Adams staying at Georgetown; Green Sea Floyds continues search

One Grand Strand high school is about to take the next step in its coaching search.

Another won’t have to.

Georgetown football coach Bradley Adams withdrew his name from the opening at Hilton Head on Wednesday.

Adams was initially asked to apply for the job by Hilton Head Athletics Director Mark Karen. The Island Packet newspaper reported Adams was selected out of approximately 140 resumes as one of three finalists. The publication then reported Tuesday that one of the other three candidates had withdrawn his name, and that a possible offer from the high school was going to come today to either the 31-year-old Adams or Lexington, Ohio, coach B.J. Payne.

However, Adams said his current job is the only one he wants.

“Because of Mark Karen, Hilton Head was a situation I was looking into,” Adams said. “But my heart’s in Georgetown. I owe it to these people. They gave me the opportunity to be their head football coach. I’m going to give it all I’ve got.

“When a man comes into a tough situation with young men, you develop a bond. There is that with us. The community and the administration has really rallied around us and been very supportive of us. It’s hard to leave a situation when people are supportive of what you’re trying to do.”

Georgetown is 13-8 in Adams’ two years, and last season the Bulldogs qualified for the postseason for the first time since 2008. The coach said a win over Wilson in the regular-season finale would have given the Bulldogs the necessary seeding to make a deep run in the playoffs.

It appears Adams will have a third opportunity at Georgetown to do just that.

Meanwhile, Green Sea-Floyds is expecting all applications for its football vacancy to be in hand by Monday.

The opening, created by former coach Joey Still’s resignation earlier this month amid an internal investigation, has already attracted plenty of interest, Athletics Director Doug Hinson said. He anticipated “two-to-three times” the 22 or so applications the school received two years ago when Still was hired.

“We’re not going to drag our feet,” Hinson said. “My guess would be by the end of February, maybe first week of March, we would have somebody in place. That’s my guess. We need to get the best candidate, and now’s the time to do it.”

Principal Andrea Parsons will meet with officials from Horry County Schools soon to assemble a formal search committee. Following that procedure, the school will identify three to five candidates to interview.

Although Hinson won’t have a direct hand in the hire, he was adamant about what qualities the next coach would possess.

“We’re looking for someone who’s going to put our kids in the best possible situation to win,” he said. “We want to hire somebody who’s going to do that. We don’t want to hire somebody … who is going to use our position as a stepping stone. We want somebody who’s going to stay here. We want somebody who’s going to take what’s there now and carry it to the next level.”

Still formerly resigned Jan. 9, although he had been on administrative leave since Oct. 31. Two days before, Still was named in an incident report in Green Sea in which he, a 23-year-old man and 17-year-old woman were involved in a physical altercation.

Still was never charged, and police noted in the follow-up report that a warrant for his arrest would not be issued after witnesses said the other man hit Still first.

Regardless, the situation effectively ended what was starting to look like some improvement for a Trojans’ program that had back-to-back two-win seasons before Still’s arrival. Green Sea-Floyds was 7-13 in Still’s two years, and the program was making strides in terms of developing younger players.

The Trojans lose only five seniors from last year’s team.

During the coaching search, defensive coordinator Jason Elliott is in charge of the offseason conditioning program.