BHS football coach Jesse Hicks may roam the sidelines on Friday nights in the fall, but he says he also strives to instill in his players how to be great fathers, husbands and neighbors.

On Friday nights in the fall, Coach Jesse Hicks of Baldwin High School can be found roaming the sidelines at Braves field. Though Hicks, who is in his second stint as the Braves’ head football coach, always has the goal of winning football games, he also works equally as hard to use the game of football to teach life lessons to his players. 

“A lot of people get caught up in winning, but that’s not the most important thing,” said Hicks. “This job is a servanthood job. I love speaking life over these kids, no matter if it’s about life, relationships, money or their career, that’s the most important thing.”

When Hicks first made his way through Milledgeville as a young man headed to continue his football career at Albany State University, he had no idea the small, close-knit community in the middle of the state would come to mean so much to him only a few years later. 

Hicks, an Augusta native, was a multi-sport athlete at Glenn Hills High School. Hicks said he played every sport, and doing that helped him be able to coach several different sports when he began coaching at the high school level. 

“Today, I think kids like to specialize in one sport in high school, but when I was in school, the best athletes always played every sport,” Hicks said. “I threw the discus and played baseball, basketball and football. I think it helped playing so many sports because I was able to coach a lot of sports when I started teaching.”

For Hicks, his best sport was football, and he eventually earned an offer to play at Albany State University. As a player for the Golden Rams, Hicks said he would routinely pass through Milledgeville on his way to school. 

When his playing days at Albany State were over, Hicks stayed in Albany and accepted a position on head coach Hampton Smith’s staff as a defensive assistant.

“Coach Hampton Smith baptized me into coaching,” Hicks said. “Coach White, a defensive assistant, was also my mentor. He did a good job of working my butt off and helping me understand the value of relationships.”

One day while passing through the Milledgeville area on a recruiting trip, Hicks said he met the principal of Baldwin High School at the time. After speaking with the principal, Hicks said he was basically offered the head football coaching job, but he decided to talk it over with his wife before making the decision of whether to accept the position. 

“At the time, I was a Division II coach, and I wasn’t making a lot of money,” said Hicks. “So I decided to talk it over with my wife and once we heard how much it paid, she said I had to apply.”

When Hicks took the job, he inherited a team that had only won a single game over the previous two seasons.

“From my time recruiting, I knew Baldwin County had some great athletes, and I thought they should have been better than what they were,” Hicks said. “When I took the job, it wasn’t a good program, and a lot of people told me I made a mistake taking the job.”

In his first season, Hicks led the Braves to the playoffs. And in the next seven seasons, Baldwin made the playoffs six times. Hicks’ most successful season came in 2005 when Baldwin made a Final Four appearance and took on Northside in the Georgia Dome. 

However, after winning more than 70 games and sending more than 60 athletes to college in eight years, Hicks decided to leave Baldwin County.

“I didn’t want to leave, but I think some people in administration felt like I thought I was too big for the program,” said Hicks. “But it was for the best, because God was dealing with me anyway.”

After leaving Baldwin in 2010, Hicks spent two seasons as the head coach of Dougherty County High School in Albany, where he only amassed a 3-17 record. 

“My time in Albany really humbled me,” Hicks said. “It showed me that you can’t put anything in front of Christ. But I do think we laid a great foundation there even though I may not have been there to reap the benefits of it.”

After leaving Dougherty, Hicks moved back into Middle Georgia, this time taking the head job at Central Macon in 2012. In his five seasons at Central, Hicks got the Chargers back into the postseason, as well as helped several players go on to receive a college education. 

Finally, in 2017, Hicks finally got his opportunity for a homecoming when the Baldwin job came open following the 2016 season. 

“I felt like I had some unfinished business in Baldwin County,” said Hicks. “I wanted to finish the work I started here in 2002. I love this community and the people in it, and I want to fix what I didn’t finish.”

In his first season back on the Braves’ sideline, Baldwin finished the season with a 7-5 record and advanced into the second round of the state playoffs. But despite all the success Hicks has had with the Braves, he said there are still more important lessons he can teach than the ones that help win football games. 

“There are three things I try and teach my guys to be,” Hicks said. “I want them to be great husbands for their families to depend on, great fathers and take care of their kids, and great neighbors. I really preach that and I think that’s the most important thing. If they are those three things, then there’s no room for failure because you’re taking care of your house and the community.”

Along with learning how to be great fathers, husbands and neighbors, Hicks said there is also one more way he strives to impact his players’ lives. 

“I want them to know who Christ is,” Hicks said, “because I really do care where they spend eternity.”