Success: Rebel season built on coaching the soul
“Coach the game, but more importantly coach the soul,” Chad Cheatham said as he described what held the Fannin County Rebels football team together through the 2024 season.
Cheatham’s words echoed through the crowd at the Fannin County school board meeting Thursday, February 13, just as they had during the end of the season football banquet the previous Monday.
The Rebels head coach relived a season that produced the “darkest moment” in his coaching career.
That came April 1, 2024, when senior football player John Holsonback was tragically killed in a car crash. And from there, obstacles continued to arise. “If it could have gone wrong, it did,” Cheatham said.
“This team went through the greatest tragedy a football team can go through. In that tragedy I saw something miraculous. I saw strength, love, passion, courage, honor, and fight. One team, one heartbeat, one mission! I saw focus and determination in a team that I had never seen before. And this team accomplished something that I can only say was ordained and put into order by the Almighty Himself,” Cheatham said.
Those traits were displayed both on and off the field.
When the season ended, Cheatham told of how countless people came to tell him what a great job he and his coaches had done this year. This brought the answer, “Great players make great coaches,” and also the revelation of the approach of Cheatham and his staff that, “Great coaches make great men.” And from there the approach had changed to “Coach the game, but more importantly coach the soul.”
Cheatham said, “After our second scrimmage there was a major change in the way we approached what and how we did things. We gave them ownership, We held each other accountable, We put trust in our captains and we brought in as many Godly men and character coaches as we could put in front of them.
“Winning football games is great. Winning in life is the goal. We did both,” Cheatham said. The head coach concluded by saying of the football team that went 12-1 and won the region championship, “Be it wins, championships, touchdowns or tackles this team was pivotal when it came to healing a community. When we all felt loss, be it John, Jake, Dewey, Pam or Shawn, this team put this county and community on its shoulders and led us through the “Valley of the Shadow of Death.” And for that they deserve and I mean everyone of them deserve our respect, our love and our praise.”