Jonathan Nix believes every coach should be able to work in a place like Ragland.

“People in Ragland love their sports,” he said.  “In so many communities, sports are not important.  We love it that our community is fired up about sports and that our kids are passionate about it.   That’s a coach’s dream, to be in a place where sports is important.”

Nix has in recent years given Purple Devils supporters plenty to get fired up about.  With two state softball championships to his credit and having helped guide Ragland to an appearance in the state football semifinals, he hopes for continued success as he takes over as the school’s head football coach and athletics director.  

Brian Mintz, who has served in the positions since 2004, retired Dec. 1.  Nix has served as an assistant football coach and head softball coach since coming to Ragland after three seasons as head coach for the Ashville Bulldogs.  

“I’ve learned a lot from Coach Mintz,” he said.  “He’s one of the best head coaches I’ve ever been around.  He stands for everything you want your kids to play for: hard work and being a genuine person.  He accomplished a lot at Ragland, like the school’s first playoff win in football and two trips to the semifinals.  I can’t say enough about him and what he’s done.”

Nix, who has also coached at Glencoe, J.B. Pennington, and Southeast Whitfield High School in Georgia, said he plans to continue coaching the Lady Purple Devils, currently the back-to-back defending Class 1A state softball champions.

“It’s always a juggling act when you’re a small school with only seven coaches taking care of your entire sports program, and five of them are football coaches.  It’s very important to have everybody looking out after each other’s interests.  You don’t have that at every school, but we have it here.  That kind of camaraderie helps the entire program, so we’re going to make it work.”

The Purple Devils are set to start spring training April 24 and will start the 2012 season as part of a new nine-team region.

“That means the state has set eight of our games for us,” Nix said.  “We only got to pick two games, which will be Gaylesville and Victory Christian.”  Appalachian remains in the region, which now includes Addison, Summiton Christian, Falkville, and Meek. “Some of these new schools are 120 miles away, but that’s who we got picked to play.”

Nix doesn’t believe that will deter fans from supporting the Purple Devils.  “When we had to make the two-hour trip to Marion County in the football playoffs, we had as many people on our side as they had on theirs.  At the state softball tournament in Montgomery, the 1A Ragland crowd is bigger than anybody else’s for bigger schools.”

The upcoming football season will, he added, involve a degree of rebuilding.  “We’re losing some key players who had a great work ethic.  The last three years, you had to run them out of the weight room.  When they lost to Gaston in the first round when they were sophomores, they really turned it on.  That’s what I want our underclassmen to understand.  Our seniors didn’t just go out there and become good.  They worked to get there and accomplish everything they did.”

Nix said commitment is the main thing he and the coaching staff expect from players.

“We preach it daily, and we’re getting more and more kids to buy into it every day.  Commitment and work ethic are always a challenge, but it’s so important at 1A because we don’t have the numbers.  It’s important to get everybody to buy in because if we can get those two things, everything else falls into place.”

That happens even if it’s not immediately evident, he said.

“Coaching is not like Burger King, where you get it right now, your way.  Sometimes it’s two years later that you get a text from a kid at college telling you that college is tough but he’s sticking it out because he remembers that football was tough.  Things like that are what makes a coach appreciate his job.”