Last year, two area football coaches returned to their respective schools after a brief hiatus.
In 2021, Columbia (Lake City) football coach Brian Allen announced his resignation, stepping down after 10 seasons as the head coach of the Tigers.
He made the postseason every year and finished with double-digit wins four times at Columbia, including a 12-2 mark in 2015 when the Tigers advanced to their first state semifinal since 1997.
Following Allen’s departure, Demetric Jackson was named his replacement. He left Fort White after 14 seasons as head coach of the Indians to take the job with his alma mater.
But Jackson, who won a national championship his senior year at Florida in 1996 under coach Steve Spurrier, resigned after two successful seasons in which he led the Tigers to back-to-back district championships and a spot in the Class 3S state semifinals in 2022.
Within a span of three weeks, Allen and Jackson were back again.
Allen returned to Lake City last year, and Jackson went back to Fort White to coach his youngest son.
The Tigers (4-6) struggled against a tough schedule, dropping their first four games of the season before rebounding and making the Class 3S state playoffs, which ended with a 37-14 loss at Choctawhatchee (Fort Walton Beach) in the regional quarterfinals.
“Last year was a disappointing season when you look at our record,” Allen said. “However, it provided us an excellent opportunity to go through some growing pains while re-introducing our way of doing things. When you’re in a program for over a decade and step away, you can’t have the expectation that things will be exactly the way they were when you stepped away. So last season was a chance to reset the culture.”
The Indians (9-2) won nine games for the fourth time under Jackson (2008, 2015 and 2016) and made the Class 1R state playoffs before falling at home to Union County (Lake Butler), 17-10, in the regional semifinals.
“Coming back my second stint at Fort White and not being with the guys the whole year, we kind of surprised some people,” he said. “To go 9-1 with a fairly new quarterback and Dakota (Fisher) who hadn’t played for us in a while, I thought it was a great regular season. We exceeded the expectations of what we set out prior to the season. Unfortunately, we didn’t finish out the season like we wanted to…we’re excited about last year’s team and happy with what we did, but we want to do better.”
The carousel continues in 2024.
Buchholz’s Mark Whittemore stepped down at the end of the 2022 season and defensive coordinator Chuck Bell took over as head coach for the 2023 season.
However, Whittemore is back as head coach, replacing Bell who will remain with the team as the DC once again.
“I’m really excited,” Whittemore said. “From a personal standpoint, it’s a lot of fun. It’s such a blessing to be able to step away and for a coach with the quality, dedication, and love for the school like Chuck Bell had and displayed last year.”
Buchholz advanced to its third straight state semifinal and finished 13-1 last season under Bell.
“I am stepping in for the winningest coach in a single season in a long time at Buchholz High School,” Whittemore said. “He holds right now the best win-to-loss ratio in the school’s history. It’s a lot of fun when you can step in and your staff is full of guys that are motivated, love to coach kids, and are really good at what they do, and take pains to be the best they can be.”
Whittemore, who said he often uses the words that he is “stewarding the program” is thankful to still have Bell on the staff.
“It’s gargantuan,” he said. “It’s such a big deal. First of all, the continuity from me to him and from him to me, it’s pretty neat. We have a great relationship. He’s a family man. He cares about the community. This is his community as is the way that my wife and I see ourselves here. These are our people, and we want to do a great job as citizens of this community helping these young men become all they can be. Yeah, having Chuck is really, really big.”
While Whittemore is back for his second stint, Adam Gore returns for this third as Chiefland’s head coach.
James Corbin stepped down after two seasons, opening the door once again for Gore.
“It’s where I live, it’s where I was raised,” Gore said. “My wife is from Chiefland as well. It’s where our kids go, so it’s a special place to us. When it came open the conversations happened a little bit. It’s just a special place to me and it’s really hard to say no.”
Gore, who played for head coach Jim O’Neil his junior and senior seasons in the mid-90s, said although the names have changed, the type of players who are in Chiefland have not.
“You can still win a lot of football games by playing hard and physical,” he said. “X’s and O’s, we just try to figure out what kids we have and what best fits us as far as the system on both sides of the ball. We’re not tied to one thing right now. We’re doing a little bit of triple option stuff and that fits our kids but if we get the right kids, air raid would be next. I think us as coaches, it’s our job to figure out what we have, what best fits us, play really hard and really physical and tighten down on the X’s and O’s of that and keep working at it and get good at it.”
Off the field, there has been one positive change since he last manned the sidelines.
“I would say the biggest change is the field house,” Gore said. “We’ve got our own stand-alone field house. It’s got its own weight room, a nice weight room. We’re renovating that right now. Traditionally throughout the years that I’ve grown up in Chiefland things have been in different places on campus and now we’ve got everything there centered around that field house.”
During his second stint, Chiefland advanced to the 1A state semifinals before falling to Madison County.
The foursome has all had big pockets of success as Allen has gotten Columbia to a final four, Whittemore took Buchholz to a pair of state semifinals, and Jackson has reached a pair of regional finals.
All four should be poised to return their schools to the FHSAA state playoffs again in 2024.