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‘What took you so long?’ coach jokes

Tracy Hayworth was formally introduced as the head coach of the Franklin County High School football Rebels in a press conference Wednesday at the high school.

Hayworth, a Franklin County alumnus who played in the NFL for six seasons, was named as the head coach on March 15 after working as an assistant coach with the Rebels for the prior two seasons under previous head coach Justin Cunningham.

He was flanked at the press conference by FCHS Principal Dr. Roger Alsup and Athletic Director Kelly Kennedy.

Kennedy, who worked with Hayworth at Grundy County High School in 2019 and 2020 before both came to FCHS in 2021, provided the opening remarks for the event.

“Thank you everybody for coming today to welcome our new head football coach,” she said. “”I’m very excited to make this announcement. I’ve worked with coach Hayworth for the last four years, and I just know what an amazing man he is and what a great football coach he’s going to be for our program.”

Hayworth started off by thanking God for the opportunity to be the head coach of the Rebels before jokingly asking, “What took you so long?”

He followed by thanking the administration for picking him for the position and then turned his attention to the players in the audience for the press conference.

“I’m very proud to be the football coach of you young men that are sitting back there and glad to be the one that’s going to help lead the program,” he said.

Alsup said that Hayworth is very deserving of the chance to be the head coach at his alma mater.

“It’s great to be able to bring in a hometown hero to lead our football program. We’ve got some challenges, no doubt about that, but there’s no question in my mind that coach Hayworth is the right man to lead this football team,” Alsup said. “When we found out we were going to be making a change at the head-coaching position, I immediately knew who I wanted to take over the program, and that was coach Hayworth.”

When asked about his first steps as the head coach, Hayworth turned his attention toward the importance of the connection between FCHS and North and South middle schools.

“The first order of business right now is to help make sure we find the right coaches for our junior highs to help implement our program down on that level,” he said, adding that the high school will need to communicate with the principals of North and South to make those decisions.

Hayworth said that a key part of connecting the middle school programs to the Rebels will be not forcing all three programs into one particular offensive or defensive scheme.

“Most coaches have their system and then they’re stuck with that one system, and then of course, they want the junior highs to come in and implement that exact same system,” he said. “Sometimes that causes a problem because you may find a coach that has a lot of knowledge, but he doesn’t have a lot of knowledge of that system.”

Hayworth said the solution to that issue is to have the Rebels set up so they can run a wide variety of systems based on their personnel.

“The only thing that we would ask (the middle school teams) to do is to use some of our terminology so that when those students come here, they’ll already be familiar with that,” he said. “How we would make that adaptation here is just understanding what type of system they came out of so we’ll know where to start teaching them.”

Alsup added that communication has already begun with North and South, and both schools are on board with Hayworth’s vision of synergy between the three football programs.

Turning his attention to a question about his coaching staff, Hayworth said that the Rebels are in for an easy transition

“Sadly, we lost Justin (Cunningham), but he put together a great staff, and we had already been working on building the program,” he said. “It’s great that we hired from within because now we just continue on with the program.”

The Rebels will have a slightly new look to their region in the 2023 season with Tullahoma, Shelbyville and Lawrence County joining their division along with stalwart gridiron opponents in Columbia Central, Lincoln County and Spring Hill.

Hayworth said that the regional slate reminds him of his high school days before highlighting four early-season games against Coffee County, South Pittsburg, East Hamilton and Tullahoma as major challenges for his team.

“Right off the bat, we’ll be tested. Of course, that’s what the old (region) was about. Everybody was pretty good in it,” he said. “I think we’ll fare well in this (region,) and I’m looking forward to it.”

Hayworth then reiterated the smoothness of the transition that he and the program have experienced as he stepped into his new role.

“I don’t know if there could have been any smoother of a transition in circumstances like this,” he said. “We’ve got a great coaching staff, and we already had a direction. We just changed fighter pilots.”

He closed out the press conference by thanking Franklin County’s citizens for the support he’s received both in-person and online.

“I’m extremely proud to be the leader of your program,” Hayworth said.