By Morgan Bryce and D. Mark Mitchell
Opelika High School has found its next head football coach.
According to a press release, the school has hired Caleb Ross of Mobile’s McGill-Toolen High School.
Compiling a 30-8 record at McGill-Toolen in three seasons, as well as winning the school’s first state title in 2015, Ross replaces OHS’s longtime head coach and athletic director Brian Blackmon, who resigned last month to take an offensive analyst position with Auburn University.
Starting out in 2001 as a student assistant for the Samford University football team, Ross worked his way up the coaching ranks as a defensive positions coach at Clinton High School from 2002-2005, Prattville from 2006-2010 as its running backs coach and offensive coordinator, 2011 as the head coach/assistant athletic director at Thompson High School, 2012-2013 at Spain Park as wide receivers coach/offensive coordinator and assistant head coach, before joining McGill-Toolen as its head coach later in 2013.
“We are very pleased with the interview process and are extremely humbled by the number of outstanding applicants that were interested in the job. It truly speaks to the quality of our football program,” Opelika City Schools Superintendent Dr. Mark Neighbors said in the press release. “We feel confident that Coach Ross is the right fit for Opelika.”
A Prattville, Ala. native, Ross and his wife Amy have two children. According to Neighbors, Ross will assume his coaching duties early next month.