Mason Wittner (Staff Writer)
Photo: Matt Boggs-Sentinel
Twelve months ago, Tim Glanton was calling the shots as head coach of a South Paulding football squad that featured Chandler Burks, Jae Bowen, and Lorenzo Adger.
Fast forward to present day, and all four have graduated into college football at Kennesaw State.
Coach Glanton was hired on staff in May, and serves as both the Owls’ running backs coach and special teams coordinator. Glanton, who spent the past seven seasons as head coach, described his transition to a position coach at the next level as nonchalant.
“It’s been fairly easy,” said Glanton. “Probably one of the biggest adjustments I had to make was going from being in the building all day, at a high school situation, to having a little bit more freedom to be out and about at that college level.”
Glanton posted a 29-33 record over his seven years as head coach of the South Paulding Spartans. In spite of being under .500, he led his team to a 6-4 record each of his last three seasons.
As for his former players, Glanton firmly believes having previously established relationships with Burks, Bowen and Adger played a large role in their recruitment.
“When you’ve already have an established relationship with guys, and then you go in the building and you start that recruiting experience with them, it makes it easy,” said coach Glanton. “It’s easier because you know a lot about them, they know a lot about you and they know how things are going to get done. They know they’re going to be treated fair and things are going to be done right.”
The players had somewhat like-minded opinions on the role coach Glanton played in their recruitment, however.
“There was a kind of comfort zone there for us guys coming from the high school level to a big transition to college where you have a lot of responsibility,” said freshman quarterback Chandler Burks. “So having coach here to push us and guide us like he did in high school is a really helpful tool here.”
Burks came out of high school ranked the sixty-second quarterback in the state according to MaxPreps. He finished his senior year at South Paulding with 2,468 passing yards and 24 touchdowns, while averaging nearly 208 yards a game through the air. In addition, he rushed for 1,476 yards and 18 touchdowns, averaging 123 yards on the ground a game.
Freshman running back Jae Bowen believed the relationship with Glanton served as an asset, but not the primary reason he chose to be an Owl.
“It did and it didn’t,” Bowen commented on Glanton’s role in his decision to come to KSU. “It’s been good to have him here though; it’s comfortable knowing someone very well. But we just liked the program as a whole and saw where it was going, and we wanted to hop on.”
Bowen had an outstanding senior season as well. He rushed for 1,233 yards and 21 touchdowns, as well as racking up 762 receiving yards and pulling in eleven receiving touchdowns.
Regardless of its role in recruitment, Glanton’s relationships with his former players will certainly play a part as they continue to grow in preparation for the inaugural season next fall.