Like for every other prep football team taking the field tonight, the odds of Chattanooga Christian’s season coming to an end rise each week as the Chargers face tougher competition. Regardless of whether they ruin East Ridge’s dream season to extend their own playoff push or they’re turning in their lightning bolt helmets after tonight, one thing is certain: Something much bigger is in the works for the program’s future.
As you make your way from the main school building across CCS’s manicured campus, with Lookout Mountain as a backdrop, toward the sprawling new $2 million football complex that sits next to an impressive stadium complete with artificial turf, it’s clear that the school is serious about its football program.
In the Chargers’ first five years of varsity football they compiled a 13-37 overall record, with their best finish (4-6) coming in 2010 when they narrowly missed the playoffs. Then in the spring of 2014 came the first step in CCS football becoming the area’s next powerhouse program – the hiring of Rob Spence as head coach.
Spence had been the quarterbacks coach at Rutgers University the two years before he came to CCS, and before that he had built a reputation as one of the most innovative offensive minds in college football as the offensive coordinator at Clemson and Syracuse. He also worked on the offensive staffs at Temple, Toledo, Bethune-Cookman, Louisiana Tech, Maryland, Hofstra, Holy Cross and Iona.
But college coaches can live a gypsy existence, and after moving his family 14 times in 28 years, including having his youngest daughter attend four high schools in as many years, Spence admitted he wanted to step away from the grind of the college game to work at the prep level. He also wanted to coach for a Christian school, where he could share his faith as well as his knowledge of the game to impressionable teens.