Johns Creek, Northview Hire Head Football Coaches

By Mike Blum

JOHNS CREEK, GA -- Both Johns Creek and Northview high schools will have new head football coaches with Florida backgrounds for the 2017 season.

The new Johns Creek head coach is Matt Helmerich, who takes over for Matt Kemper, who left the Gladiators after two seasons to accept the head coaching job at Roswell. Northview's new head coach is James Thomson. He replaces Chad Davenport, who resigned after seven years as head coach with the Titans.

Helmerich served as a head coach for the first time last season at Fort Pierce Central after being the defensive coordinator for four Florida state championship teams at St. Thomas Aquinas. He takes over a team that tied for first in Region 7-AAAAAA last season, finishing with an 8-3 record.

Kemper was 12-9 in his two seasons with the Gladiators, helping turn around a program that went 1-19 the two years before he took over as head coach. Johns Creek went 17-3 in the regular season and twice qualified for the playoffs in 2011 and ’12 under Mike Cloy, just the second and third seasons Johns Creek fielded a varsity team.

But a significant drop in talent following the senior-dominated 2012 team resulted in consecutive dismal seasons, with Kemper’s first team showing significant improvement before enjoying an outstanding team last year.

Although the Gladiators graduated a sizeable number of their front line players, they return a talented nucleus, including standout receiver Zach Williams, two-year starting quarterback Zach Gibson and running back Gerard Hearst. Two all-region defensive starters will also be back.

Thomson served as head coach at three different Florida high schools in a 6-year span before joining his uncle on the coaching staff at UCLA last year.

After making the playoffs for the first time in 2014 and repeating that feat the next year, Northview went 2-8 last season, with seven of the team’s eight losses coming by at least 15 points.

The Titans have a decent number of returning starters, but after a disappointing 2016 season, Thomson faces a challenge to get Northview back to its level of 2014 and ’15 – the only winning seasons since the school fielded its first varsity team in 2002.

Northview went 27-45 in seven seasons under Davenport, a considerable improvement over the 19-61 record the Titans posted in their first eight seasons, beginning with back-to- back 0-10 records when the decision was made by school officials to play a varsity schedule the year Northview opened.

Northview, Johns Creek and Roswell are among five North Fulton high schools that will have new head football coaches for the 2017 season.

Former Gainesville and Coffee assistant Michael Perry replaces Lenny Gregory at Centennial. Gregory left after two seasons to return to Gwinnett County as the head coach at Collins Hill.

Howie DeCristofaro recently resigned after six seasons at Milton, and has been replaced by Adam Clack, the head coach at West Forsyth the past three seasons.

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