Center Nathan Cox describes second-year Golden Wave head football coach Trent Hammond as “very intense, very determined and very focused on getting to where we need to get to be able to win.”

“Coach Hammond makes it a priority that we give 110 percent at practice, and I think he really pushes us to want to be better and be the best player on the team every Friday night,” the senior said.

Hammond, who has coached at Amory, Water Valley and Franklin County, has been changing the lives of players for more than 10 years.

“I love the game,” he said, explaining that coaching “is the only way you get to stay involved and get to be a part of it. Kids that play football are special – it’s just something about the relationship you bring and build from coach to player, player to player. I probably will spend more time with the kids I coach than I do my own from August to November.

“I do the only job where it’s 100 percent acceptable for grown men to hug each other…and sit and cry and just let emotions take over,” Hammond continued. “To me, it’s a great job.”

Although coaching is quite the experience, it can also be difficult.

“The challenge is finding kids that can come in and fill the roles that the seniors left, getting kids to understand their jobs because it’s a lot more than just going out there and playing,” Hammond said. “Thumbs can win the battle. A thumb down or to the side can lose the battle. A six-inch step come off the line could win and eight-inch step can lose so there’s a lot that goes into playing. You get kids corrected and eliminate those mistakes. It’s the simple things. Say a running back is going backwards, you would want them to go forward and you eliminate those false steps.”

Correction is key to progressing for Hammond, who focuses on learning and then improving.

“You try to give the kids reps to take those things away and make it become natural,” he said. “Sometimes it’s not a natural act and that’s where you have to coach it.”

Last year’s season was just a trial run for Hammond’s repetition method. Making the trip to Jackson was enough proof that his techniques were working.

“It’s only a result of hard work and labor and concentration and, just being honest, I’ve had the fortune to play in Jackson in the state championship game three times and won two of em,” he said. “You gotta be lucky at some point. Kids can’t get hurt. The ball’s gotta bounce your way at some point in time. You can’t shoot for that.”

Hammond gives a generalization of his team’s top priority.

“I tell my kids all of the time, playing in Jackson doesn’t define whether we have a great year or not,” said Hammond, who stresses the importance of his players being the “best football team we can roll out there and be.”

He said he wants his players to live by a quote by George Halais, legendary founding coach of the NFL: “No one ever regrets something they gave their all in. If you’ve given me everything you got we’ll be a great football team, maybe not in the eyes of [spectators] but so be it, we’ll let the chips fall where they may.’”

“Pauly Dawton one time said, ‘at the end of the day when you leave the field, if you could honestly say I had more fun than the other team, you’re a great football team,’” Hammond said. “That’s where we want to be.”