With just four returning players from last year’s number-one squad, Gatewood Gators head coach Jeff Ratliff sees promise mixed in with a little uncertainty as he looks out at his 2022 team.
“You know, I’ve got a good senior group and the way I feel about them is they’ve had to wait their turn, and now it is their turn,” Ratliff said after watching his team play its annual pre-season jamboree Aug. 5, at Gatewood’s Sammons Field. The Eatonton-based Gators were rotating eight plays at a time in scrimmages against Macon’s Mount de Sales Academy and Edmund Burke Academy, out of Waynesboro.
“The strength of this football team will be in how well the seniors lead and how they perform, because I put a lot of emphasis on leadership, on how you lead by example,” Ratliff explained. “You have to get on to people sometimes, but if you lead by example, you do it, and you’ve set the tone. And I’ve got nine seniors and I’m dependent on them to do that.”
Ratliff expects returning senior and 2021 All-State running back Justin Jameson to continue leading the Gators offense alongside returning junior and fellow running back Evan Bennett. The veteran coach also is impressed by the early work of sophomore quarterback Ames Johnson, who “will only get better and better with more reps,” he said.
On the defensive side of the ball, Ratliff is looking for returning senior Demarian Maddox to again step up at the end position, along with fellow senior Aidan Rainey on the defense line.
“We’ve had a good first two weeks of practice, but we’ve gotta’ work on some things,” Ratliff admitted at the end of the scrimmage sessions. “We needed to go up against somebody else. It’s a little bit different than our number ones going against our number twos; we needed to go against somebody else’s number ones and it showed where some of our weaknesses are.”
Ratliff cited blocking and tackling as critical areas to improve.
“We’ve got pretty good team speed, but if you can’t block and tackle, obviously you’re in trouble. So we have to work on that,” he stated. “But again, we needed to see somebody different in order to identify that.”
Now in his 29th year coaching football, his 12th coaching at Gatewood, and starting his 10th consecutive campaign as head coach, Ratliff has three state division titles under his belt and his teams have enjoyed semi-final divisional finishes in each of the past two years. He also teaches geometry and algebra at the Eatonton-based school.
The Gators are on the road Thursday night, Aug. 11, for what Ratliff called “an official scrimmage game” against Strong Rock Christian in Locust Grove. Their first GIAA AA Region 2 game comes at home a couple of weeks later, Friday, Aug. 26, when they officially open their 2022 season at “The Swamp” against Trinity Christian, from Dublin.