Jason McManus earns first head coaching job with Myers Park
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (BVM)— Jason McManus spent years as an assistant coach learning so one day he could fulfill his dreams of being a high school football coach. Now he is living that dream after being named the next head coach at Myers Park.
McManus grew up in a small town north of Charlotte called Newton. As a kid in a small town, all McManus did was sports. He watched high school football games under the lights on Friday nights and that’s where his dreams of coaching began.
“I knew from a young age I wanted to be a high school coach and teacher,” McManus said. “There was never a doubt in my mind; we grew up in a small town where Friday night football was king.”
Seeing the high school coach from his town respected and loved by the community gave him an early impression of what his future could be. The impact that coach had on McManus from a young age up to his time on the team strengthened his desire to coach.
“The high school coach in my small town was a big deal,” McManus said. “My high school coaches had a huge impact on me, and I kinda just wanted to be like those guys,”
McManus played four years of football at Gardner-Webb University before he got his first coaching job as a graduate assistant at Middle Tennessee State University.
After his time at Middle Tennessee, McManus spent the next eight years coaching at the college level. His stops include a defensive coordinator job at Sewanee, a running back and wide receiver coach at Chattanooga, and an assistant at Troy.
Coaching college football supplied McManus with the knowledge he needed to coach high school at a high level. The interactions with different types of players and coaches over the years helped move his career forward.
“The work ethic that I learned as a college coach is something that is ingrained in me,” McManus said. “The relatability to all different types of kids from all different types of backgrounds is something I learned as a college coach.”
In 2014, McManus joined the staff at South Pointe High School in Rock Hill, South Carolina. He served as the offensive coordinator for the Stallions for five years, winning four 4A state titles during his time there.
“The two main ingredients to our success were great players who love football, who loved to compete and were great kids who worked hard, and then two, we had a unified staff culture who put ego aside and put agenda aside, and all they cared about was winning and serving the kids,” McManus said.
An administration change at South Pointe led to a new direction for the program. Feeling he had accomplished all he could with the Stallions, McManus departed for Spartanburg High to learn from South Carolina football Hall of Fame coach, Chris Miller.
“I just felt like it was a great opportunity for me to go learn from another Hall of Fame coach and see it done in 5A football as opposed to 4A football,” McManus said. “It was really a move that would have just helped me be better prepared to be a head coach.”
McManus eventually made his way to Grayson High School in Georgia. Grayson plays at the 7A level of high school football, the highest in the country.
“I wanted to see it done at the highest level, and there are huge differences,” McManus said. “Some of those Georgia schools are run like small colleges, and I was able to see it done at the highest level, from a weight room, from fundraising, to then the volume of players.”
All this learning and experience led McManus to where he is today.
Myers Park has one of the most successful programs in the Charlotte area. Despite this, the team has lacked head-coaching consistency and faced a controversy that forced the team to forfeit the 2021-22 season due to ineligible players.
McManus saw potential at Myers Park. He believes it is one of the best programs in the state of North Carolina and has made it clear he wants to build a program that wins on the field, in the classroom and in the community.
“I really believe that we have a chance, with our parental support, with our number of students, we have a chance to be the premier school in the state of North Carolina, and that’s going to be our vision is to be the standard,” McManus said.
Building a winning program starts with establishing a culture. McManus wants that culture to be elite and focus on competing on and off the field.
“Everything that we’re going to do is about competition,” McManus said. “We’re going to compete in the classroom, we’re going to compete in academics, we’re going to compete on the football field, we’re going to compete in the community,”
To establish this culture, McManus is putting together a staff that he feels will serve his players.
Myers Park often sends players to the next level. Drake Maye at UNC, Jordan Bly at Old Dominion and Matthew Dennis at Wake Forest are just some of the many alumni to play in college.
McManus knows kids in his program will be seeking opportunities to play at the next level. That is why his staff will include a recruiting coordinator whose main job is to promote the players on social media, to coaches, trainers and camps.
“We’re going to constantly support our kids, going to college camps, college visits, working with personal trainers; we’re going to support anything that helps those kids get recruited,” McManus said.
His program will give kids a feel of what college football life is like.
“We are going to run it like a college program,” McManus said. “From the way we do things in the weight room to the practice structure, to the community service, to the academic rigors, those are all things that are taken from college programs.”
McManus wants to build an elite program. He wants to support the community that is passionate about their local football team, just like he saw when he was a kid. He is committed to the school and is in it for the long haul.
l’ll telll everybody that my number one goal is to build a great culture that’s going to be a sustainable culture, that’s a consistent winner over a long period of time,” McManus said.
