Jarvis Jones, Carver (Columbus) head coach
Today’s interviewee is Carver of Columbus coach Jarvis Jones, whose team is the reigning Class 2A champion. Jones, a former Georgia All-American and NFL player, became Carver’s coach in late May after former coach Pierre Coffey resigned to become the principal at Stewart County High. After his final NFL season in 2017, Jones returned to the University of Georgia to finish his degree and joined Georgia’s football staff as assistant linebackers coach. He has worked the past few years as Georgia's player connection coordinator. In 2007, as a high school junior, Jones was the leading tackler on Carver's Class 3A championship team under Dell McGee, who is now Georgia State’s head coach. That was Carver's first state title in football.
1. This is your first job coaching high school football. What made you decide this was an opportunity you wanted to take? “It’s an opportunity to come back home and help kids and my community and to coach at my alma mater where my foundation came from. I’ve always wanted to do that. I was close friends with the principal [Chris Lindsey]. The assistant principal [Latavius Watts] is one of my best friends. We won a state title together in 2007. I’ve always stayed in contact with people at the school and helped wherever I could. The principal called me and said Pierre is taking the Stewart County job and said they needed a head coach and asked what I thought, and it went from there. After talking with my mentors about it, Coach McGee and a couple of others, they said it was a good opportunity, that I’m still around football and I’m young. It was an opportunity that I couldn’t turn down.” [Lindsey was Carver’s principal during Jones’ high school days and retired in June after serving 20 years. The new principal is Lacoya Day. Watts was a starting safety on Carver’s 2007 state championship team, then played at Morehouse, where he got his degree.]
2. What’s it been like so far? What’s been the hardest adjustment? “The experience has been awesome. The kids are buying into what I’ve tried to give them, and we’ve had 100% participation. I’m enjoying every bit of it. A lot of the kids I’m coaching, I graduated with their parents. It brings back a lot of old memories from when I walked these halls. The hardest thing is just managing time. You don’t have a lot of time to do things, especially for me, coming from a college atmosphere. You just don’t have the time to do everything you see that you envision. That’s been the most challenging thing, being detailed, trying to use your time in an appropriate way. That and managing my kids, making sure they’re getting things they need to get done on and off the field.”
3. What do you remember most about the 2007 season? “That season means everything to me. It really created who I am today. I felt we did it as a family. Everybody in our school and the community was a big family. That’s my vision for this program, to get it back to how it was then. They’re doing a great job already, obviously. They are the defending state champions. The program is headed in the right direction. I want to continue to build that support system and family atmosphere.” [Carver had never won 10 games in a season until Jones' sophomore season. Since then, Carver has won 10 or more games 13 times and ranks eighth in GHSA victories with 198 in those 19 seasons.]
4. How does this team look? “It’s a different team from last year, but we do have a lot of returning starters and guys who played last year. We’re doing some things differently to help these kids grow and mature from a mental standpoint. I won’t know our identity until we play, but I am hoping for a team that hunts, a team that plays the game with great discipline and a team that plays with a lot of passion.”
