A Chattanooga native, East Tennessee State head football coach Will Healy is going to have an unfamiliar view Saturday afternoon when his Bucs face the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
The home stands.
Healy, in his first season leading the ETSU program, is bringing his Buccaneers to Finley Stadium Saturday afternoon for a key Southern Conference battle at 1:30. Both teams are 1-1 in the league, with ETSU sporting a 3-4 record, while UTC is 2-4.
But for Healy, it’s a homecoming in a lot of ways. He played at Boyd-Buchanan before spending four seasons at Richmond University. After that he came back to UTC and was part of former head coach Russ Huesman’s staff from 2009-15 before taking the Austin Peay head coaching job, where he earned the Eddie Robinson Award for the Football Championship Subdivision Coach of the Year in 2017 after improving from zero wins to eight.
He left in 2018 for the Charlotte job, but was fired after four seasons and a 15-24 record and didn’t get back into the head coaching game until this offseason when the Johnson City program came calling. He did face the Mocs a year ago as an assistant on the Georgia State staff.
And now he gets a chance to go against UTC head coach Rusty Wright, where he will stand on Finley’s visiting sideline and face his former colleague (both worked on Huesman’s staff from 2013-15).
“I’ve played a lot of games in that stadium, and I remember when we got there in 2009,” Healy said at Monday’s ETSU weekly press conference. “I’ve been able to see that program then and where it has grown to. It’s a special place to me. That’s where I cut my teeth under some good coaches and coached some talented players.”
Healy said there would be a lot of great friends and coaches that he expects to be in attendance Saturday, but joked that he was going to learn a lot about loyalties this weekend.
“We’re going to find out a lot about our friends when we go back,” Healy joked. “There’s a lot of UTC grads that will be in attendance on Saturday, but if we (ETSU) get you a ticket, you have to be in ETSU gear. I’m not dealing with this Blue and Gold where you get to remain neutral, you’re going to stand up for what you believe in if I get you a ticket.”
When Healy left UTC, ETSU had not yet brought back football (the school shut down its football program in 2003 due to financial issues, but revived it prior to the 2016 season) so he wasn’t aware of the depths of the rivalry. But since the program came back into existence, the Bucs have been one of the best in the league with SoCon titles in 2018 and 2021 and a NCAA FCS quarterfinal appearance in 2021.
But the Bucs have just one win over UTC during that time, which came in 2018 with the Mocs holding a 7-1 edge in that span.
The Bucs have just four players from the Chattanooga area on the roster — receiver Karim Page (Dalton), kicker/punter Ethan Lane (Boyd-Buchanan), wide receiver/return specialist Xavier Gaillardetz (McCallie), receiver Hudson Makuch (Walker Valley) — who are also making their return.
“I’ll be honest, I think it’s just another game,” said Gaillardetz, who had an 80-yard punt return for a score against Virginia Military Institute last week and was named SoCon Special Teams Player of the Week. “It’s exciting because there will be a lot of familiar faces out there, but I think trying to quiet that noise and take it one snap at a time will be the biggest thing.
“It’s just another conference game.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.