New Hardaway coach Michael Woolridge putting off-field success first

Hardaway football coach Michael Woolridge was on his way to Hattiesburg, Miss., in 2007 to become an assistant academic advisor for the Southern Miss football team when he got a phone call.

It was Russell County coach Dwight Jones, who was coaching McIntosh High in Peachtree City at the time. Jones knew Woolridge had just accepted the position at Southern Miss, but Woolridge remembers Jones telling him he could tell the passion Woolridge had for football and coaching.

Woolridge agreed to join Jones’ staff, and the rest was history.

Woolridge, who accepted his first head coaching position at Hardaway in December, coached for a year at McIntosh before returning for two years as an assistant at Hardaway, two more at Harris County, and four as a coordinator at Jordan before taking the Hardaway job in December.

A Class of 2000 graduate of Hardaway, Woolridge has his sights set on turning the struggling program around. More importantly, though, he wants to be an influence to his players off the field.

That’s why he pursued coaching to begin with. After spending a year trying to make it in the NFL with the Cincinnati Bengals and Atlanta Falcons, he began work on a Master’s degree and joined the Marshall University football program as an academic advisor. From the beginning, his goals were to help young athletes make it off the field, not on it.

“I love coaching because I believe life is about serving others,” he said. “As a coach, you wear so many different hats — teacher, mentor, coach, parent. … Young African-American males don’t always have a lot of positive role models. A lot of times they think if (they) can spit a lyric, if (they) can shoot or catch a ball well, that’s the only way (they) can make it and have a decent living. As a young African-American, I wanted to show them that, hey, you can be a teacher, you can be a doctor or a lawyer. There are things besides ball and music where you can advance in life.”

Taking that role on at Hardaway, he’s realized quickly how big of a responsibility it is. Unlike being an assistant coach, where he was solely focused on Xs and Os and coaching players on the field, a head coach is required to do so many more things away from the game. So many, Woolridge said, that he has to make time for the coaching aspect.

“You have so many things that can distract from that,” he said. “Make sure your booster club is running smoothly, make sure your clothes are washed, make sure you’ve got summer meals, meals for the games, field maintenance, keeping up with grades. As a head coach, you’re thinking about everything.”

Including how to connect with his athletes.

“It’s knowing your players,” he said. “What kind of music do they listen to? I care more about the person than the player. Do you know how many siblings they’ve got? Do you know where they live at? Do you know their GPA? It’s all that kind of stuff. Just being a positive role model and taking part in their life, making it bigger than football.”

At the end of the day, that’s what he wants his time at Hardaway to be about. Yes, he wants to turn around a struggling program on the field. The Hawks have won just seven games in the past five years combined. Woolridge knows how important it is to get that number trending in a positive direction.

His main goal, though, is to have his players leaving Hardaway and becoming productive members of society.

“If we get 3-4 Division I players, that’d be great,” Woolridge said. “But we have three goals for these boys: Either sign to play ball or go to college somewhere, go into military service, or pursue a career. If our players are doing that out of high school, then I’m happy.”

This story was originally published June 20, 2016 at 4:45 PM with the headline "New Hardaway coach Michael Woolridge putting off-field success first."