By Randy Capps
When Scott Riley ended his 12-year run at Cleveland in January — a period that featured a 130-27 record and 11 conference championships — one of the best high school football jobs in the state was unexpectedly open.
It drew plenty of attention from coaches all over the Carolinas, and it seems, in Georgia as well.
Enter Codi Vick, a defensive-minded coach that has been a high school assistant in Georgia (Kell and Westlake), Florida (Centennial) in addition to his time with Florida Atlantic in the college ranks.
While the job is appealing enough on its own, there was another reason Vick was drawn to Polenta Road.
“My older sister and my younger brother live here. And it’s really the biggest part, to be honest with you,” he said. “I’ve been away from family the last seven years in Georgia. This is an opportunity to kind of put my family around more family. And I kind of jumped at it.”
As he acclimates to the community, he’s also getting to know his players. And as a defensive guy, Markus Medley’s name came up right away. As a junior, he was third on the team with 84 tackles, with 23 for loss, to go along with seven sacks and an interception.
“Marcus has been a godsend, really. He’s been a leader for us,” Vick said. “We’re moving him around a little bit. Last year he played a little bit more edge in the 3-4 scheme. He’s playing more “sam” for us. He’s an athletic guy, so we put him in space.”
Vick also cited Kaden Blake (64 tackles, 17 TFL) and Noah Williamson (42 tackles in five games) as early players that are helping Vick institute his idea of culture for the program.
“Where I came from at Kell High School, our head coach, Bobby May, had a motto for our program,” he said. “It was DMGB, which stands for ‘doesn’t matter, get better.’ So part of me wanted to just steal that.
“But I wanted to come up with something that was my own. So I came up with ‘AITE,’ which means ‘average is the enemy.’ (It’s) refusing to be OK, refusing to be good, refusing to even be great. We gotta always strive to be better with everything we do on and off the field.”
While Vick might be new, the Cleveland offense is still under the direction of coordinator Joe Capps. It’s a unit that has produced countless college standouts and a Los Angeles Charger running back in recent years and last year, in what some termed as a down year, averaged 44 points per game.
Owen Hulbert, the latest in a long line of talented Ram quarterbacks, is back for his senior season after completing 63.6 percent of his passes for 1,969 yards and 17 touchdowns while adding another 258 yards and eight scores on the ground.
“I saw his film, and he’s a guy who can beat you in multiple ways,” Vick said. “He’s athletic in the pass game as far as his live arm, and he’s the one of the best runners I’ve ever seen. We have a catapult system here where (we track speed), and he hit 21 miles per hour the other day in practice. So he’s a guy who can beat you both ways.”
Kaleb Ferrell returns at running back after tallying 932 yards and 18 touchdowns last season, but new faces will need to emerge at receiver.
“Everybody’s competing, man,” Vick said of his team’s summer workouts. “And they really buy into that average is the enemy, because there’s no day where they think they’ve arrived. Every single day is a competition. Every single day is a grind.”
