Walls named new Navarre head football coach

NAVARRE – Since Chad Lashley handed in his resignation as head football coach at Navarre on Dec. 9, Principal Brian Noack has fielded over 100 applications, interviewed nine candidates, narrowed the list to two finalists before deciding that Jay Walls would be the school’s next head coach.

Walls, who started his high school coaching career at Crestview in 1989 as a defensive line coach, met with the current Navarre coaching staff Tuesday afternoon before being introduced to his players in the school’s media center.

“They’ve been pretty dang good the past five or six years,” Walls said. “They’ve been really competitive and I was here for eight years in the Panhandle and loved it. I believe there is great football here and certainly our district is very good, very competitive football.”

Over a 15 year career as a head coach, Walls has accumulated a record of 103-71 and has made the playoffs 11 times. Before his most recent stint at Tift County (Ga.), where he led the program to a 12-2 record and a state runner-up finish in 2006, he took his first head coaching job at Suwannee (1997-2005) and led them to a State runner-up finish as well in 1999.

Noack conducted the interviews and ultimately made the decision based on knowledge, experience and leadership qualities, citing that Walls has “a presence of confidence, but a humbleness to him.”

“I just felt like it was important to get somebody that was seasoned and has taken over a program before with success and coach Walls just kind of fit that bill.

“Having done my homework making check up calls, it became apparent that as good as he was as a football coach, he was a great man.”

Walls made his priorities clear to his players in the meeting: They will put team first, they will play an aggressive defensive scheme, and, to the delight of the players, they will continue to run the spread offense.

“Offensively we’re going to try to be wide open and have a very aggressive attack, a balanced attack on both sides of the football,” Walls said. “We’re going to try to build on what they’ve been doing with the spread offensive attack and just try to improve defensively.”

Over the next few weeks, Walls will interview the current staff– including Navarre’s current offensive line coach Aaron Daniels, who was the other finalist for the job – and assemble his own staff accordingly.

“I think they worked really hard here and there is already a lot of pride in the program,” Walls said, “so I’m going to jump right in and try to do everything I can do to let us win some more games.”

Follow Pat Flynn on Twitter: @PatFnwfdn