Greg Vandagriff, Prince Avenue Christian head coach
Today’s interviewee is Prince Avenue Christian coach Greg Vandagriff, whose team finished 14-0 and won Class A Division I last season. Vandagriff’s record at Prince Avenue is 83-11 with two state titles in seven seasons.
1. Looking back on 2022 one more time, what was the legacy of that team? “Just going in, we were playing the toughest schedule we’d ever had. We were playing six non-region opponents, two of which [Baylor of Tennessee and Hammond of South Carolina] ended up being state champions from other states. We knew we had our hands full. We weren’t going to be shocked if we were 6-4, 4-6, 8-2 in the regular season. We thought we were going to have a chance of being pretty good offensively with the three receivers we had. We knew skill-wise we were going to be pretty good in a dynamic offense. And then we had the unknown of the south Georgia teams that you hear about your whole career. [Prince Avenue played in a private-school division until 2022.] I had never played any south Georgia teams, so again, the unknown of everything being different [in Class A Division I] and how tough the schedule was, that was what stood out most about that team.” [Those three receivers – Bailey Stockton, Josh Britt and Ethan Christian – each finished with more than 1,100 yards receiving. All were seniors.]
2. Aaron Philo, who has passed for more than 4,500 yards the past two seasons, is the most widely known of your returning starters. What can you say about Aaron and his skill set? “What’s awesome about Aaron Philo is he’s an even better kid than he is a football player. He’s just a wonderful kid, fantastic leader. The awesomeness of it is that we didn’t know what to expect when he became a starter [in 2021]. We thought he was going to be pretty good. He was backing up Brock [Vandagriff, now at Georgia]. His first game, we travel to Calvary Day, and he throws four of the ugliest picks I’ve ever seen in my life, and we can still win the ball game [losing only 21-13]. We come out of that game wondering how good is Aaron? Can he do this? We didn’t have anybody else. And he throws for 557 the next week against a team out of Knoxville, and we never looked back. He’s thrown for back-to-back 4,500 yards. I think it’s No. 3 and No. 6 all-time in Georgia history. Never been a kid to throw for 9,000 in two seasons. He has an outside chance to break the career passing record.” [Philo is 4,576 yards short of Trevor Lawrence’s state record.]
3. What’s the scouting report on this season’s team? “As it’s been in this eight-year cycle [with Vandagriff as coach], we’ve replaced our receivers every other year. This is the other year. We had three kids that caught for 1,000 apiece, and they were our three DBs, so we’re really losing six kids. We’ve spent the whole summer going to seven-on-sevens, we went to Hoover, and I don’t like those things at all, but they helped us everywhere we went. So we’re anxious to see if we’ve found the right pieces. We’re going to be talented, but we’re inexperienced, so these first three, four, five games, against teams that have played for state championships, we are going to have our hands full, but if we grow up, we have a chance to be pretty good.”
4. You’re averaging 50.1 points per game over the past six seasons. Don’t know if that’s ever been done for that duration. How has Prince Avenue set itself apart in the passing game and on offense? “The greatness of Prince Avenue in my opinion is we lose every pregame and win most post games. When another team stands across the field, they’re never scared by our size. And then our kids through our passing game, because it is complex, they understand where the holes are. We win more ball games with 5-8 and 5-10 wide receivers than probably anybody in the state. And then the fact that we tempo and work at a high pace allows us, if we are equal in talent, to be able to get them on conditioning.”