Robbie Jones Promoted To Head Football Coach At Northside High

SAMANTHA, AL — The Northside High School Rams didn't have to look very long or hard to find its next head football coach, as the school confirmed on Wednesday that assistant football coach Robbie Jones has been promoted and will now lead the program.

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This follows the retirement of Chris Hilliker, who stepped down at the end of the school year as the winningest coach in the program's history.

"I think it was just God's work," Jones told Patch of the promotion. "This is such a special place, the brightest community around. I don't have the words to describe the people here."

Originally hired in 2007 by former Northside football coach John Montgomery, Jones has been a regular face on the sidelines for the Rams for more than a decade.

Born in Scottsboro, Jones was a coaching intern while a student at the University of Alabama and learned the ropes under Hilliker at Hale County High School, before eventually deciding to stay in Samantha when Hilliker was hired to replace Montgomery in 2012.

"I got up here and, out of the blue, I was about to leave and [Hilliker] said he was coming and I said 'I don't know if these boys are tough enough to do it' and he said 'we're going to find out,'" Jones said. "I just knew right off the bat when these boys beat [Berry High School] that this was going to be big."

Looking ahead to the future, Jones said he hopes to build on the foundation and culture developed by Hilliker, which saw the Rams go from a football cellar-dweller to a bonafide powerhouse in the course of a decade.

"We're just going to keep doing what we're doing," Jones said. "Our offseason program is very intense. But the system we have, it changed the entire culture and Coach Hilliker brought that with him when he came. We actually have a football program now."

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