New coach ready to turn Connersville into a 'masterpiece' with blank canvas

Like an accomplished artist, Justin Jackson is looking to create a masterpiece with his “blank canvas.” The first-year Connersville High School head football coach is looking to turn around a program that has had one winning season since 2000 and enters the 2020 campaign on a 24-game losing streak. While that would deter many from wanting the job, Jackson sees it as a positive and a main reason why he was so interested in the job. “We haven’t had much success here as a football program, and that has given me a lot of free reign to run the program the way I want to. There aren’t really any “this is the way we’ve always done it” at Connersville,” Jackson told Sideline Prep Sports Report. Jackson, who is 30, started his coaching career at East Central, where he coached middle school football from 2008-2010. From there, he was an assistant at Lawrenceburg High School, served as an assistant at Pike High School, was a graduate assistant at the University of Cincinnati, was an assistant at Southern Dearborn and spent the last two seasons back with Lawrenceburg, serving as the defensive coordinator. “I have had some theories of the best practices to build a program and always wanted the ability to try and test those. Not to say that they’ll work, I have no misconceptions that I won’t make some mistakes my first year, but I like that I have the chance to put my name on building a program, which is something you can’t get at a lot of places,” Jackson said. Circumstances well beyond his control have hampered his first offseason in his first head coaching job, as COVID-19 and restrictions have limited his ability to personally interact with potential and current players. He tells Sideline Prep Sports Report he was able to personally talk with about 20 players before school ceased. “With practice, we’ve had to completely revamp what we wanted to do in the summer. I’ve tried to see the silver lining in all of this, hoping that it’ll hurt other teams more than it will us. I’m the only first-year head coach on our schedule this year, so everyone we play had already been in a groove and we haven’t had the chance to start ours yet,” Jackson said. When he is able to conduct in-person practices with his team, Jackson will be met with some talented players on both sides of the ball. The Spartans bring back senior Evan Schaefer (outside linebacker/running back), senior Sean Cates (offensive line), senior Alex Fox (offensive line), junior Brayden Jones (defensive back), junior Chad Owens (running back), junior Gavin Lynch (running back/defensive back), sophomore Gavin Pearson (quarterback/defensive back), sophomore Cody Hauger (defensive back), sophomore Carter Deboard (running back/defensive back) and sophomore Braxton Myers (wide receiver). While Jackson is optimistic this is the season Connersville will pick up wins, he insists that is not the main focus. He believes if the Spartans can do the little things correctly, the big things will take care of themselves. “I made it clear to our guys that we don’t have a goal of how many games we want to win this year, and they aren’t going to hear me talking about winning championships. I told them our goal this year is to learn how to play this game, which includes competing and giving maximum effort on every down, and, that if we do that, the scoreboard will take care of itself,” Jackson told Sideline Prep Sports Report.