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Football coach Mike Holland makes his point to his players during a practice last year. He will have new faces on his staff next season. (Landen Todd/The Oglethorpe Echo)
Oglethorpe County’s football staff has undergone a shakeup.
Assistant coach Daniel Eubanks will have a different responsibility in the fall and fellow assistant Matt Beyatt is leaving the program.
A year after Eubanks joined the coaching staff, he’s heading to the middle school program as its new offensive coordinator.
“(It) is a good thing because this is just another person at the middle school level who knows how we do things and is willing to do things that will align and do things (the way) we want to do them from the top down,” OCHS football coach Mike Holland said.
Eubanks served as one of the wide receivers coaches last year, where he worked with rising seniors Jordan Johnson and Darius Heard.
Meanwhile, the change will help Oglethorpe County continue to develop continuity.
“One of the things we really need to continue to work on here is building those transitions from middle school to high school,” Principal Bill Sampson said. “He’s knowledgeable, he’s passionate about what he does and he’s going to take things that he learned from high school back over there.”
Beyatt, the team’s running backs coach, is moving for a full-time teaching position at another school.
“The opportunity for him to go get an actual teaching job is going to be a tremendous pay increase for his family,” Holland said. “I don’t blame him one bit for doing that.”
Beyatt worked with star running back and recent Berry College commit Jake Turner and fellow seniors Elijah Hood and Quentin Nash.
“We do have a little joke on our team about RBU — Running Back University — and we play into in,” Turner said before the season. “(Beyatt) made shirts this summer and stuff, so that was fun.”
OCHS added former Patriots quarterback AJ Perlotte to the coaching staff.
Perlotte, a relative of the current outside linebackers coach Tennyson Hull, will serve as a defensive backs coach.
Other coaches have switched positions.
Gresham, who worked with the receivers, will coach the running backs, and Holland will switch to coaching receivers.