Conversation with Coach – Andy Mills, Defensive Coordinator, Southern Columbia
Tagged under: Coaches Corner, District 4, News, pfn
Phil Myers | September 3, 2024
(NOTE: Last Friday Coach Mills probably became the first defensive coordinator to be a part of 500 wins and the 500th was a shutout!)
You know about Jim Roth, Southern Columbia’s head coach, who is not only Pennsylvania’s winningest football coach of all-time, but is among the winningest coaches in America. But did you know there is a coach on Roth’s staff who has some interesting things to say and has been a huge part of Southern’s success the past 40 years. In fact, he’s been on the Southern staff longer than Coach Roth. In 2024 he will be starting his 46th year coaching football, 42 of those as the defensive coordinator at Southern.
His name is Andy Mills and he was more than willing to give an hour of his time in the summer, although he did not know why in the world PFN wanted to interview him. You would be hard pressed to find someone who has been a defensive coordinator in high school football for 40 plus years. Mills is the man when it comes to defensive schemes and getting the most out of his defensive players at Southern, and to focus on the task at hand on game day. Coach Mills was elected into the District IV Football Coaches Hall of Fame this past summer.
We began our conversation by talking about the Tigers gearing up for the 2024 football season and that the coaching staff always encourages the kids to play other sports because developing other muscles and things like hand-eye coordination actually help them come time for football season.
Andy Mills has been married to his wife, Kimberly, since December 26, 1982. They have one daughter, Adele. He met his future wife in Florida when he and fellow coach, Al Lonoconus, went to Florida on an extended Christmas break one year. (Mills was a history teacher at Southern Columbia.) Mills said they got tired of $300 phone bills and calls at 11 o’clock at night. So, they got married during another Christmas break.
Coach Mills graduated from Southern Lehigh in 1975 where he played football and baseball. He said baseball was actually his favorite sport. He then went to West Chester State College and graduated in 1979 with a degree in elementary education. He pitched for the West Chester baseball team for two years before he ran into some arm injuries.
When asked how he got into coaching football, he said that jobs were hard to come by back in 1979. “I found out about an opening at Southern Columbia and applied and got interviewed and they needed a varsity baseball coach. They also told me they really needed help coaching football and asked if I’d be willing to do that. I said ‘anything to get me a job, I’ll do.’”
“I was part of the infamous 0-27 losing streak,” he said, “the numbers at Southern Columbia at that time were in the low 20s and the sport of football was almost dropped.” Four of Southern’s coaches were 22 or 23 years old. They were Mills, Lonoconus, Al Cihocki, and Jim Roth. Mills tacked this on, “we had no idea what we were doing.” The coaches learned and adapted and, within a couple of years, turned the SoCol Tiger program into the envy of just about every football program in the state. “It just kind of took off,” stated Mills.
PM: “As far as defenses go, how do you measure success?”
AM: “The first thing we try to do is make teams one-dimensional. Basically, every game we try to shut down the run and make them pass, make them one-dimensional, if they are a running team.” Coach Mills is implying that by making teams one-dimensional on offense, then the Tiger defense is doing their job and being successful.
PM: “What about when you face teams that like to throw the ball, all you can do is frustrate them, right?”
AM: “Yeah. You have to give them different coverages, sometimes d-backs will give a cushion, sometimes bring them up and jam the receivers, sometimes mix different blitzes in, sometimes we’ll double team their best receiver. When I first started, most teams ran the ball, then we’d run into Steel High with their spread offense. That was an adjustment for us. That was not the normal offense we faced. Now, I’d say the opposite. We face all these spread teams and it’s a little harder to adjust to teams that run the ball. Times have changed, it’s evolved.”
We chatted a bit about teams that give his defenses problems over the years. He said the last time they played Wilmington (2020), the Greyhounds had one of the best lines he has seen in high school. He also said, “last year against Westinghouse they had a pretty good scheme with the QB faking the handoff behind the pulling backside guard and tackle and then running up the middle behind a 300 pound guy.” He added that he thought in 2022 Westinghouse had more talent athletically than Southern Columbia. He thinks the coaches at Westinghouse are doing a great job and gave them a lot of credit in planning for the Tigers, especially last year (2023).
PM: “As the defensive coordinator, what is the most important thing your players need to learn?”
AM: “Right now, what we stress, especially in practice, is assignments. You get teams who run all these formations. Bald Eagle was a pain last year. They ran formations, but they also ran all these different motions. They were a pain. So, the biggest thing we stress is whatever defense is called, to make sure they know what their assignment is.”
