By Erik Harris
TRUSSVILLE — Following a winless season in Class 7A, Area 6 play, Hewitt-Trussville decided to shake things up on the hardwood.
The school revealed its plan to promote former boys junior varsity head coach Jeremiah Millington to co-head coach along with head varsity coach Mike Dutton last Monday. A meeting was held last Friday to make the plans official, pending approval by the Trussville City Board of Education.
Dutton, 70, is a veteran among Alabama high school coaches. His recent stops include Hayden, Mortimer Jordan and Pinson Valley, where the gymnasium is named after him.
“I have a lot of respect for coach Dutton,” Millington said. “Any time you get a gym named after you, your coaching pedigree kind of speaks for itself.”
At 28, Millington expects to bring youthful energy to the coaching staff.
“I think the No. 1 thing would be bringing some energy,” Millington said of his role as a co-head coach. “I think having somebody new and somebody fresh can maybe energize the program and get this thing going back in the direction that we all want it to get.”
Millington coached the junior varsity Huskies for two seasons, reaching a pair of tournament championship games last year. His guys also handed Northridge its only loss of the 2014-2015 season.
“Hopefully for the people that came to watch us play, they saw some growth and some development from Game 1 to the end of the season,” Millington said.
The younger of the two is hoping to learn a lot from one of the most experienced coaches out there, and will treat next season as somewhat of a job interview to eventually be the lone head man at Hewitt-Trussville.
“(The administration wants) me to be with coach Dutton and learn some of those things and just grow as a coach and as a person as well into, when it is time to have it by myself that I’ll be ready,” Millington said.
He believes that he has much to learn about what it takes to be a varsity head coach at the Class 7A level and that Dutton is the right man to learn from.
“Some on-court stuff I feel like he can teach me, but a lot of things I feel like I can learn from him will be off the court as far as organization, some of the administration things that a lot of people might not know that go into coaching,” he said.
With the bulk of last year’s minutes returning to the floor and a shot of new energy to go along with years of coaching experience, the Huskies should be fun to watch next time around.
Millington is also the running backs coach for the Hewitt-Trussville varsity football team. He spent the previous season as the co-offensive coordinator and six seasons before that as the Huskies’ quarterbacks coach.