Class A Div. II Blog: Brooks County head coach Josh McFather is building mental strength to achieve team’s 2025 goals

Brooks County is coming off a very successful 10-5 season and will be a major contender in Class A Div. II in 2025 as head coach Josh McFather enters Year 2 at the helm. Coach McFather started at Brooks County as a wide receivers coach and later became the offensive coordinator before taking over as head coach this last year. His debut was a major success as he led the Trojans to the state title game and the Region 2 title. Now, the program is taking more steps to keep climbing toward the goal of winning the state title. On Thursday, coach McFather talked about the upcoming season and spoke with Georgia Chambers about his decision to add two sports psychologists to help his team this season.  

Georgia Chambers: “You were the only first-year head coach to reach a finals last year, when you reflect back on 2024, What really stands out to you?”

Coach McFather: “We had a really good group of guys, great leadership from our seniors especially, and it was a really fun group to coach that worked their butts off. Our thing at Brooks County has always been to get better week by week and I felt like we were doing that last year. We got into a close one with Manchester and took it into overtime and our kicker knocked in a 25-yard field goal to win it in overtime and that was huge for us.

Georgia Chambers: “Now that you have your first year as a head coach under your belt, what are you looking forward to the most this season?”

Coach McFather: “One of the things that we believe is when you look at the lifespan of anything, whether it is a human or an animal, the biggest period of growth happens from year 0 to year 1. And so last year was year 0 and that was my first shot at it, and so I’m interested in seeing where things progress from where we’re at this year compared to last year. I feel like culturally we have some things that I’ve maintained from the way coach Freeman did things. We’re still doing some of those things today and then there are things that I’ve added that are new. One of those is we have two sports psychologists that have been working with our program all summer and they will be with us throughout the season. So that is going to be great to get that mental coaching for our players. And some other things fundraising wise and community wise. It’s been awesome and I’m looking forward to seeing if it leads to more wins or more fans in the stands or whatever it may be.”

Georgia Chambers: “You talked a little about adding two sports psychologists. With mental health improving with people’s openness towards it, why was that important to you to make that addition to your program?”

Coach McFather: “You have to have it nowadays. One, the way that things are for our young people, there is so much that they are exposed to and everything is put on the internet. We have two big-time recruits right now that are both four-star athletes that are stepping into that world of being famous where everyone knows who George Lamons and Trae Stevenson are and so I felt like it would be a disservice on my part if I didn’t find a way to mentally prepare them for the next level and prepare them for all the things that they are about to go through their junior and senior year. And it wasn’t just for those two guys. I look back at last season and there were some games that we lost because it was mental things. And you make a mental mistake there and a mental mistake here and it really changes the trajectory of a game and so I felt like if we can work with some psychologists to mentally prepare us on the mental side of the game and help us be able to come back from a mistake or if when something doesn’t go our way we are able to mentally overcome that, that it leads us to the potential to win more football games and lead us to more success.”

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