4 Questions With Richmond Hill Football Coach Matt LeZotte

Written by: Phil Jones

Richmond Hill head football coach Matt LeZotte has been leading the Wildcat football program for the last eight seasons, including the 2022 season, which welcomed him and the ’Cats to GHSA Class 7A, the largest in the state.

Richmond Hill had a tough first season, finishing 3-7 overall and 0-4 in rugged Region 1-7A. The Wildcats are returning several starters and contributors to the 2023 squad, so look for a very much improved Richmond Hill football team this upcoming season. Here’s more from Coach LeZotte on which players he expects to have breakout performances in 2023.

Q: Coach LeZotte, thanks so much for joining us. Let’s talk about the journey from your hometown, all the way through where you are today as the football coach at Richmond Hill High School?

A: Thanks for including Richmond Hill in this. It’s been a fun eight seasons at the helm, but man, the road here was an awesome one full of experiences that I’m so grateful for. I played quarterback at James Madison University from 20002004, winning a national championship in 2004. I left school and worked in pharmaceutical sales for two years before moving back to my hometown of Augusta. I cut my teeth at Aquinas High School, beginning as a part-time assistant on the football team. I was in charge of strength and conditioning and really acted as an assistant head coach.

I finished my tenure there as the head football coach and athletic director, hosting our first playoff games, winning our first playoff games, and reaching as far as the quarterfinals in 2011. I left Aquinas and headed to Wayne County High School. In 2013, we played in the state semifinals and in 2014 we were region champions and made it to the second round.

I saw what it meant to coach at a South Georgia school where athletics matter and accommodations are made to make everyone in the building successful. I began as head football coach at Richmond Hill in 2015. Many of my friends wondered why I took the job, but I saw the potential. Over eight seasons, we played six straight years in the playoffs, reaching the semifinals in 2019 after becoming region champions, and the rest is history.

Q: As the community of Richmond Hill has grown, so has the high school’s enrollment, which is a great thing. Of course, that meant joining Region 1-7A. I know you’ve mentioned to us previously that you and the administration at Richmond Hill have been preparing for this explosive growth and movement up through the rankings. Coach LeZotte, how what was this first year competing in Region 1-7A like for your Richmond Hill football team?

A: It was great. Extremely professional. Like I’ve mentioned be- fore though, ball is ball. T major difference in this region is resources and allocation of those resources. Those [other teams] don’t have to fight battles we have to fight at Richmond Hill. They’ve been competing at a high level for decades upon decades.

Here at RH, everything we have done has been new to everyone in the system. We are still in the process of growing and educating so that we can continue to grow to be as competitive as the teams on our schedule. We are building a new school, opening in 2024, that will be the premier high school in coastal

Georgia – state-of-the-art everything. It’s going to be a huge upgrade from where we are now.

Q: Let’s talk about the team. Who will be the key members returning this season, as well as the key losses to graduation?

A: Our biggest loss is going to be Ravon Grant, one of the best wide receivers in our region and state. We feel good about the guys coming in to replace our other senior losses. We only had four who started in 2022. On offense we return our entire offensive line. They really started play- ing some good ball late in the season, but their youth still showed matching up against some of the best defenses in 7A. Nick Bliss is our top returning skill player. He and Caleb Easterling will line up at a variety of positions this year. We plan to be creative getting the ball in these guys’ hands. Defensively, we lose one starter. I feel good about being able to exceed the production at that spot this year with the guys returning. Brian Ruland is one of the most fundamentally sound football players I’ve ever coached. Gabe Bauman is a tremendous leader at linebacker. We return a

First Team All-Region cornerback in Brandon McDonald, along with Caleb Easterling, who has been a two-year starter at DB. Our kicker, Blake Williams, is nationally ranked and set to have a huge season.

Q: Coach LeZotte, as you looking at the 2023 Richmond Hill football schedule, who are some of the key opponents and games that fans are going to enjoy attending?

A: I think every single game on our schedule is big. We play Ware, Coffee, Valdosta and Lowndes at home this year – pick your matchup. I doubt there will be enough seats in the stands for those games. We have two tough local opponents, Jenkins and New Hampstead, along with a Border Classic game against a to-benamed Florida school played down at Glynn County Stadium.

So far, since the 2022 Georgia high school football season ended roughly a month prior to the time of this writing, there have been 71 – yes, 71 – head football coaches who are no longer at the school with whom they began the season. With another six months of offseason remaining before the 2023 campaign comes around, more head coaches are likely to leave their posts. However, every year for the past 30 high school football seasons, as such coaching changes would be announced, there was one name you never heard: Peach County coach Chad Campbell.

Campbell spent those three decades in the

Head Football Coach Chad Campbell Moves on After 30 Years at Peach County

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same school system, but he recently announced he is leaving Peach County High to take over the head coaching job at Perry’s Westfield School, a private school and member of the GISA.

Campbell was hired in 1993 to coach the middle school football team in Peach County. That began a long stretch that saw him serve as just about every position coach on the field, culminating in his promotion to head coach of the Trojans in 2007.

Campbell says he never considered leaving throughout those three decades.

“Never once did I go looking for another head coaching job,”

Campbell says, stoic as always. “I never felt like I needed to.”

But Campbell admits he never thought he’d spend 30 years at one school, either.

“You saw the coaches all around you at other schools coming and going, so you couldn’t help but think if that was ever going to be you one day,” Campbell says, acknowledging the reality of the situation that comes with coaching at any level.

It wasn’t as if there was no pressure, because as Campbell says, he was at a school where you were expected to win.

“Believe me, the folks here expected to win every game,” he says with a laugh.

He may not have won every game, but he won a lot. Campbell’s record in his 16 years as the Trojans’ head coach was 168-38. That’s more than 10 wins per season and between two and three losses per year.

Yes, that will keep you around for a while.

Under Campbell, the Trojans advanced to the state championship game four times, winning a state championship in 2009. Peach County and Campbell also played for the title in 2011, 2017, and 2018.

Campbell knows that a coach is really as good as the players who surround him, and he says he was blessed to have coached some good ones at Peach County.

“Man, we had some really good players come through the program,” Campbell says, naming a few of the many greats who played for him at Peach. It is an impressive list, for sure. He mentions Randy McMichael (UGA, Miami Dolphins), Jacquez Green, (Florida, Tampa Bay Buccaneers), Chris Slaughter (Auburn), Demarcus Robinson (Florida, Kansas City Chiefs), and those are just a few who come to mind.

“There are so many great ones that played for me here at Peach,” Campbell says.

That’s OK, Coach. Thirty years is a long time.