By: Michael Spiers

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

Legendary Camden County High School football coach Jeff Herron may have hung his whistle up for good at the end of the 2023 season, but those that know this man like I do understand that he has never been one to stand on life’s sideline.

Coach Herron is the living embodiment of “Team First”, but all of us that call Camden home are thrilled to see him get the individual honors that he so justly deserves.

This week the National High School Football Hall of Fame announced that it will induct Jeff Herron into its newest class.

Coach Herron roamed the sideline for 32 years as the head man at high schools in Georgia and South Carolina, compiling an overall record of 334 – 69. His record of 312 – 54 in Georgia alone, a winning percentage of 85.3%, is good enough for second best in the state’s history and 34^th best in national high school football history.

Herron was named Region or Area Coach of the Year 25 times and the Georgia Coach of the Year 9 times in those 32 years. He was the Atlanta Falcons High School Coach of the Year in 2009. He has led 19 region champions, had 10 final four appearances and five state championships.

He is the only head football coach in Georgia High School Association (GHSA) history to win state titles at three different schools. He won his first state championship while at Oconee County in 1999, three at Camden County in 2003, 2008 and 2009, and his final at Grayson High School in 2016. That 2016 team at Grayson went 14-1, winning the GHSA 7A State Championship and the Public-School National Championship.

Coach Herron’s Camden County Wildcat teams also won 12 straight region championships, and hold the state record with a 58-game regular season winning streak, and a 28-game overall winning streak.

During his tenure, the Wildcats were ranked in the USA Today Top 25 six times and selected by ESPN as the program of the decade in Georgia for the 2000-2010 decade.

He also coached Walton (1989), Cedar Shoals (1990-93), Wheeler (1995-96) and Prince Avenue Christian (2013-15) in Georgia, and at T.L. Hanna (2017-18) in South Carolina.

In 2022, Jeff Herron was inducted into the Hall of Fame at Emory & Henry College in Virginia, where he was a starter and four-year letterman.

He was the team captain for the 1981 season when he was named a 2^nd Team All Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) player.

In September of 2024 it was announced that Coach Herron will also be inducted as part of the 2025 Georgia Athletic Coaches Association (GACA) Hall of Fame class, which will also include former Charlton County High School head football coach Rich McWhorter, former Dougherty County and Troupe County head coach Charles Flowers, and basketball coaches Anzy Hardman and Rufus McDuffie.

The GACA induction will be on May 31, 2025 in Dalton, Georgia.

Its going to be a busy summer for Coach Herron. Two weeks after the GACA ceremony, he will be inducted into the National High School Football Hall of Fame on June 14th in Canton, Ohio.

All of us in Georgia’s southeasternmost county are eternally grateful for everything Coach Herron has accomplished as a coach, but we are most indebted for his role as a teacher, and a leader of young people when we needed it most.

The best news of all…Jeff Herron goes into the National High School Football Hall of Fame, and into coaching eternity, as a Camden County Wildcat.