Zach Vincent Named Head Coach For Edmonson County High School Football

ECHS newly named head football coach Zach Vincent, with his wife Calli and two sons.

Darren Doyle, story:
Edmonson County High School has announced Zach Vincent as the new head coach for Wildcat football.

Vincent replaces Ed Smart, who served one year as head coach. The Wildcats had an 0-10 record, with two of those losses coming as a result of COVID cancellations. Edmonson County won their last game on November 20, 2020.

Vincent is a 2009 graduate of ECHS and played 4 years under former head coach Kyle Pierce. He later served as an assistant coach under Pierce for two seasons then served as an assistant at Drakes Creek for 4 years. He has been an assistant with Wildcat Football for the past 3 years and as the head coach at ECMS for the past 2 years.

"I'd like to bring some old things back to Wildcat football that worked in the past," he said. "My first year back to Edmonson County was the 2019 district championship team and you'll see some offense and some plays from then. I want to bring some stuff back from when I played under Kyle Pierce. I think you'll see some hard-edge football. We're going to make it simple. We're going to move it down the field, we're going to eat up clock and we're going to try to win games. If you're going to beat us, you're going to have to out-hit us."

Coach Vincent said he wants to bring a sense of pride back to ECHS football, and after a really tough season last year, he wants to start that immediately.

"We're going to take ownership, take pride in where we're from," he said. "We don't want anyone to try and smother that out just because we're a little county."

ECHS Principal Jonathan Williams said he is excited to welcome Vincent as the head coach.

"Coach Vincent will bring an energetic and positive approach to our program while providing academic and athletic discipline to our student athletes," he said. " Zach was an outstanding player for us and has coached under Kyle Pierce and Nathan Smith here, and alongside several excellent assistants.  Zach will be a role model and mentor to our young men."

He described both Coach Vincent and his wife, Calli, who is a kindergarten teacher at Kyrock Elementary, as "great young people." 

"They both went to school here and both are serving our community as teachers, they are raising their children here and I’m so proud of them both," he added. "I’m looking forward to this season."

ECHS Athletic Director Brad Johnson agreed that Vincent was a great player at ECHS and hopes that Vincent's players will emulate the kind of player he was and the person he is.

“We’re proud that a former Wildcat is going to take the reigns and inject positive enthusiasm into the football program," said Johnson.

Coach Vincent, who also currently serves a science teacher at ECMS, begins his duties immediately. He said while the current roster has many young players, the freshmen and sophomores from last season got a ton of varsity experience.

"We were pretty thin on the roster last year, but there's plenty of potential there," he said. "One real advantage we have is that the guys coming back have really good experience and you don't always see that. We've also got some older kids returning and overall, I'm pretty excited with the crew we got."