Justin Newman, Crisp County head coach
Today’s interviewee is Crisp County coach Justin Newman, whose team upset Pierce County 28-16 last week. The victory was a nice change in pace for Crisp County, which had lost four close non-region games, then one to region opponent Appling County 29-27 two Fridays ago. The win over Pierce County clinched a state playoff berth for the Cougars, who are still in the hunt for a region championship. Pierce County was ranked No. 2 in Class 2A when Crisp County pulled off the upset. A proven giant-killer, Crisp County has beaten four No. 2- or No. 1-ranked teams this decade. The others are No. 2 Oconee County in 2021 and No. 1 Cedar Grove and No. 1 Eagle’s Landing Christian in 2020. Crisp County hired Newman this offseason from Carver of Columbus, where he was the defensive coordinator on the 2024 Class 2A championship team.
1. How has your team continued to stay focused and fight despite several tough losses? “We try to tell our kids that no matter what we do, we're going to try to chase perfection in everything that we're going to do and that we’ve got to quit beating ourselves. Crisp County keeps beating themselves. Appling County last week, we snapped three bad punt snaps that led to 22 points. We played Peach County and gave them 21 points to start the game in the first four minutes. We go against Lovett, and we had like six or seven bad snaps on offense. Same thing against Sumter County. And Swainsboro, we dropped two touchdown passes on two separate drives to tie it and win it. You’ve got to just tell them you've got to keep chopping. Our big motto that we have is that we're going to stay on the wall. We've got to keep staying on there and keep building, no matter what people say and how things are going, because everything's still ahead of us.”
2. What stuck out to you most about the win over Pierce County, and how did you find a way to win? “I'm sure that's probably one of the reasons that Jimmy Hughes [Crisp County’s athletic director] brought me down here, because we did so well last year at Carver versus Pierce. We lost the year before at Carver. We knew being in [Class 2A] we'd have to go through Pierce. And Coach [Ryan] Herring does such a tremendous job down there with what he does offensively and defensively. We spent about a year studying it, and we brought that same defensive mentality to this game, which I think both games it kind of gave them a problem. We gave up seven in the playoffs the year before at Carver, and then we gave up 16 this game.” [Carver beat Pierce County 44-7 in the 2024 quarterfinals. To be fair, Carver beat three other playoff opponents even worse.]
3. What does the Pierce County win do for team morale? “It was a big win. Former coaches that have been there for a long time still remember them losing on the scoop and score in the Final Four down there [when Pierce County beat Crisp County 25-13 in the 2020 Class 3A semifinals], and it kind of made them feel a little bit of redemption because Pierce ended up going on to win their first state championship after that in Class 3A that year, I believe it is. And it felt really good and let the kids know all the work that they're doing and the believing in the system that they can be a good team and they could be somebody that a lot of teams aren't going to want to play when it comes down to it.”
4. How much of an advantage do you have in getting a bye before playing Cook on Oct. 31? “You know, the last two weeks, Appling had two weeks to prepare for us and Pierce had two weeks to prepare for us. So, it kind of put our backs against the wall a little bit, let alone with the tough schedule that we got, only made it tougher. But it's nice to get this off, let the kids kind of relax, enjoy the win a little bit, and then us get to work on trying to prepare for Cook and try to put us in as best seeding as we possibly can.”
