FAIRVIEW, Ala.- After the sudden resignation of legendary Fairview head coach George Redding on Feb. 20, the future of the program was up in the air to those on the outside.
The administration had their man in mind from the jump, however, and met with long-time defensive coordinator Brian Simmons to offer him the head coaching position last weekend.
By last Monday, the decision was made public, with Simmons stepping into the lead role after 19 years of calling the defense alongside Redding. One of his first acts as head coach came on Thursday when, during a weight room session, he noticed multiple players wearing Hey Dude shoes instead of their athletic-wear.
Simmons pulled the team aside for a meeting, not to scold them, but to affirm that despite a coaching change, the winning standard at Fairview isn’t going anywhere.
“Athletically, we’re not going to out-athlete people at this level, so we have to be very, very good at details- the details being the right footwear. I said, ‘those standards are not changing. We will pay attention to detail, and we will do things at a certain level, one that’s higher than most people around us are going to,’ That’s our goal, and that’s been our goal for 19 years,” Simmons said.
That standard, the same one Redding adopted from his head coach, Dafford Smith, has the Aggies in the midst of the most successful run in school history. Since the program’s rebirth in 1963, Fairview had recorded just one 10-win season in 1994. In Redding’s 19-year tenure, they had five, with four of those coming since 2020.
Last season was the best with Redding at the helm, with Fairview going 10-0 in the regular season, senior running back Jake Harper amassing over 2100 yards and the team going to the third round of the state playoffs. The weight of continuing that recent success would be crushing for some, but Simmons pushed back on the idea of pressure. Instead, he called it a “tremendous honor” to get the chance to sustain the Aggies’ success.
Stepping into the lead role has been a dream of Simmons’ since he played football at West End high school. He pointed to one moment when, as a tenth grader, he and his team were preparing to come onto the field for a game. With the Patriots being their mascot, the team would pump fog into the tunnel, and set off a canon to signal the team to enter the field.
Seeing the crowd and feeling the energy and the passion, he knew he wanted to be a part of the sport for the rest of his life. He knew too, however, that he wouldn’t be doing it as a player. In that moment he looked up and saw his head coach, Randy Hallmark join them to lead the team out, and knew coaching was the avenue, with head coach being the ultimate goal.
In the past two decades as the defensive coordinator at Fairview, Simmons said there’d been opportunities to take head coaching jobs elsewhere, but declined them to stay with the Aggies.
“I love everything about Fairview. I absolutely love this community. Our fans are phenomenal, our parents are phenomenal. The students here, even if they don’t play ball, they’re phenomenal kids. Right now, I’m the athletic director, I’m the head football coach and the head softball coach. I’ve had people ask me ‘How many jobs are you going to take on?’ and I tell them ‘as many as we need,'” said Simmons on his increasing responsibility in the school and community.
Despite the increased workload as head coach, Simmons said there’s still a chance he’ll be the defensive play caller, but the staff is looking at all possibilities.
With nearly 20 years at the side of Redding, Simmons had more than just a co-worker, the two are now close friends. With those years together, they learned how to win together and their philosophies have “morphed into the same.”
With the change at the top and the loss of some key seniors, some details will be different, but Simmons said “Our goal has not changed, our standards have not changed and our passion has not changed. That’s what I’ve told the team, I say ‘why would you change something that’s worked for 19 years?’ Coach Redding and I did it together for so long, so we agreed that those key things are what we need to be good at and have in order to succeed. The only thing that’s changed is who’s printing off the schedule.”
