McGeorge excited to lead Heritage football program

Jason McGeorge knows the Cap Eight 4-A conference very, very well. He learned it under former Leesville Road coach David Green as an assistant coach for three years.

In those days he coached against good Broughton teams before watching Wake Forest-Rolesville rise to the top of the league.

Now, in his first head coaching position at Heritage, McGeorge knows his Huskies will face a lot of challenges this season. The Huskies’ regular season ends with consecutive games against Millbrook, Broughton, Leesville Road and Wakefield – all teams that reached the playoffs last year.

“We get to run through at gauntlet and this league has a lot of great coaches,” he said. “The schemes will change. Everybody does something a little different. What we will tell our kids is if we continue to get better we can win a game or two this year.

“I always tell our kinds, ‘Forget it and drive on,’ and when something bad happens let’s overcome it.”

Today the North Raleigh News and Midtown News published a story on how Heritage did in its first year playing varsity sports. This fall, McGeorge’s Huskies will play on the varsity level for the first time.  

Heritage will host Holly Springs in its first varsity game Aug. 19.

“We’re really excited to have a Friday-night experience of varsity football,” said Pat Kennedy, the school’s athletic director. “I think the physical size will be a problem for us. The size of our players compared to those schools who have seniors might be a struggle. I think we’re very strong from a skill-positions level.”

The Huskies’ JV team went 6-4 last year, and McGeorge coached his team to a 32-0 victory over the Sanderson’s JV team. Heritage also defeated Wake Forest-Rolesville's JV team, a school that had its varsity team reach the 4-AA state championship game.

With that though, McGeorge says he doesn’t want people to get too excited coming into this season.  

“I think you look at it two ways,” McGeorge said. “We had five coaches who were working solely with the JV team. I don’t want to take away that we scheme more than most JV teams, but something we’re still battling with is finishing. A lot of people give us the, ‘You’re going to be good,’ and those compliments are tough on us because we have to finish. Nobody is going to be sorry for us this season.”

As their summer workouts continue, McGeorge says he expects to have at least 85 players tryout for the team – a situation that has him excited and worried that he might have to buy more jerseys in order to expand the team.