Today’s interviewee is Calhoun County coach Marquil Middleton, whose team is playing 11-man football this season for the first time since 2020. After three years in an eight-man league, Calhoun County is playing a GHSA schedule again and is 2-1 after a 34-0 victory over Central of Talbotton in a game between the GHSA’s two smallest schools that play football. The Cougars’ two-game winning streak is their first in the GHSA since 2017. Calhoun County, just west of Albany, has 140 students. Though small, the school won Class A titles in boys basketball in 2015 and 2019. Middleton is a Calhoun County alumnus who returned to his Edison hometown in a rewarding 2022 career change.
1. What’s Calhoun County like, and why did you return? “It was my grandfather that persuaded me to come back. He was about to retire from teaching as an elementary school teacher and telling me to come down and try to teach. My family got tired of me being so far away and working so hard and told me Calhoun County is looking for teachers. I was actually substitute-teaching in Bibb County before that, so I was close to the school system but not in it. I was living in Macon, working at Blue Bird [the bus manufacturer] building fuel-tank holders. So I decided to take a stab at teaching. One of the best decisions I ever made. Calhoun County is a like a very small town. Pretty much everybody knows anybody you might see. It’s not a bad place at all to live. It’s very comfortable. We got that Cougar pride down here, so it’s different. I feel like we are the heroes of this region. I feel like everybody is the villain, and we’re trying to stop the bad guys.” [A Fort Valley State graduate, Middleton teaches middle school social studies. He was named Calhoun County Schools teacher of the year for 2023-24. “I didn’t expect that, but I’ll gladly take it,” he said. “I guess I meant something to the kids.”]
2. What makes Calhoun County football a challenge? “It’s the numbers. You’ll have kids in the school that have size and ability that won’t come out. It’s a blessing to those that do. No matter what ability they have, we’re trying to get all to come out. That’s the hardest part. We have right around 30 players now [with a four-man coaching staff]. There’s got to be an incentive for all the hard work they put in, so I try to talk to them and get the ones who are playing to talk with them. I tell them some fun things we’re doing as a football team. We usually take them to a college game. Over the summer I took some guys to a water park. That was an incentive for them to come to workouts and be consistent. We cook for them sometimes outside of just pregame, just a regular day after practice. And there’s always that opportunity for an athlete to get seen and get to play on the next level if they play football. I definitely have to stay on top of my incentives.” [Middleton has had success with multi-sport athletes. “The majority of my team is basketball players,” he said. “It’s hard to get them to lift weights during summer league basketball, but once they finish that, they jump right in. They attend seven-on-seven and different camps.”]
3. Why was it important to return to 11-man football, and what are your goals? ‘’We want to build a culture and continue to make football a tradition in the school and potentially have a chance to compete for a championship. All the other schools say we’re a basketball school. We want the opportunity to show people in our region that we can play football too. Our goal this season is to finish above .500. That’s us just being modest. We want to finish out 9-1, but we’ll take anything above .500 – 6-4, 7-3. We don’t want to go 5-5 or anything under.”
4. How has the team responded to these recent two wins? “They feel proud of themselves [for the two victories]. I’m proud too, but from a coaching standpoint, we’re trying to keep them hungry for the next game. But they do enjoy the wins. They’re starting to believe in themselves.”
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