New head coach named for LCHS football

Just beyond the welcome sign that sits at the end of Highway 400, the future of Lumpkin County football was decided Monday morning in a Waffle House booth over two sausage, egg and cheese bowls.

Monday evening, Heath Webb, who most recently served as head coach at Gainesville High School, was confirmed as Lumpkin County High School’s next head coach following a split decision from the Lumpkin Board of Education.

Webb says it all began with a call from LCHS Principal Billy Kirk.

From there, the former Red Elephants coach met with Kirk, Athletic Director Steve Horton and Superintendent Rob Brown in the days to follow, before the board voted 3-2 to approve Webb as the program’s next head coach. Board members Craig Poore and Mera Turner voted in opposition to Webb’s approval, while Jim McClure, Bobby Self and Lynn Sylvester carried the majority vote required to make Webb the new coach.

Now that it’s official, Webb, says he is ready to hit the ground running.

“We’re not going to waste any time,” he said. “There’s still several days left in this school calendar and we’re not going to let them go away. I hope that those coaches and players that are still left there aren’t just counting down the days until Christmas Break because I’m going to come in there hair on fire and ready to go, so I hope they are too.”

Brown, who ordered the other sausage, egg and cheese bowl, said he’s excited for the next era of Lumpkin football with Webb at the helm.

“I think Coach Webb gives us the very best chance for success moving forward,” he said. “I hope this community and our parents and our fans will get behind him and support him."

According to Brown, over 30 coaches were considered for the job, including around 25 applicants. Brown said it was Webb’s experience as a head coach that truly separated him from the remainder of the pack.

“We had a lot of conversations with people, not just from this area but around the state and we had some really high quality candidates,” Brown said. “I think at the end of the day you want to find the very best person that you can find that’s willing to come and turn around a program that would have to go undefeated for 23 years to be .500 on the history of the sport. That’s not a place that has been a traditional winner."

Webb began his head coaching career at North Paulding High School in July of 2007 where he helped start the football program in its first year. After five years at the helm, Webb worked as an assistant at Flowery Branch and Peachtree Ridge for one year each before accepting the Winder-Barrow head coach position in February of 2014. It was his work there that Brown felt best qualified him for the position at Lumpkin.

“He was very successful at Winder-Barrow, turning that program around,” he said. “We see us in our situation as a very similar situation that he took over when he went to Winder-Barrow….We felt like the 12 years of head coaching experience that Coach Webb brings to the table was extremely valuable for what we need and what’s going to help us change the course of the future.”

Webb agreed that it’s a similar fit.

“When I took the job at Winder in 2014, everybody in the coaching world said ‘don’t do it, Heath. Don’t do it. It’s a dead end, you can’t win there’ and I just took that as a challenge," he said. "At the time I said I was going to bet on myself and believed I could do it….I think the similarities between the two are a hungry group of players that want to be successful, a great community that loves its football even though the wins haven’t exactly piled up and and an administration that wants to do everything that they can to make it successful. And I just think that if you put all of those things together then we have the starting point.”

After taking the once struggling Bulldogs to the playoffs in four straight years, Webb took the head coaching job at Gainesville High School, where he made the playoffs three out of his four years before resigning after the 2021 season.

Webb joins the Lumpkin County football program with his wife Jesi, a Lumpkin County High School graduate, and three children Josie, Abbie Kate and Thomas.

COMING FULL CIRCLE

Early in his career, Webb actually served as associate head coach and offensive coordinator at LCHS in 2006 under then head coach Tommy Jones while his wife Jesi began teaching at Long Branch Elementary. For Webb, the question was never if he would be coaching at Lumpkin again, but when.

“We absolutely loved it,” he said of his family’s first time coaching and living in Lumpkin. “It was a great experience for us and a great job for her, a great job for me. ... When we left, we said we were coming back.”

So when he heard about the opening at Lumpkin, he and his family didn’t hesitate.

“When the job came open, we just kind of looked at each other like ‘Is this the time? Is this the moment? 15 years ago we said at some point in time we were coming back, is this the right time?’ and the answer was yes,” he said. “It is the right time. It’s a great school system. The things that matter to us, the graduation rate that’s third best in the state, that matters to us. Our kids are growing up and we want our kids to be in a quality school system. Just a connection of the community, the family that we have there and the great experience we had there in the past, it was just time to come back and I’m happy that it worked out.”

Now, Webb looks to help the program reach its potential, which he feels is high.

“There’s a talent pool that is there,” he said. “...There’s definitely some pieces that are in place that watching from afar, you can see, yeah they’re young, but there are pieces there that we can work with and pieces there that we can win with.”

And for the doubters in the community, Webb understands, but hopes he’ll be given a chance to show what the program can do.

“Honestly that’s fair, but I would say this, give us a chance. Give us the resources, give us the chance and trust that the process is going to work itself out,” he said. “It’s our job as coaches and players to prove those people wrong and I hope that they’re there on Friday nights when we’re winning so that we can prove them wrong.”