By Dustin Kent

Published: May 10, 2008

After one season as an assistant, Don Dowling will lead the Sneads Pirates as head coach in the 2008 fall season.

Dowling, who spent six years as head coach at Marianna High School, replaces Ron Tanner as the Pirates head man.

Sneads finished with a record of 4-6 last season.

“He was the best applicant I had,” Sneads principal Lawrence Pender said of Dowling. “He had everything I felt this school needed. He’s a good teacher, does a good job and has been there when I’ve needed him.

“We had some interest from coaches at bigger schools, interest from some younger coaches, but I didn’t feel at this time that was right for the program. I thought we needed someone we could count on being here and staying here. The children love and respect him.”

Dowling said he was anxious to become a head coach again, but knows that he has a lot of work ahead.

“I’m excited about it. I had a year off, so I’m looking forward to it,” the coach said. “There’s a lot of excitement going on. We’re changing the offense and defense, so we have a lot of things we have to do.”

The Pirates are a little over a week into spring practice, which concludes May 23 with the Blue and Gold game.

It’s a short amount of time for a coach to put his imprint on a program, but the coach and his players are moving fast.

“They’ve got to learn my lingo and the way I do things, so we’re going through that,” Dowling said. “We’re just sort of getting to know one of another. I know a lot of the kids already and I’ve spent time with them, but that was only about 30 of them, so there are 30 more that I’m trying to learn.

“But everybody is bouncing around, ready to go to practice and having a lot of fun.”

Dowling said that after his time at MHS had come to an end, he was prepared to take two full years off before pursuing another head job due to the strain being a head coach can cause, but the Sneads job was too good to pass on.

“I planned to take a couple years and just catch my breath, but the opportunity came again and I jumped on it,” the coach said. “I was tired. It grinds on you a little bit, being a head coach, trying to keep up with everything.

“Once you’ve been there for a few years, it gets to grinding on you. Sometimes you just need to get out of it, recharge your batteries and go back at it.”

Dowling said he learned a lot from his time at MHS.

I’ve learned that you’ve got to pick your battles,” the coach said. “When it’s all said and done, it’s all about character, working on character in the class and everything you do.

“It’s like you’re in a fishbowl. I tell the players that everything you do is magnified because you’re on the football team. We want the public to look at us and say ‘I like the way that Sneads football player acts and behaves,’ so we’re just concentrating on us right now.”

Pender said that Dowling’s leadership style is exactly what he wants from his coach.

“I respected him as a coach before he came here,” he said. “He puts motivational quotes everywhere for the kids to see and he is always pushing the kids in a positive way to a positive direction. I like that teaching style.”