Countdown to kickoff: Yeager recounts first coaching gig

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Sports

The official start of high school football season is in 15 days as of August 5, with teams permitted to begin AHSAA competition on Aug. 20.

Mountain Brook will open the season in 16 days, as the Spartans head to Hueytown on Friday, Aug. 21.

As kickoff approaches over the next several weeks, Village Living and Under the Lights will count down the days until the opening kick.

Mountain Brook head coach Chris Yeager's coaching career started with an injury that ended his playing days. Yeager suffered a serious knee injury as a sophomore at the University of North Alabama, then reinjured it, leading to three major surgeries.

With his playing career over, Yeager moved into coaching during his senior year. After that, he became a graduate assistant at Austin Peay State University, initially working in a support role as an assistant to the offensive line coach.

That changed in July, when Austin Peay's offensive line coach left the program. Yeager's first big chance followed.

"Emory Hale, the head football coach, walked in and said, 'I made a decision, you're going to be the offensive line coach,' and I was just like, oh my gosh," Yeager said.

Yeager had played in a veer offense as a player, while Austin Peay ran more of a pro-style zone scheme, a system he had to learn on the fly. He credited two mentors on that staff, Chick Grain and Greg Johnson, both of whom had NFL and college coaching experience, with getting him up to speed.

"That was the very first time I had my own group, at the ripe old age of 23," Yeager said.

From that first opportunity in 1984, Yeager has made plenty of stops in an illustrious career. He was an assistant at Austin Peay and Troy State (now Troy) before moving into the high school ranks. He spent two years at Walker (now Jasper) and West Blocton as head coach in the early 1990s, arriving at Mountain Brook in the mid 1990s as an assistant to Joey Jones and taking over as head coach in 2006.