Telegraph Staff Writer
Jamie Rodgers, who had head-coaching stints at Baker County and Suwanee and was named the Florida Dairy Farmers Class 5A Coach of the Year twice, was announced as the new Bradford High School head varsity football coach.
“I’m just excited to get here and get to work and build something special,” said Rodgers, a Baker County native who was the head coach at Cook in Adel, Georgia, the last three seasons.
Rodgers, who’s the brother of the late Paul Rodgers of Starke, described South Georgia in the Valdosta area as the “mecca” of high school football. He worked his whole career to get the opportunity to coach there, but the time came to make the decision that was best for him and his family.
“I wanted to get my wife back closer to her family,” Rodgers said. “They’re right there in Glen St. Mary. We lost my dad to COVID in January. It’s going to be really good to get back closer to my mom (who lives in Macclenny).”
Rodgers and his wife, Ashley, who’ve been married almost six years, have two small children: Aaron, who’ll be 4 on Dec. 21, and Lexie, who’s 18 months. Rodgers said he wants his children to be able to grow up around their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
“Life changes,” Rodgers said. “Choices change. I had to make the right decision.”
When he learned of the opening at Bradford, Rodgers said “it seemed a little like it was meant to be.”
His hiring came one week after the district announced it was parting ways with former Head Coach Brian Tomlinson. Superintendent of Schools Will Hartley, a 1999 BHS graduate, remembers playing football and baseball against Rodgers, who’s a 1997 Baker County High graduate.
“Jamie is a fierce competitor,” Hartley said. “It’s one of the things I always remember about him when he was playing. During his time at Suwannee and Baker, I saw him coach. Nothing’s changed. He’s the same on the sideline as when he was playing.
“I really like that competitive nature in him. I think the players will take on that same personality.”
Hartley said talking to a couple of his colleagues confirmed that Rodgers was the right man for the job.
“(Suwannee Superintendent Ted Roush) and Sherry Raulerson over in Baker County just couldn’t say enough great things about him, about how he’s such a great community guy,” Hartley said. “He’s a program builder. You won’t have trouble with the kids with discipline or with the parents — he deals with all of that kind of stuff. Every place he’s been, he’s built up a great booster club of supporters.
“He wants all of the responsibilities it takes to be a successful head coach these days, not just the coaching-on-the-field part of it.”
Finding a career
Rodgers served as an assistant coach for seven years — all under Bobby Johns, the current Wewahitchka head coach who was also an assistant coach at BHS when Corey Green was the head coach. He worked under Johns at Baker County, Milton and Bacon County (Alma, Georgia) high schools.
“When I started working with Bobby, I had no idea I wanted to do this for a living,” Rodgers said, adding, “He took me in and made me the defensive coordinator early on in my career with him. He just kind of groomed me.
“I owe my career to him and those seven years, when I learned so much about not only the game of football, but about being a head coach.”
For someone who had no idea he wanted to coach for a living, Rodgers has certainly made his mark. His first head job was at Suwanee, which had experienced four straight losing seasons and had not qualified for the playoffs in nine years. The Bulldogs went 3-7 in Rodgers’ first season in 2012, but then went 7-4, 12-2 and 9-4 — all playoff years. His 2014 team advanced to the state semifinals — an accomplishment that earned Rodgers his first Florida Dairy Farmers Coach of the Year honors.
Rodgers then took the job at his alma mater, leading Baker County to the playoffs in all three seasons he coached there. He went 29-9 with three district titles and a Class 5A state runner-up finish to private-school powerhouse American Heritage in 2017. The Wildcats went 13-2 that season, with Rodgers earning another Florida Dairy Farmers Coach of the Year award.
Unlike Suwannee, Baker wasn’t in need of a complete turnaround, which Rodgers said is how he views Bradford right now.
“I’ve watched enough film to see that we’ve got talented football players (at BHS). That’s not the problem,” Rodgers said, adding, “There’s no rebuild here. It’s a competitive team. There are just some things that need to be tweaked a little bit.”
Rodgers, who compiled an 11-6 postseason record at Baker and Suwannee, took over a Cook program in 2019 that had gone 15-20 in three seasons. He went 15-19 in three seasons, with a playoff record of 2-3.
“There were things going on that needed to be fixed,” Rodgers said of Cook. “We were able to get that turned around. Next year’s going to be the best year that Cook’s had in the last four or five years.”
Eager to start
Rodgers, when he was hired, had one week left on his contract to fulfill in teaching P.E. at Cook. When school resumes after the Christmas break, he intends to be at BHS, getting to know the players, who had the opportunity to meet Rodgers on Dec. 10.
“We had talked about not doing that for a couple of weeks,” Rodgers said of the Dec. 10 meeting, but I got with Mr. Hartley and said, ‘Hey, I’d really like to come meet them so they can see me face to face and hear me speak to them about the things that are important to me.’ If it’s important to me, and it becomes important to them, then we’ve got something.”
Being the head coach isn’t about just getting to know the players. Rodgers is ready to meet people in the community, saying it takes the whole community to help create a football program to be proud of.
“The only way you can really build it and do exactly what you want to do is to have support,” Rodgers said. “You can’t do it without support. One person cannot lead a football program by himself. It takes the whole village. I’m talking about everything. It takes every single business. It takes parents. It takes administration.
“All the things are in place here. We’ve just got to pull it all together.”
As to what the Tornadoes will look like on the field, all Rodgers can say is that he’s ready to employ multiple offensive and defensive schemes, which will be determined by the types of players.
“We won’t know until we get to the spring,” Rodgers said.
Rodgers has seen the kind of talent Bradford has had in the past. Hartley said Rodgers told him how when he prepared to play Bradford as an opposing coach, the level of talent he saw on video made an impression and had him thinking, “Man, at any given time, one of those kids can break loose, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“He said he’s very excited about the type of talent that is here and being able to work with those kids,” Hartley said.
Rodgers said he never makes promises on how many wins he and his teams are going to deliver, but he added, “What I do promise is our kids are going to play hard. They’re going to play hard every down. They’re going to play disciplined.
“If they do that, the wins and losses will take care of themselves, and that’ll be something the whole community can be proud of.”
The new coach can’t wait to get on the field. During his interview for this story on Dec. 10, he said, “I wish it was tomorrow.”
However, his work begins well before May.
“The next three or four months will be a little bit of chomping at the bit,” Rodgers said, “but there’s a lot of stuff we need to get done before then. There are a lot of things that need to happen. Get our coaching staff in place. Get some equipment things taken care of. All the things that come with preparation.
“We’ve just got to cram it into four months, but that’s OK.”
