As Tony Welch walks down the concrete steps from the Claxton High School weight room, he wipes the sweat from his brow in the 95 degree heat May brings for the last spring practice before his first game as the Tigers new head football coach.
    On his way to the grassy lot across from the main parking lot at the school, a white Toyota Corolla pulls up in the street. Out of it steps an old friend and teammate of Welch’s off Claxton’s 1978 football team which still holds the school record for wins in a season at 14 and remains the only Tiger squad to reach the state title game in the programs 94 year history.
    The two stand and chat about the ins-and-outs of the game under the shade of a large white oak tree, something that was probably more common between the two nearly 40 years ago.
    “You know I got recruited because they saw me throw a block!” said the friend with a chuckle. “The kids nowadays don’t want to do those little things.”
    “We played a little Beamer ball back in our day didn’t we,” Welch replies. “But we’re going to get those little things going again.”
    It was as if the two had seen each other just yesterday.
    Mercer drives away, leaving Welch back to his practice schedule on the clipboard he holds in his left hand while the uses the other to shade his eyes to watch the 42 kids dressed out for spring practice across the street. Now that he’s back home, those kinds of run-ins have become more common for Welch, a 1981 graduate of Claxton High School.
    “Yeah that’ll happen every once in awhile,” Welch said. “It means a lot for me to come home, to be honest with you I don’t think I would have gone anywhere else.”
    Claxton should consider themselves lucky in that aspect. Welch was arguably one of the hottest commodities on the high school coaching market this offseason after the 54-year old head coach took Savannah High School to the GHSA 3A sweet 16.
    As one anonymous head coach put it, taking Savannah High School to the second round of the playoffs is like “getting a three-legged horse to Churchill Downs”. Prior to Welch’s arrival, Savannah had not been to the playoffs since 1995 and whose best season since was a 5-5 campaign in 1997.
    But since 1997 Savannah hadn’t won more than four games a year in what is admittedly a football-challenged Chatham County area. When Welch arrived he saw football talent, but in a town where basketball dominates the landscape hoops is what attracted the best athletes at Savannah High School. 
    “I saw the athletes we had, they were football athletes who were trying to play basketball,” Welch said. “I knew once we could get those kids to buy in to our mindset we could do something good with that freshman and sophomore group.”
    Welch took all the principles he learned winning three state titles at Memorial Day School and applied them at Savannah. Welch overhauled the weight program, implemented an offseason workout schedule and made the Savannah players attend regular film sessions. For most programs in Georgia, these are mainstays for any program good or bad. But that’s the kind of shape Savannah’s program was in when Welch took over in 2014.
    That season Savannah finished 2-8, were shutout in half of their games and finished second to last in their region only behind 1-9 Islands. The next year Savannah was 3-7, shutout in only three games and finished fourth in their region. What happened the next year was assumedly ahead of schedule, but for Welch he knew he had the right kids to make the competitive leap.
    “Those juniors and seniors I had last season were those same freshman and sophomores who bought into a winning mindset when I first got to Savannah,” Welch said. “They bought in for two years and put in the work, so I knew once those boys had matured we could compete in that region.”
    After dropping their first game to Telfair County 19-15, Savannah reeled off four wins in a row with the cap being a 33-16 romp over Southeast Bulloch in Brooklet. SEB went into 2016 head-to-head with Jenkins as the proverbial region favorite, but that night Welch’s team announced to Southeast Georgia they were real contenders to win the region title,
    However Savannah would come one-point shy of of winning region 3-3A, falling to Jenkins 21-20 in a game Welch thought his team could have easily won.
    “We missed two extra points in that game and had a couple of defensive mistakes we could have easily avoided,” Welch said. “We were absolutely good enough to win the region, and I knew that for sure after we beat Southeast Bulloch the week prior because that was the game that changed the mindset of our program.”
    Savannah would finish up the season 8-2 to host their first true home playoff game since 1969, where they also won their first playoff game since 1993 when they beat Cook 27-3. Cook came to Savannah with class AAA’s leading rusher Brandon Doe, who by halftime had amassed 83 yards rushing against Savannah’s No. 1 scoring defense. Welch found something else about his team that night, something he hadn’t known before Nov. 12.
    “I looked at those guys and asked them if they knew just how good they were,” Welch said. “I don’t think anyone had ever told those boys how good they were before. But I told them you’re the best defense in the state, and that they were good enough to stuff the best rusher in the state.”
    Doe finished the game with 105 yards.
    Even though Savannah would fall in the next round to defending state champion Westminster, the Bluejackets still put together their best season in over 20 years. Plenty of schools, of them being Statesboro and Seminole High School, reached out to Welch for his services. But as previously mentioned, Welch had only two choices in mind.
    “It was only ever going to be two schools,” Welch said. “I was either going to stay at Savannah or go to Claxton. But even still, sometimes God just writes your steps for you.”
    Welch had been making frequent trips to Claxton for his mother who had just started her second stint battling breast cancer. Being that his family was such an important factor in his life, the decision to be home to be closer to his mother was easy — but leaving that upcoming group of seniors at Savannah was not.
    “I announced I would be leaving at our banquet, which by the way was the first one where we had every player and every parent in attendance,” Welch said. “It felt right to do then. And I told those kids coming back that if they kept that mindset they would be good enough to be an Elite Eight team next season, no matter who was coaching them.” 
    Now, Welch’s next challenge is to take the same mindset that turned Savannah around to his alma mater. Of all the jobs he’s taken on, this one is personal for Welch.
    “This building behind me? It hasn’t changed since I was here in school,” Welch said. “Out by the cafeteria they have pictures of all the graduating classes and there I am sitting in the 1981 frame. It means a lot for me to be back here.”
    Welch says in order to turn things around the players at Claxton have to do the little things all the time, and in his eyes Claxton is in already better shape than Savannah was when he arrived there three years ago.
    “These boys have an eagerness about them, and the size and strength is already there with half of these boys already in my weight program,” Welch said. “I’ve already got a foundation here.”
    Even as Claxton is 2-17 in their last two seasons, it’s not out of the question the Tigers could get back to some sense of normalcy. From 2008 to 2014 Claxton never had a losing season was was in the playoffs as recently as 2014. But Welch doesn’t want to rush expectations, because he knows it’s going to be an uphill climb to get Claxton back to respectability.
    “We’re not here to build a season, we’re here to build a program,” Welch said. “It’s going to take a team effort to make this work, and once the wins start coming in the fans and support will follow behind it.”
    Fans of the Tiger football will get their first chance to see Welch’s team in action Thursday at 6:30 p.m. against Long County in their spring game.