OPINION: South Side’s new football coach appears to fit well with team

Last week’s announcement by Jackson-Madison County Schools about the new head football at South Side was one in which not a lot of people around here were immediately familiar with his name.

Lester Narcisse has never coached at a high school closer to Jackson than Tipton County.

But he did play college ball at Lambuth University, so a lot of the Eagle faithful are familiar with him from his playing days under Vic Wallace.

But Narcisse appears to be a quality hire for the Hawks.

South Side football has never been flashy.

Jerry Hayes is the legendary name in program history, and his coaching philosophy was based on playing good enough defense that the other team doesn’t score many points, if any.

And the offense would play it safe by keeping it on the ground and wear their defense down. Scoring drives would take a little while, but it’s OK because if the defense did their job, the offense didn’t need to score many points to get wins.

The plan worked as Hayes had a successful tenure leading the Hawks. Tyler Reeder, Narcisse’s predecessor, is the second-longest tenured coach in South Side history as he led the program for seven full seasons and part of another one as interim.

He wasn’t flashy either. He let girls’ basketball coach Brent McNeal run the offense while he focused on defense and line play, and he quietly went about his business leading the program without putting a lot of content on social media or doing interviews because he thought it best to let his team do its talking on the field on Friday nights.

That strategy worked because the Hawks got to continue talking in November for most of the seasons Reeder was in charge.

Narcisse seems to fall in line with this way of thinking.

He’s primarily been a defensive coach but coached running backs at Covington to gain experience coaching offense before he became a head coach.

He’s hitting the ground running and working hard, partially forced to because of the timing of his hiring so late in the offseason. But also that’s his mentality.

See the job that needs to be done, work hard and achieving the goals that need to be achieved to get the job done and then work on the next goal.

JMCSS Deputy Superintendent Ricky Catlett is a fan of him. Catlett was an assistant coach at Lambuth but left the year before Narcisse arrived in Jackson. But he kept up enough with the Eagles after he left that he knew Narcisse and likes what he got in the new coach at South Side.

“He’s a great coach and a great teacher, and I think he can do good things at South Side,” Catlett said last week, who himself is an alum and former assistant coach for the Hawks.

Narcisse said himself last week that he likes the attitude and commitment the players have shown through the transition as not a single player quit football between the time Reeder resigned in May until his hiring last week.

This appears to be a good fit for the program as it is now, and it meshes with the history of Hawk football as a whole.

How will it play out? Time will tell, and admittedly, the team is behind the proverbial eight-ball with the new coach getting the late start.

But all this does is create more of an opportunity to galvanize this group together as a more cohesive unit as they prepare to take the field against Ripley in their season-opener in August.

But Narcisse has plenty of work to do between now and then to get them ready under his way of doing things.

Brandon Shields is the managing editor of The Jackson Post. Contact him at brandon@jacksonpost.news. Follow him on Twitter @JSEditorBrandon or Instagram @Editorbrandon.