Johnson trying to change mindset around Tharptown football program

The Tharptown High School varsity football team, coming off a 1-9 campaign in 2023, has finished bottom of its region every year since 2014. Last season, Tharptown allowed an average of 53.4 points per game and averaged scoring just over 11 points. The last region win for the Wildcats was just under seven years ago—September 7th, 2017—when they defeated Shoals Christian 38-28. Tharptown has never made the playoffs.

All of this is to say, the task in front of second-year Tharptown head coach John Johnson appears to be a daunting one. It’s not just a matter of changing the results, it’s a matter of changing hearts and minds, too.

“We’re trying to build the popularity of football there,” Johnson told media members at the Football in the South Scoreboard Show Media Day in July. “It hasn’t been a popular sport at Tharptown.”

When Johnson took the Wildcats’ head coaching job right before the start of the 2023 season, he said he noticed one thing immediately.

“I noticed very quickly when I took the job last year there wasn’t very many kids working out in the summer. I think there might’ve been, the first couple of days I was there, six or eight boys working out,” Johnson said. “Everybody in Alabama’s lifting weights. We were kind of in a little time warp there where in the ‘80s nobody was lifting weights or very few people were lifting weights.”

Retention of players was difficult, too, Johnson told the Franklin Free Press, and the effort level in games simply wasn’t good enough.

“It doesn’t scare me to get embarrassed, but frankly we got embarrassed in some games last year and it was because we’d stop playing at the half or when the chips were down we just stopped playing,” he said. “That all goes back to what kind of mentality you have.”

Now, heading into the 2024 season, and with a full offseason to implement his plan, Johnson is optimistic that the mindset is starting to change around Tharptown.

First, in the weight room.

“We’ve had the majority of our team consistently during the summer,” Johnson said. “That makes a difference in a sport like football…not only developing strength but, you know, how much being in the weight room cuts out nagging injuries and things like that. And just the mentality aspect of those guys being around each other to try to build a bond with one another and that idea of, you know, it’s just not my teammate, this is more like family to me.”

The players are noticing the difference, too.

“We’ve had a bunch of kids start really showing up and working like they’re supposed to,” senior running back and defensive back Joah Wilcoxson.

“Right now there’s a lot of people starting to come into the weight room now and if we just keep on doing that—everybody just comes in, works out—I think we’ll grow a lot stronger and just get better overall,” added sophomore lineman Angel Morales.

The administration has bought into the weight lifting program, as well.

“The mentality is starting to change out (at Tharptown). Our principal, Tyler Berryman, is behind all athletics lifting weights, so the mindset’s changing going forward,” Johnson said. “Hopefully we’ll see, not just out of football but out of all sports, we’ll see the benefit of being in the weight room throughout the year.”

Johnson said the effort and dedication level shown in the weight room and in the first couple weeks of fall camp met his demands, but with the season looming the real test of player commitment will come when things get tough or go sideways during games. The proof may not be in wins, necessarily, but it will show nonetheless.

“They’ve met my expectations with summer workouts…and in the first couple weeks of practice, no one has missed, so those expectations I started establishing last year have been met. Now the expectation turns to can we give everything we’ve got for four quarters,” Johnson said. 

“If we can change that mindset to where we’re going to fight every play, it’s going to produce the best possible outcome,” Johnson added. “It may still be losing, but is it losing by 40 or is it losing by three?”

Finally, while Johnson may be the one to initially push the program towards a winning mentality, he understands it has to be fostered and grown by player leaders and ultimately team-led. Whether it’s rallying behind a common theme or making decisions as a team, that behind-the-scenes aspect of the group has also seen improvement.

“I told them a story the other day that comes out of the Bible about 40 days. Forty days is talked about a lot in the Bible. Not just with Noah and the flood, but Jesus was tempted for 40 days; and Moses was in the desert for 40 days before he received the 10 Commandments. The emphasis was that all these guys had a day 41 where things changed for them,” Johnson said. “That kinda stuck with the kids. I didn’t mean it to stick, really…but I’ve heard them talking about 41 a lot, and I guess if we have a team mantra this year it’s ‘41,’ and they’ve gotten behind it.

“We’ve got a players council this year, too, which is more or less like team captains, and I’m letting them decide on things more this year,” he added. “Like, it doesn’t matter if you’re running a top notch program or not, there’s always kids that want to come out on the first day of school and play and not go through the summer. (The players council) take it on a person-by-person basis and talk about them and decide. Those four players are kinda the voice of the team and make the decision. Are we going to let them come out or not? Things like that.

“That’s been a good thing, and the buy-in from the team has been a lot better this year.”

Proof of that could be seen in the senior Wilcoxson, who, when asked what his goals for his final season were, said, “Change the program. Make sure everyone starts buying into it and people won’t stop 50/50 and really buy in. Just be a leader, really.”

