Austin Crisp tabbed to take over the Tigers
Ringgold High School Principal J.R. Jones announced last Tuesday that Austin Crisp has been tabbed as the program’s new head football coach. Crisp has served as the Tigers’ offensive coordinator for the past three seasons.
This will be the first-ever head coaching job for the 30-year-old Crisp.
“This is something I’ve dreamed about for a long time,” he said. “I knew I wanted to be a football coach at 18 years old, when I wrote my senior paper about it. This has been a goal of mine for an extremely long time and to God be the glory that He put me in this position to take this responsibility.”
“We had a lot of very, very good candidates that we interviewed,” Jones said. “But at the end of the day, we just felt like Coach Crisp was the one to be our head coach. Austin is young, but he does know the game and he builds great relationships with the players. I feel like the kids really like him and Coach Akins has always spoken very highly of Austin’s knowledge of the game. He does a great job in the weight room with our players.”
Jones recalled Crisp’s immediate reaction to being offered the job last Tuesday afternoon.
“He immediately told me ‘Thank you, Mr. Jones. You’ve given me my dream job. Now if you don’t mind I’ve got to go back out to the weight room and keep the kids lifting weights.’ “We knew that we wouldn’t miss a beat hiring Austin and again, there’s a perfect example. He got the job and immediately went back to working with the kids, so we’re excited for him and we’re excited for our football program.”
A 2011 Gordon Lee graduate, Crisp began his coaching career as a 19-year-old community coach at Saddle Ridge Middle School and also was an assistant coach at Gordon Lee High School for a time. He spent a year as an assistant at Lafayette under then-head coach Chad Fisher and has spent the last six seasons at Ringgold.
He coached the quarterbacks for three years before taking over as the team’s offensive coordinator in 2020. The Tigers have gone 22-11 with two state playoff appearances and one playoff win in the past three seasons with Crisp calling the plays. Ringgold’s offenses have averaged 32 points a game over that span.
Ringgold’s 2021 team won 10
games and made the second round of the playoffs by averaging 34.75 points a game, including 40 or more points five times. The 417 points were the second-most in a single season in team history, trailing only the 500 points
scored by the Tigers in 2013 (11-3), who went to the Class AAA state semifinals.
He will be taking over for Robert Akins, who recently announced his retirement from coaching at Ringgold after 16 seasons, 97 total wins and eight trips to the state playoffs.
Crisp said he wants to bring a lot of energy to the program and continue the
work Akins was able to do with the Tigers.
“He’s done a fantastic job of laying the foundation of success,” Crisp explained. “One thing that we want to do is get our guys to understand immediately that we have to dominate every moment, simply because if we’re not doing everything we can to dominate the moment, we’re not going to be
very successful.
“I also believe in building good men. Parents have taken their kids from childhood to boyhood and we’re going to take them from boyhood to manhood.”
The new coach spoke of building relationships, referencing former Gordon Lee head coach Kevin Mcelhaney, who Crisp played for during his time as a Trojan.
“We built a great relationship together and he was very impactful to me,” he said. “We still talk today and that’s something that means a lot to me. I want to carry that on with my players and my coaches and my community.
“I also want our guys to understand the three C’s, which is our campus, our community and our country.
If we do that, then we’re going to be very successful.”
Crisp is the 15th head coach at Ringgold, who will be starting the 89th year of football at the school this upcoming fall.
“I’m also excited for Coach Akins,” Jones added. “He had a great career here. He was ready to retire and he’s left this program in really good shape for Coach Crisp.”