Warriors land Mac Bryan as new head football coach
LFO High School announced on Friday that Mac Bryan has been named the school’s new head football coach.
This will be Bryan’s seventh stint as a high school head coach in a career that has spanned over 40 years.
“We’re very excited about being here,” Bryan said. “I think it’s a great place and I’ve been very impressed with the administration, their principal and their athletic director in meeting them, and I got a chance to visit with the faculty (on Friday).
“It’s a very positive situation and we just want to go in there and try to get more kids out (for football), get the weight program going like it is now and hopefully make some strides in the fall.”
The former Appalachian State University player served as a graduate assistant with the Mountaineers for two seasons before taking the head coaching job at West Wilkes High School in Millers Creek, N.C. in 1983.
He also served as head coach at Boiling Springs, S.C., Emerald High School in Greenville, S.C., Enka High School near Asheville, N.C. and Ooltewah High School in metro-Chattanooga.
He spent the past four seasons at Avery County in Newland, North Carolina, a small town in the western part of the state near the Tennessee Border, where he took his team to the Class 1A state playoffs in 2019 and 2021.
At Emerald, his team won 11 games and made the Upper State Finals in his first and only season there in 2005, just one year removed from a two-win campaign.
His successful run at Ooltewah (2013-2017) included a 45-16 record and five trips to the state playoffs.
The Owls made the second round twice and made the state quarterfinals in both 2015 and 2016. They were District 5-AAA champions in 2013 and 2014 and went 10-0 in the regular season in 2014, while Bryan was named the district’s Coach of the Year both times.
Ooltewah also won a Region 4-AAAAA title in 2015 and was region Coach of the Year that season. He stepped down in February 2018 to move back to North Carolina.
Bryan also had stops at several colleges along the way, including head coaching jobs at Lee’s-McRae College in North Carolina and Pikeville in Kentucky. He also served as an assistant coach at Pikeville, Newberry College in South Carolina, the University of Southern Mississippi, Chattanooga and Tennessee-Martin.
personnel will allow us to do,” he explained. “But we want to throw the football and be exciting, up-tempo and no huddle, and give the fans something to enjoy up in the stands and give the kids something to enjoy playing. Defensively, we’ll be aggressive, come after people and try to force the tempo there too.
“You’ve got to play hard and you’ve got to play physical, so I think effort is a big deal. But we also want to do things the right way. We want to be a team that shows class at all times and represents the LFO community in the right way.”
Bryan is replacing Bo Campbell, who stepped down as head coach of the Warriors in mid-January. Campbell led the program for the past seven seasons.
According to the Georgia High School Football Historians Association website (ghsfha.org), Bryan will be the 24th head coach at Lakeview/LFO High School since 1932.