Brad Harrison
sports@jcnews.com
When football season kicks off in August, Adam Gillhouse won’t be signaling in plays, reviewing film in between series or giving detailed instructions to players during timeouts.
But that’s not to say he won’t be heavily involved. Gillhouse — also Jones County’s head wrestling coach — will play a key role on staff as the Greyhounds’ director of football operations, taking on key roles during the week and games from a logistics standpoint. In short, it’s a position to helps ensure things move smoothly from ensuring players and coaches are fed, coaches have what’s needed to run practice and aligning details for road games.
“We’ve never had this role before here at Jones County. The way I view
it is that I am trying to make everybody’s job easier,” Gillhouse said. “With what I have going on, I can’t be there every day to coach a position. But I do try to put a system in place to help our coaches be as effective as possible.”
The football operations role will have an even bigger piece of the workings when the Greyhounds hit the road, being responsible for ensuring things run smoothly when it comes to travel. When should the buses leave? When and where will the team eat before and after games? Those are just some of the things that the new director of football operations role will handle and streamline.
“That’ll be big. You have to get stuff there and set up and figure out what you’re doing for pre and post-game meals,” Gillhouse said. “What time do you want to eat? You kind of have to build backward. Whatever time it is you want to be on the field for warm-ups, you take that and build out when you want to leave.”
Football is hardly new for Gillhouse, who as part of doing a bit of everything even helped coach outside linebackers during spring practice prior to the full coaching staff being filled out.
He was a full-time football assistant until 2021 at JCHS, when he pivoted to being the head wrestling coach. But in his current role, Gillhouse is able to bridge a previous disconnect.
“This is what I missed the most from football, just being out there at practice. I loved being out on the grass at practice,” Gillhouse said. “I remember when Barney Hester retired from coaching to be athletics director in Bibb County. He said what he missed the most was the comradery of being on a football staff.
“I thought I understood that until I wasn’t. To be honest, I didn’t know how I’d miss it as much until I came back around doing this, and a lot of that has to do with Coach Montgomery and the quality of guys he has brought in.”
Montgomery says that having Gillhouse is a big key for the Greyhounds as the season approaches, notably in a time of transition.
“Especially in a transition year, having a guy like Coach Gillhouse, who is a head wrestling coach and kind of knows some of the things you might run into, it’s huge,” Montgomery said.
BRAD HARRISON/Staff
