Focus is on long term for Prep's newest team

Harry Bacheller asked his new boss for an Augusta Prep shirt to wear for his picture for The Augusta Chronicle last week.

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Before he reached the field outside Prep's athletic center, he'd added a cap and a football.

Bacheller, Augusta Prep's first football coach, had said he was willing to work with the media to get the word out on his Cavaliers program. Finding his own props for the picture was a good start.

But the only shirt athletic director Tom Holodak could find was a medium. And Bacheller, who stresses weight training with his St. Pius team and has vowed to do the same when he starts at Prep in May, filled out the shirt.

He should have his own properly sized staff shirts soon enough. But everything else involved with his hire appears to be a great fit.

Bacheller is the athletic director at Christ the King, a private K-8 school in Atlanta. He's an assistant at St. Pius, which has thrived as a football program.

Bacheller's philosophy might not win over everyone. Parents might become frustrated when the multiple offenses he installs stall as young players try to grasp it.

This is part of the process.

Once the program expands to the high school level, the graduating middle school players will know the veer and the Delaware and probably the spread. And Bacheller expects to move up with them.

The middle school and high school staffs will then teach the same system, which Bacheller said could take a couple years for a player to learn. So, when the Cavaliers' middle school team falls behind during games next fall, don't expect to see any radical changes as it attempts to come back.

Bacheller wants the system ingrained.

He also wants his players to hit the weights. He believes a team's success is partly a reflection of its off-season workout, and will help institute a weight program for all of Prep's teams.

In the next couple of years, Columbia County could have seven football programs at the high school level -- Evans, Lakeside, Greenbrier, Harlem, Grovetown, Augusta Christian and Augusta Prep. The Cavaliers probably will assume that final position in the county power rankings for a while. But Bacheller isn't looking for instant gratification.

"You want to build some momentum with the program," he said. "You have to do it the right way."