David Perno is a household name in Athens.
Between his stint as a player on Clarke Central’s state championship football team in 1985, playing baseball for Georgia in the early 90s and then coming back in the early 2000s to coach the Bulldogs to three College World Series, and then going back to his alma mater to coach the football program in 2016? He’s been loyal to the Classic City’s athletic successes at both levels., there’s no doubt about it.
He’s a walking legacy of sorts.
It’s his eighth year as the head coach of the Gladiators football team. As a player, he won three region titles (’83-’85) and as a coach he’s just claimed his fourth (’19-’21, ’24), seventh overall. Clarke Central had its best season since 2021, credit in part to the senior quarterback they brought in from Arizona over the winter, Hezekiah Millender.
“But I’m not thinking about that,” Perno said. “I’m thinking about next week. We don’t want to shortchange what we’ve got, and what we’ve got is a pretty good football team. They keep improving, but we need to stay where our feet are.”
Coming into this season, it was evident that they needed a culture shift. They needed their guys to get their heads on right, get their sights set on greatness and then get to work for it or else they were never going to get back to the team they were from 2019-2021.
They’d lost the recipe to building a team and needed to start from scratch. They put the focus on finding the key ingredients through the winter and into the spring. This meant finding discipline in the classroom and on the field. This meant adopting selfless attitudes, especially while Perno and his staff played chess with roster positions — they moved senior Skylier Walter Jr. from running back, which he played since ninth grade, to linebacker in his final season.
“We kept moving guys, trying new combinations, and when we tried that in the past there was push back and excuses,” Perno said. “That’s not the case with this group. They’re all in it together and it’s been a joy to be on this journey with them.”
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Of course, having a quarterback of Millender’s caliber come in and be a solid force the way he has doesn’t hurt. In fact, it elevated them. Like adding garlic to a meal (garlic lovers unite!). Millender is unique, because while he’s outrageously talented, having led his Arizona team to a state championship right before moving to the Peach State, he’s also outrageously humble.
He takes joy in seeing other people succeed, which is rare now-a-days, in today’s ‘look at me, look at me’ social media day and age, Perno said. His eyes aren’t green with envy, but alight with excitement for the people he cares about when they do big things. He’s a poster child for a dictionary-defined team player.
That’s what Perno wants Clarke Central to be about. Family competition. Love of and dedication to each other. Millender’s devoted family-man values lit the match and set the ranks ablaze.
“I kind of think, I made an impact like this on my other team too,” Millender said. “I’ve always been a big family guy, making sure everybody’s heads are right, making sure everybody’s ready for the game, making sure there’s no problems in school or in their personal lives. It’s not always about football with me. I just always try to pick everybody up.”
Senior running back Corey Watkins Jr. said there are chemistry and trust this year with real leaders in place. They took the fact that they have good players and built them up to also have a good record, something they didn’t do last year when they lost three heartbreakers in a row. Perno said they kind of just melted down last year, knowing they had a chance and letting it slip through their fingers one after another, unable to recover from losses like Jefferson, Flowery Branch and Loganville. They didn’t have set leaders, despite having good players, so things were like a machine needing oil.
This year, they went out there with a plan and they won the region, even going so far as to beat all three other top 4 teams in the region on the road (Winder-Barrow, Jackson County and Habersham Central).
“That they’re fun to watch,” Perno said when asked how he wants this 2024 team to be remembered. “They’re an exciting team and they play for each other. That’s the biggest thing. They’re not a group of individuals that are good football players. They’re a team of good football players. Because of the people around them, they make each other better.”
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