Akins retiring from coaching at Ringgold
Search underway to find new Tigers’ football coach
Ringgold High School announced the retirement of Robert Akins as the school’s head football coach last Monday afternoon.
Akins coached for 44 years, spending 40 consecutive years as a head coach in four different states. He spent the past 16 years at Ringgold.
“I’ll really miss the kids, the coaches and the camaraderie there in the school, along with the community,” Akins stated. “Ringgold is a great place with a lot of really good people. We had a lot of good players come through who did an awesome job, and we had a lot of good coaches come through over that 16-year period. I’ll miss all of that and really just the feeling of being home.”
“Coach Akins is appreciated for his leadership and hard work the past 16 years,” RHS Principal J.R. Jones stated in a press release from the school. “He has set a standard of winning and building young men in our football program. He will be missed and difficult to replace.”
He began his career as a head coach in Alabama at Mobile Christian, going 29-19 from 1980-1985 and collecting an Alabama Christian Schools Association state championship in 1983.
Stops at Hernando High School in his home state of Mississippi and at Memphis’ Harding Academy followed before he arrived in the TriState area in the mid-1990’s to take over at Boyd-buchanan.
Ten years removed from their last winning season, the Bucs went 11-1 in his first season and made the second round of the TSSAA playoffs. In a decade at the school, Akins’ teams won 11 or more games six times and made the state quarterfinals or better seven times in an eight-year span.
That included a memorable run from 2002-2004 when they went 38-6 and made three straight state title game appearances. The 2003 season culminated with the 1A state crown after a 26-3 win over Donelson Christian Academy on a cold, windy night in Murfreesboro.
He was called away to Ringgold in 2007 and went 97-75 with the Tigers with nine winning seasons and eight state playoff appearances. Prior to his arrival, Ringgold had made just one state playoff appearance (2003) in the program’s history. His 97 wins at Ringgold is second only to the late Don Patterson, who won 132 games from 1969-1998.
One the big highlights of Akins’ tenure with the Tigers was the 2013 season when Ringgold won 11 games and made it all the way to the Class AAA state semifinals before a loss at third-ranked Washington County.
Ringgold has made the playoffs in each of the last two seasons. This past season, the Tigers went 7-4 after losing 21 seniors from a 10-win, secondround team in 2021.
During Akins’ time at RHS, he also served as a teacher, as an assistant principal, and as the school’s athletic director. As the A.D., he was instrumental in the rebuilding of the Ringgold athletic complex after the April 2011 tornado that devastated the town.
“Some of my best memories happen every year,” he said. “Certainly that 2013 season, but even before that when we were trying to build up the program. I had a lot of really great kids and great players who loved the game and I just hope I helped them to grow up to be the men they’re supposed to be. That’s the main reason why you’re in coaching anyway, to help them do that.
“Even that 0-10 year (2019), we had some kids that really played hard and stuck it out to the very end. Then the last two years, making the playoffs and beating Hart County in the playoffs (2021), things like that stick out. But it’s really just the individual players, whether it was a good year or a bad year. It’s great to see them grow and know that you had some sort of influence on them.”
Akins also said he believes he’s leaving the overall program on solid footing.
“I think we’ve made continual progress and got the program in pretty good shape, and I’m talking about everybody involved, from the Quarterback Club and those people there, all the way to the school administration, down to the last player on the roster. I think we’ve got kids now with the mindset where they’re going to go out and compete, do their best and lay it on the line.
“I think if you get your program to that point, you’re ready to hand it over to someone who’s maybe a little younger and more energetic, someone who might have a bit of a different vision. Not that our vision
was ever bad, but just a vision of what the program could be. My hope is that they get better and better every year and they find the right person to fill that position where the kids can continue to be successful.
“But more than anything, a coach that can give them the pride, the character and the integrity they need in the world today to become the right kind of men.”
Jones stated that a hiring
committee has been established and a search for a new head coach will begin immediately.
The 68-year-old Akins will finish out the school year at Ringgold and continue to preside over the football program before heading back closer to where he grew up. Akins is set to become the new head of schools at Fayette Academy, a private school in Somerville, Tennessee, just a few miles east of Memphis.