Change is coming for Liberty under new regime

When football coaches from Jackson-Madison County Schools bring a couple players with them to the media day for the Commissioners’ Cup, most coaches bring upperclassmen who’ve put time and effort in and emerged as leaders for the program.

For first-year Liberty coach Robert Gillard, he brought a couple of players who’ve put time and effort in and are emerging as leaders for the program. But his two were freshman quarterback Danterrious Marsh and sophomore defensive end Immanuel Hawkins.

The two underclassmen are part of the group of Crusaders who are ready to change the trajectory of their program that hasn’t won a game on the field since 2019.

While Friday night’s 54-0 loss at Jackson Central-Merry may make it appear to some on the outside that the trajectory isn’t changing yet, Marsh and Hawkins say the changes are happening inside the program and locker room and those changes will hopefully begin to reflect outwardly sooner than later.

“Things are a whole lot different,” said Hawkins, whose freshman season at Liberty saw the Crusaders’ closest game be a 27-point loss at Scotts Hill and the average margin of loss be 42.9 points per game. “There’s a level of discipline that we have as a team now that we didn’t have last year, and that’s holding us accountable when we don’t do what we’re supposed to do on the field or off the field too.”

Marsh said he likes Gillard’s way of coaching because it pushes him to give more effort when he’s ready to stop, which makes him better.

“The only way to get better is to push harder than you’ve pushed before, and he’s getting that out of most all of us,” Marsh said. “I think people will see a different team from us this year.”

Gillard is hopeful of that too. He told local media that when he arrived on campus in February that he only had a few linemen that he felt like he could depend on over the course of a game. Now he feels like he’s got more than a couple dozen.

“We’ve got probably 13 or 14 now,” Gillard said. “And that comes from me being visible in the school building and talking to kids who are interested, and once we get them to come out and work with them, they’re doing things that we want the way we want them done.

“That’s all you can ask for out of the kids.”

The Crusaders host North Side this week. Kickoff is at 7 p.m.

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news