Attached is permission to print an editorial by student/football player Sam Hale that appeared in McIntosh High School newspaper, The McIntosh Trail, as a rebuttal to a Free Speech item printed several weeks ago in The Citizen about Head Coach Dwight Jones. His intuitiveness suppresses his age. Perhaps the individuals in this community need to know all the facts and not take comments out of context before making suggestions about how to leave this area.

We support all of the coaches at McIntosh and hope that this community will give these gentlemen the opportunity to do the job that they are hired to do without being put under a microscope.

Ron and Teresa Hampton,
Co-Presidents
McIntosh Touchdown Club

Recently, Peachtree City’s The Citizen newspaper printed a letter in their Free Speech section bashing McIntosh football coach Dwight Jones for statements he made during a halftime speech to his football team. During the speech Jones made remarks on how it might have been a mistake coming to McIntosh.

Taken out of context these comments could seem like Jones has given up on the team, but as a football player who was there and knows what the situation was like, I can say I did not interpret his words in an offensive way.

I saw them as motivation, as Jones’s way of telling us we have let him down completely. I was ashamed for not meeting Jones’s expectations in the game. When the team went back out after halftime, we were pumped up and angry — we were ready to play football the right way.

Unfortunately, we did not come back and win the game, but there was a major difference in how each Chief played. Jones’s words had done what they were meant to do; they made us be football players.

As for the person who wrote in The Citizen, you should be embarrassed of your article. You gave the Joneses directions back to Columbus, but maybe you should leave. Obviously you do not care about what everyone else cares about, winning.

Winning is why we have a new head football coach; winning is why the McIntosh football players have worked harder than they ever have in their lives.

You said that Jones only thinks about himself and winning, instead of the players. Winning is what the players want. We are tired of losing and everyone telling us that it is all right; it’s not.

Losing is losing and I, along with the rest of the football team, am tired of losing. Also, you told Jones, “You should have done your homework before you took the job and not listened to school administration which includes an AD who has never been a head coach in addition to having an ego that needs feeding and a female principal who knows zero about football.”

Does this mean you have no faith in the football team? It is apparent to me that you are either a football player or the parent of a football player because of your knowledge of what was said during halftime. So why do you not believe in yourself or your son?

Finally, you decided to make your thoughts known through the Free Speech section of The Citizen. Free speech is one of the things that make the United States unique. It is one of our rights, but it’s a great privilege to have that right. What angered me the most is not that your words were ignorant anger on paper, but that you hid behind your right to free speech. You said all of these things and then did not even bother to sign your name.

You are a coward, and the only reason my reply is in a newspaper and not a letter in your mailbox is because of your spinelessness in not signing your name.

Sam Hale