VARNELL — The questions surrounding head coach Drew Carter’s second season as head coach of the Coahulla Creek Colts are pretty similar to the ones being asked a year ago.
The former offensive coordinator helped coach former quarterback Kace Kinnamon to a career that’s plastered all over the school’s passing records. Kinnamon had graduated prior to the 2023 season, and in stepped Chase Ward.
“We thought we would have a tough time replacing Kace Kinnamon, not knowing the kind of dynamic season Chase Ward was going to have,” Carter said.
All Ward did was step in and become the region offensive player of the year. But, with Ward graduated, the quarterback position is changing hands again.
“The difference, I guess, was that Chase has played a lot of football for us at linebacker and wide receiver. He’d been in the fire before,” said Carter, who played quarterback at Northwest Whitfield and LaGrange College. His new starting quarterback, sophomore Waelyn Baliles, comes in without as much on-field varsity experience, but Carter is confident that the sophomore will step in and make plays for the Colts.
“Waelyn is in that situation as a first-time starter. From JV to varsity is a big jump,” Carter said. “He’s really poised, calm and comfortable in the pocket, and he throws a really good deep ball. He gets the ball out of his hands quickly on the quick game. He may not be as dynamic or skillful of a runner as either Kace or Chase, but he’s a willing runner and bigger and stronger than both of those guys. It may be a little bit of a different style, but he’s aggressive at pulling the ball down and making plays with his feet.”
The quarterback situation is echoed in several other parts of the roster for this year’s Colts team.
Coahulla is coming off its best two season stretch by far in school history — the 12 wins in the last two years nearly matches the 15 in the previous 10 years combined — but most of the contributors from the school’s first playoff team in 2022 and a lot of the players that helped Creek finish just short of another postseason appearance last year have graduated.
“We’ve graduated two pretty successful classes back-to-back,” Carter said. “We’ve got some young guys that we feel are really talented, but they’re still young and unproven.”
Carter said the team would lean on the experience it does have coming back, like linemen Chevy Joyce, Isaac McGill and Jackson Lowery and skill players Carson Weaver, Wyatt Mann and Tyler Douglas, especially early in the season.
“Those guys are going to have to be the guys that make the plays and pull some of the younger guys along early in the season,” Carter said.
The new-look Colts will get two non-region games before they launch into an eight-game slate in a new-look region.
Creek dropped down into 2A this season after playing its first 12 seasons of football in Class 3A. Coahulla will be in Region 7-2A alongside Ringgold and Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe, which were region mates with Coahulla in Region 6-3A last season, alongside some other region rivals from previous cycles, including both Murray County and North Murray.
“It’s pretty new, but, even some the new schools we’re pretty familiar with. Both the Murray schools and Sonoraville were in the region with us the cycle before last,” Carter said. “There is a good bit of familiarity, but there are some that we’ll have to learn that will be brand new to us.”
Those new schools include Union County and North Cobb Christian, a private school that will compete alongside the other public schools for the region title, but will split off to compete for a separate state championship with other private schools in Class A through 3A. It’s a new system put in place this season by the GHSA, and it makes it possible for Coahulla to vie for a playoff spot this season even if it finishes outside the top four in the region. At-large playoff spots are determined through a GHSA rating formula based on winning percentage of teams and their opponents.
The other team in the region is one that has won seven straight region titles.
“There are a handful of games that you feel like you need to win, there’s another handful of games that you feel like you have to play well in to win, and then there is a team like Rockmart — they are what they are,” Carter said.
Whether or not Creek is able to make a return to the state playoffs in 2024, Carter says his team’s goal will be to continue the leaps of progress the program has made in the last few years. Creek never won more than two games in a season prior to 2021, and it’s had three straight seasons of four wins or better since.
“The direction is continuing to go the way we want it to be,” Carter said. “The kids are bought in and they understand the expectation, and now we’re starting to get the community and the feeder programs behind us too.”
Carter credited his two predecessors, former head coaches Caleb Bagley and Danny Wilson, with getting the progress started.
“We’re starting to consistently put the good and competitive product on the field, and that’s the expectation,” Carter said. “When I got here and before I got here, there wasn’t an expectation at all. With the work that coach Bagley did and coach Wilson did, and me being able to learn from those guys, it’s really infected in our kids and our community and the school. It’s an upward trend, and I expect that to continue.”
Region 7-2A
Coahulla Creek
Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe
Murray County
North Cobb Christian
North Murray
Ringgold
Rockmart
Sonoraville
Union County
Key losses
QB Chase Ward
WR/DB Nate Tilley
WR/DB Keith Collins
TE/DE Levi Lowery
Key players
OL/DL Chevy Joyce, junior
QB Waelyn Baliles, sophomore
WR/DB Tyler Douglas, sophomore
OL/DL Jackson Lowery, junior
Circled on the schedule
Northwest Whitfield, Aug. 16
• After winning over their rivals in the northern end of Whitfield County for the first time in 2021 and losing in a classic of a game in 2022, Coahulla Creek was thumped 42-7 by Northwest Whitfield last year. The new-look 2024 Colts team gets a big test in the first game of the season.
At North Murray, Oct. 25
• Coahulla Creek travels over to Chatsworth to renew a region rivalry with North Murray after the two schools in adjacent counties were separated in the last two-year GHSA reclassification cycle. Creek is 0-10 against North Murray, with the two schools having shared a region for the first 10 years of Creek’s existence. The game will also be televised on CW Chattanooga’s Friday Night Rivals.
At Ringgold, Nov. 1
• To close the regular season, Coahulla plays at Ringgold. The game could serve as a last chance for Coahulla Creek to battle for a playoff spot — or help Creek increase its seeding if a playoff spot is already assured. Coahulla beat Ringgold 20-17 last season on a 30-yard touchdown strike on 4th-and-10 with less than two minutes remaining.
