The Mount Pisgah football team has faced the adversity of going from 16 seniors last year to only 3 seniors this year. With this significant departure of leadership, Coach Livezey has stepped in as head coach.

Livezey’s personal experience regarding football includes playing at Norcross High School and later Furman University. Although basketball was Livezey’s first love, he found that more opportunity was available to him when pursuing football.

Going into his 26th year as a coach, Livezey explains that he has gravitated towards coaching football because, in addition to knowing it better than any other sport, he values the team aspect of the game.

“There are a lot of different life lessons in football because it is a team sport in which the majority of the guys on the field don’t ever actually get to touch the football and so it really truly is a team sport.

“The great thing about it is that you don’t have to be a star, to have a very important role on the team.”

A major role of the coaching staff is to analyze the way that the opposing team for the week plays. They study film and develop a plan based off of what the other team does and how to defend that.

“Having done this for a long time, where I think some coaches fall into a trap is that they try and change everything they do from week to week and are always adding a brand new thing. Well, if you can’t really do it in practice, you’re not definitely not going to be able to do it in a game.”

“There’s simply just not enough time in practice to really get good at a thousand different things so we kind of have to narrow it down. This is what we do.” When asked about his head coaching strategy specifically, Livezey explains why he coaches from the press box at the majority of Mount Pisgah football games. He states that after years of viewing the game from the field, the unfortunate occurrence of a blood clot in his leg last year that forced him to coach from the press box gave him the realization that he actually prefers to coach this way.

Ever since then, he has found that he is a better coach from up in the press box as he is able to see much more clearly and put more confidence into his play-calling. Livezey feels comfortable using this unusual coaching technique because the team is very fortunate to have a sideline that is run by three former head coaches.

Livezey constantly reminds the team that each player has an important role on the field. With that, he admires the team for their constant willingness to step into any position and have a good attitude in doing so.

“As a coach, I don’t think I could ask for more out of the players. Not using the ‘well we don’t have as many players’ as a crutch, we’ve established that it is what it is and we just gotta make the best of it and I really think our team has kind of embraced it and said, if this is what we have then this is what we have and we’re gonna be the best team we can be.”