Sammie Coates has Columbia High School rolling again, and the early returns on his coaching career are hard to ignore.
The Eagles, who had dropped 101 straight games, are suddenly on a winning streak after beating East Limestone 42-26 on Friday night. That followed a season-opening 41-14 win over Greensboro, a result that showed Columbia’s first victory under Coates was no accident.
Coates entered last year’s winless debut season in Huntsville with just 28 players. This fall, with a full roster in hand, Columbia has started to look like a different program entirely, winning convincingly against fellow 5A teams and beyond. Coates not only helped boost enrollment, he’s also showing he can get real production out of the talent he has.
Still, he’s made it clear the attention isn’t what drives him.
“Everything they’ve done, they deserve every moment of this,” Coates told reporters after the Greensboro win. “I’m just happy for the kids, man.
It ain’t nothing about me. It’s about the kids that worked their tail off.
I’m glad these kids can experience this. It’s a great experience for them.
Now they see what it feels like. They can add to it, and we can go back to work next week.”
That kind of message has been a constant from the former Auburn receiver, who said he was relieved to get that first win out of the way. In his first high school coaching job in Alabama, Coates has kept the focus squarely on the program and the work, not on himself.
He also sounded very much like a coach with a larger vision when he addressed the turnaround.
"All the glory to God ... God has blessed me to be in this situation to bring this to this school, to this community. I want to say thank you to the administration, to the school supporting me, having my back the whole time, and the players showing up and fighting every single day throughout the spring, throughout the summer, everything they have done," Coates said.
"They deserve every moment of this. They stuck it out.
Guys came out and helped support. We built the program, and it's coming.
We ain't there yet, but we are coming."
The comparison to Deion Sanders is impossible to miss. Sanders used a similar blueprint at Colorado, where he helped turn a program short on resources into a 9-4 team in 2024. Coates is trying to reshape Columbia in much the same way, and if this run keeps building, it could be the beginning of something bigger for him down the line.
Sanders got his coaching start at Prime Prep Academy and Triple A Academy, then worked as offensive coordinator at Trinity Christian High School before his jump to Jackson State. Coates may be writing a very different story, but the early shape of it looks familiar.
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