It’s a common story within football.
Two players line up alongside one another, starting on recreation fields and up to the high school ranks. Usually, that’s where the journey ends with their careers, in or out of football, taking divergent paths.
In the football journeys of Bradley Hunnicutt and River Vaughn, it’s been a road forged in the JCHS purple and gold that’s led them from being teammates to now on the Greyhounds’ offensive staff.
“It’s awesome. He’s a childhood friend and I’ve known him my whole life. He snapped the ball to me,” Hunnicutt said.
Hunnicutt was among the early additions as offensive coordinator after head coach Justin Montgomery was hired. As the Jones County coaching staff was filled out, Vaughn was brought on board to coach the offensive line.
“Once he got the position, he asked me about Jones County,” Vaughn said. “I said, ‘I wouldn’t want to do anything else.’” Just like that, a center-quarterback combo for most of their football lives was back together again at a place where they were part of the most meteoric rise in program history. They played major roles as Justin Rogers arrived as head coach in 2014, and a three-year run followed with a combined record of 26-10, a quarterfinal appearance, and a consecutive postseason appearance streak that remains unbroken.
Vaughn would go on to collect first-team all-region and second-team all-state honors with Hunnicutt at the controls of the Greyhound offense, throwing in excess of 7,800 yards.
“I’m so proud of both of them. They’ll do a great job. Bradley got into coaching at Howard and Baldwin, and he’s come down here the last two years, drove down, and me and him have just talked ball in the offseason,” said current Thomas County Central and former Jones County head coach Justin Rogers. “It’s been fun for the previous two years, with me and him just talking. River was always such a classy guy, a hard worker. He loves that community and Jones County. I’m so proud of both of them.”
Now, they’re on the same offensive staff again, this time as coaches. They also coach on Friday nights within feet of one another from their spots in the press box overlooking the field. With Vaughn and Hunnicutt having spent so much time together, including offensive snaps, there’s a built-in familiarity that’s nothing but a plus among the Greyhounds’ coaches.
“We can kind of look at each other and see a nod and know what to expect,” Vaughn said. “We know the (offensive) scheme because we played in the same style. We know the techniques because we ran it before. It’s been easy to come back in.”
Both say that one another is mostly the same person as they were back then.
“He bleeds purple and gold. This place, it’s everything to him,” Hunnicutt said of Vaughn.
There’s at least one thing that Vaughn says has changed with Hunnicutt, and it’s down the back of his neck.
“He definitely doesn’t have that long blonde hair. He’s not the ‘Mr. Sunshine of Jones County,’” Vaughn says of Hunnicutt. “He’s more intense than he was as a player. As a player, he was cool, calm and collected, like a quarterback should be. He had a lot of love for his offensive linemen, and he still has that love and compassion for his players as a coach.”
Yes, time may have passed since the playing days of Vaughn and Hunnicutt, but now, they’re back home, having gone from players to coaches.
“Looking back, they definitely showed signs of being someone who could get into coaching with their attention to detail and the questions they would ask,” Rogers said. “You look back now, and it fits both of their personalities from when they were in high school coaching.”
