do at Warner Robins,” Carroll said. “The main thing we’ve really concentrated on this past year was the weight room, the mental toughness part. We’re doing that at 6 o’clock in the morning.

“Everybody said that kids in Bibb County aren’t gonna show up. Well, we’ve had 60 to 65 kids show up two days a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we’re doing mat drills, and the parents are getting ‘em there. I don’t know how many games we’re going to win next year, but we’re going to play hard.”