The Mycenaean

The reins of the Leesville football program have found a new Santa.

Mike Hobgood, former UNC lineman and South Granville head coach, will take over the coaching duties for the upcoming 2014 season.

Hobgood comes to Leesville after nine seasons at South Granville, where he revived the 2A school’s program from a perennial bottom-feeder into a team with seven consecutive state playoff appearances.

But the new coach also boasts success of his own on the field. He played in the 1993 N.C. high school football championship and remains the only player in UNC-Chapel Hill history to start in four bowl games.

Hobgood spoke with The Mycenaean in an exclusive interview after Tuesday’s Meet the Coach event. “As a head coach, discipline [and] organization are my biggest strengths,” he said.

He inherits a Leesville team in the midst of a major generational change, with 2013 stars Braxton Berrios and Malcolm Hitchcock graduating this week and almost the entire 2013 coaching staff moving to bigger jobs elsewhere. Several former South Granville assistants are following their boss to Leesville to fill some vacated spots.

But Hobgood doesn’t think the switch will overwhelm him. “I don’t think it’s going to much of a transition at all,” he said. “I played at a big program in high school, I played at a big college, I coached at a big program as an assistant. I’ve always treated…a smaller school (South Granville) like a bigger school, so we’re going to do the same stuff here.”

Hobgood noted Tuesday to parents that he had been offered six to eight other head coach positions over the last few years, but never felt inclined to move until the Leesville job became available. He raved about the school’s football program in an interview with the News & Observer last week, telling Tim Stevens that “Leesville has the total package…outstanding coaches, outstanding athletes and a community that really supports the school. People come to the games and really care about high school football.”

Just five days after his hiring announcement last Friday, Hobgood’s new perspective and expectations are already changing the routine of Leesville football.

He hopes to implement a Multiple-I offensive formation, allowing for more “diversified” formations and downfield passing than under former coach Chad Smothers’ system. Defensively, Hobgood will run a 4-3 standard set, after determining from tapes that “Leesville got a little too variable on defense” last season.

“We’ll do different stuff offensively and defensively, [but] we’re just going to work as hard as we can and be physical,” he said.

Hobgood will take over Smothers’ previous role as the Leesville weightlifting teacher during the regular school day, and stressed that the team had to “increase the number [of players who]…hit the weight room hard.”

Team unity will also be a priority. Eliminated will be the incentive-based system that allowed some players to earn names on their jerseys. New will be school-purchased practice gear that will be the same color scheme for every player.

“It’s seeing the kids develop that, to me, is the most important thing,” said Hobgood to parents. “Very important to me [is that] everybody is uniform.”

After Leesville finished the 2013 season with two heartbreaking losses that ended their run of back-to-back Cap-8 conference championships and state quarterfinals appearances, the pressure will be on for another double-digit victory campaign this coming autumn. Although a plethora of obstacles lie between now and such a lofty goal for the Pride, Hobgood isn’t too fazed.

“I was there [at South Granville] for almost a decade so [I have] a ton of experience,” he said. “We had to work really hard to compete, so to bring that here, where we have better players…we’re hoping to be really successful.”