Amherst hires new football coach

After a month-long search for Scott Abell’s successor, and a whirlwind week of interviews, Amherst High School named Cecil Phillips as its new football coach, a move approved at Thursday night’s school board meeting.
Phillips, who started the program at King’s Fork (a Group AAA school in Suffolk) in 2004 and took the team from 0-10 to 6-4 in its fourth season last fall, takes the reins of the two-time defending Group AA, Division 4, state champion Lancers.
Abell accepted the position of offensive coordinator at Washington & Lee University last month.
“The Amherst County job is what I consider one of the most prestigious programs in the state,” Phillips said Friday in a phone interview from Suffolk. “It has great facilities and is something I’m very excited to be a part of.”
Amherst athletic director William Gouldthorpe said Phillips’ academic and teaching résumé was as impressive as his coaching background, credentials that separated him from the other four finalists.
“From everything we have on him, we can tell his organizational skills are superior,” Gouldthorpe said. “His expectations of the students is high both academically and athletically. Coach Abell had high expectations and coach Phillips will, too.”
The Radford High graduate, who played for and later coached under Norm Lineburg, also played inside linebacker at Ferrum College under legendary coach Hank Norton.
“Between (coach Lineburg) and coach Norton, those were two of the best in the business (and) without their leadership, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” Phillips said.
He earned a graduate degree in curriculum and instruction at Virginia Tech before starting his coaching career as an assistant at William Campbell from 1994 to 1997. Phillips then moved to Bainbridge, Ga., and coached the defensive line for former Jefferson Forest coach Bob Christmas from 1997 to 2000, also introducing a wrestling program at the school. He was reunited with Lineburg from 2000 through 2004 before taking the new post at King’s Fork for four years.
Lineburg ran an I formation when Phillips played for him from 1984-86, but Phillips used the Wing-T at King’s Fork.
“I didn’t get around the Wing-T until my first year at William Campbell,” Phillips said. “Coach Christmas was a Wishbone guy, but we implemented the Wing-T in 1998 and 1999.”
He may not install the same offense at Amherst, but Phillips does expect to rely heavily on the run, as the Lancers did under Abell with his volatile triple-option threat.
“It’s something I believe in, in terms of a ground control attack,” Phillips said. “We’ll have a play action passing game to keep people honest … and try to keep what has been successful.”
The Seminole District is run-oriented so his offensive philosophy should work well in a district where only Rustburg and Staunton River, the two worst teams, ran spread attacks last season.
“When I was coaching at William Campbell, we were in the Seminole District,” Phillips said. “It was a smashmouth style of football and extremely competitive.”
Coming from King’s Fork —which competed in the Southeastern District, one of the strongest districts in South Hampton Roads with AAA powers Deep Creek, Denbigh, Oscar Smith and Western Branch — Phillips is accustomed to facing challenges.
“It was a very big undertaking of starting this (program) from ground zero, in regards to myself and my coaching staff,” said Phillips, who was named Southeastern District coach of the year in 2006. “We had to get back to the fundamentals of football. We worked extremely hard. Our goal was to lay a foundation and I was very pleased with the progress we made in a short period of time.”
He walks into a very different situation at Amherst.
“I’ll be dealing with a much more experienced football team,” Phillips said. “Coach Abell and his staff have been very successful. They’ve really created a whale of a program. I’d like to find out what has made them so successful and we’d like to implement those things … and we’re going to continue those winning ways.”
Phillips and his wife, Susan, have two daughters, Madison, 9, and Kennedy Grace, 16 months. They will be looking to relocate to Amherst as soon as possible.