While everything mentioned before—the Tharptown program’s quality of leadership and the mentality and effort level during the offseason—may not be tangible or seen by most, what the Wildcats do under the lights, schematically, will be. That’s changing, too, under Johnson, starting on offense.

“We were a gun offense last year, which was by necessity because that’s what they had been doing,” Johnson said. “I got the job a week before the season started, so we just kinda had to roll with what we got.

“We’ve moved to the wing-T, which is something I’m a little more comfortable with and I think the kids are buying into it and kinda seeing the benefits of being able to run that offense.”

That acceptance of the traditional wing-T system by the offensive players may prove crucial in the future, but Johnson said there will be growing pains this season given the youth and inexperience of his team.

“The quarterback is going to be young, the running backs are young, and there’s only one senior on the offensive line, so we’re going to be young everywhere,” he said. “For them to buy in as sophomores and juniors and really start to understand what they’re doing offensively, that should put things on the up-and-up.”

The young quarterback under center for the Wildcats will be sophomore Braden Hamilton. Johnson said this will be Hamilton’s first year playing football, but he sees things in him that he believes will make him a fine player.

“He’s got a quality about him. I always look for leadership qualities in players, whether it be developed or undeveloped, and I think he has that. It tends to be in players that don’t even know it’s there,” Johnson said. “He’s a smart kid and he’s athletic.

“In the summer I think he had a change of heart and didn’t know if he wanted to play—he plays baseball and basketball, too. But when he finally made the decision to stick with it he was like the rest of these boys and fully bought into it.”

The defense, like the offense, will be young, but according to Johnson, it’s the defensive side, which gave up 70-plus points three times last season, that requires the most improvement.

“We’re going to have to get better defensively, by far, to be in any game,” Johnson said during the media day.

Also like the offense, the Wildcat D is putting in more wrinkles and schemes, but he said it hasn’t caught on as fast as on the offensive side. Tharptown will continue to work on that, but more than anything—more than schemes, blitzes, and coverages—Johnson said what his defense needs is the right mentality for playing on that side of the ball.

“There are things you can do and things you can tweak to make it difficult for opponents, but for the most part it’s all a mindset by the kids and a mentality by the kids,” he said. “You’re not going to run full speed at a guy to make a tackle if you don’t have an aggressive mentality. It doesn’t matter what coverage we’re in, what front we’re running, what blitz we’re running—you’ve got to have that mentality of, ‘you’re not going to beat me.’

“Football is a sport of wills. Whose will is going to break first? Am I going to break yours or are you going to break mine?” Johnson added. “Our mentality is changing. I don’t know if it's there yet, but it’s changing. At a place like this it’s not going to be an overnight thing.”

Johnson said if his Wildcats can develop that hard-nosed will and pack-mentality on defense, who knows what could happen?

“One thing I’ve noticed, you know, after doing this for 20 years is if you can get a group of guys to play defense aggressively and be smart, you can win games that people didn’t think you had a shot to win,” he said.

Looking at Tharptown’s schedule, the Wildcats play non-region contests starting at Danville in the opening week before taking on teams like Waterloo, Vina, Belgreen, and Phillips. In region play, Tharptown faces “some ringers,” as Johnson described them. The Wildcats open Class 2A Region 8 play on September 19 at preseason No. 7 Decatur Heritage before battling the likes of Tanner, Winston County, and Red Bay.

Johnson doesn’t sugar coat Tharptown’s chances of finally breaking into the region’s top four this season, given the quality of the competition—“It’d be a tall order.” He prefers his game-by-game approach instead.

“I don’t like to look too far ahead, to be honest with you,” he said. “We play Danville week one and that’s where I’m focused. You can only win them one at a time, you can only play them one at a time. Other than what I’ve overheard, I haven’t given much thought to what else is going on in the region.”

Whatever happens during Tharptown’s season, no matter the record or the results, Johnson said he’ll determine success at the end of the campaign by the measure of improvement in the areas mentioned at the beginning of this article. It will all come back to the Wildcats’ attitude and effort.

“I want to win. Every coach wants to win, but for me, here, if we can change that mindset to, you know, ‘I’m not going to back down. I don’t care what the score is. I don’t care what happened the play before. I don’t care that my girlfriend broke up with me.’ I know that sounds funny, but it's that kind of stuff that you have to put away to be able to come out here on a daily basis and give it your best every snap,” he said.

“There’s a good work ethic here. It just hasn’t been harnessed in the way that maybe I think it should’ve been harnessed, but every coach has different ideas,” Johnson added. “There are winnable games on our schedule. If we can change the mindset and harness the talent and that work ethic, things can happen. We’ll just have to see where the chips fall.”

Tharptown travels to Danville for its season opener on August 23rd.