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SCENES FROM THE ATLANTA CLINIC... After three years in Birmingham, in 2001 I moved the Southeast Clinic to Atlanta, and it continues to grow there. This year's clinic drew coaches from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and the District of Columbia. Friday night was a time for many of the coaches to reunite, many others to meet for the first time. At the clinic on Saturday, attendees heard from Kevin Latham, middle school coach who suffered a near-fatal heart attack exactly one year and one day ago. He attributed his recovery in part to all the notes he got from Double-Wing coaches around the country, and expecially thanked Calvin Furlow, one very loyal assistant who stuck with him at a time when staff disloyalty was putting a great deal of stress on him, and Dwayne Pierce, a youth coach from Washington, D.C., who on a visit to Atlanta observed a practice and convinced him that he was right and the problem lay with his disloyal assistants. A change of jobs helped solve the staff problem, and this year, in his first season at Millers Grove Middle School in Decatur, Georgia, his team won the DeKalb County championship. I've seen his highlight tape, and I joke with him about not giving him too much credit because he had some great kids, but considering where he was exactly a year and a day ago, it has been a blessed year for him. Two outstanding high school coaches, Steve Jones and Ron Timson, shared some of their wisdom and some of their ideas. Both have now run the Double-Wing at two different high schools. Coach Jones started running the Double-Wing at Florence, Mississippi after attending my 1998 Birmingham clinic. When he arrived at Florence,it had the longest losing streak in the state. Now, coach Jones is a very knowledgeable coach, but he admitted that he'd been a head coach for six years before he had a winning season. "Pre-Double-Wing," he said, his record was 11-51. Since then, it has been 37-23, including 11-2 in 2000. Two of those Double-Wing seasons were "break-in" seasons: his first year of running it at Florence, he was 5-6, and this past year, his first at Columbia, Mississippi (home of Walter Payton) he was 6-6 (after an 0-3 start). Coach Jones offered some excellent points on play-calling: (1) Call plays with a purpose - "I'm not going to put a bunch of plays in a bag and shake it up and draw one out." (2) "Take the good athletes and get the ball in their hands" (3) "I'm going to rep any play at least 50 times before running it in a game." Ron Timson, the head coach at Umatilla, Florida, got into high school coaching when he retired in Omaha after 22 years in the Air Force. Coach Timson had coached some service ball, but his first "real" coaching job was at Bennington, Nebraska. He was 31-36 before running the Double-Wing, starting in 1998. After two successful years at Bennington, Coach Timson moved to Florida to be closer to family, and found a job as offensive coordinator at Umatilla under Tim Smith, a Double-Wing coach who'd just taken the job. When Coach Smith took another job after two years, Coach Timson took the head job. Since converting to the Double-Wing, Coach Timson's record as a head coach at two different schools has been 31-11. This past year, Umatilla was 11-2, and lemme tell you, they've got a fullback coming back who is as good as I've seen in some time. At 5-11, 260, he looks like Earl Campbell. Coach Timson is a meat-and-potatoes guy, and puts heavy emphasis on off-season strength training and solid fundamental offensive football. He said that he'll never run another offense, and said that when he told the kids at Bennington that he was moving to Florida, they asked one final favor of him: "Make sure whoever replaces you runs the Double-Wing."