As an assistant coach, Brad Smith played a pivotal role in Junction City’s success on the gridiron since he arrived in 2003.
Now he has the chance to put his own stamp on one of the state’s most successful programs regardless of class.
Smith was named as Junction City’s new football coach earlier this week.
He takes over for Steven Jones, who left to become El Dorado’s new football coach after guiding the Dragons to the 3A state finals in 2017 and the 2A state title last season.
“It’s a job that I wanted, and when the time was right, I got it,” Smith said. “I feel real good about it, real proud.”
Smith, who has been the Dragons’ defensive coordinator since 2009, will stay in that role.
“I don’t think you change what you’re used to doing,” Smith said. Justin Thompson will take over at offensive coordinator, and Smith said the Dragons are going to combine the offenses brought in by David Carpenter and Jones into one.
“What we’re going to do is take a lot of what we did in the past two years and merge it with the spread attack that coach Carpenter put in in 2012,” Smith said. “We won three state championships with that, and we’re going to try and merge those two offenses together into one.”
Smith added that everything has proceeded normally since he took over.
“I got some congratulations, but it’s business as usual,” Smith said. “I’ve been in Junction City since 2003, and when we made it to the finals, we waited until the first of the year to really start hammering the offseason. When we didn’t make it to the finals, we started that next Monday. You don’t upset the applecart. You just keep doing what you’ve been doing.”
With the offseason now in full swing, players have been busy hitting the weight room.
“We do the weight training and merge those guys into a weight team,” Smith said. “That’s just part of it. Our goal is to get the absolute strongest as we can get and get as absolutely fast as we can get. We get to show off a little bit usually at the weight meet, and that’s our big test. That’s what coach Carpenter did such a great job of was getting guys that don’t necessarily play a second sport. Now being on the weight team is as prestigious as playing basketball, baseball or football. We have young men that don’t play football that really almost beg to get into the offseason to be a part of our weightlifting team. That all goes back to David Carpenter.”
In most cases, a new coach means new staff members to be added and new schemes to be learned.
But in Junction City’s case, the transition is about as seamless as it can be.
“If it’s not broke, you don’t fix it,” Smith said. “It’s been as good or better than any 2A program in the state for that period of time. I’ve sat and watched how it’s been done. I definitely don’t want to make any major changes to what’s been working.”