PM: “You have said that the 2019 defense may have been your best. Is there another unit from another season that stands out for any reason?”
AM: “I thought last year we had a pretty good defense minus the Mt. Carmel regular season game where it seemed like we just didn’t show up. We had Garrett Garcia and Dom Fetterolf inside and we could do things with our front and not blitz that much. Also, I forget the year but we had a front that included Mike Fox and Brad Sones. That front, sticks out in my mind. A player who sticks out in my mind is a defensive end. His name is Kirk Pfeiffer. He was about 160 lbs. and nobody could block him. I remember playing Rochester and they had this tackle who weighed about 325 lbs. Pfeiffer just ran by him the whole game.”
He also talked about Julian Fleming and Cal Haladay. “You could put Fleming on the other team’s best receiver and not worry about that the whole game. Haladay was so fast at reading things. He was top notch. He really was.”
PM: “Last year, the defense allows 42 points against Mt. Carmel and only a month later you shut them out. How does that happen in high school football?”
AM: “Well, when we played them the first time, we didn’t have Isaac Carter. We got him back in the playoffs and we kept moving Isaac all over the line. The other thing that helped and Jim (Roth) will laugh when I say this but Jim had some time on his hands to watch the Mt. Carmel game we lost over and over again because he was serving that suspension from the Wyoming game. He was really, and I was to, he was really able to dissect how poorly we played.”
“Mt. Carmel, though, has been one of the best teams in the state the last couple of years. Unfortunately for them, they ran into us the second time when we played very well. They could have easily been state champs. They were that good.”
PM: “What motivates you to keep coaching?”
AM: “What motivates me? I don’t know. I guess it’s in my blood. I enjoy joking around with the kids every now and then. In football you want to try to spend the right way to go about doing things. I think the other thing that motivates me a little bit is when you see players who have graduated and come back and you see they’ve made something of themselves. Plus, I don’t know what else I’d do with my time.”
PM: “So, you see yourself coaching a few more years?”
AM: “I’ve been doing it so long. I don’t know. I’m on a year-to-year plan. Naturally, I’d like to go as long as I can. As long as I’m healthy and as long as the mind is sharp. I don’t have a set number of years. It’s harder every year, but our staff is great. We all get along. We each know what the other’s role is.”
PM: “When you game plan defensively for your opponent, only to have them throw some things offensively at you that was not expected, how hard is it to make adjustments during the game or at half time?”
AM: “The first thing is we have very few guys who go two ways. We stress one-way players as much as we can. That helps when I pull off most of the defensive starters if we see some things we didn’t anticipate. I can start talking to them and we can try to find some weaknesses. By talking to the players, we get a better feel for what’s going on. The obviously at half time we can talk more with the kids and with the other coaches who are spotting up top. They can bring their input and we will make more adjustments if we need to. The biggest thing is communicating with the kids right away. Also, on the technology end, we have those i-pads that are right down on the field. So, if something happens, I can see it right away and make an adjustment.”
PM: “Do you have a favorite game or two?”
AM: “One that sticks out in my mind is Serra Catholic. Granted they threw the ball and had a ton of yards against us, but that’s a case where between the center and the two guards was a 3-yard split. They did that to take our defensive end, Derek Berlitz who’s now at West Virginia, out of putting pressure on the QB by making him line up wider. As soon as I saw that, I said we’ll bring both inside linebackers right up the ‘A’ gap. They went in untouched and we may have set a record with maybe 8 sacks that game.” It was actually 10 sacks.
He named the first state championship game when Southern beat Western Beaver 49-6. Then he referenced a game he thought was in the early 80s when the Tigers beat a loaded Lourdes team and nobody gave Southern a chance. “That game gave the coaching staff confidence that we can do this. That was a turning point in the program.”
PM: “How do you prep or plan for the next game each week?”
AM: “I’m kind of old school. I get two films on HUDL. I’ll do one on Saturday and I’ll do the other one on Sunday. What I do is hand chart every formation and every play. Where they run, who they running to whether it’s a tight end or whatever. I compile all of that on a Sunday. That helps me get tendencies. I know you can program HUDL to do it all for you, but then I won’t remember it as much. When kids start asking questions about what they might do out of, say this formation, I can answer their questions a little better because I charted everything myself. It’s time consuming. It really is. If we have a Saturday game, then I’ve got to do everything on Sunday if we have a Friday game coming up.”
PM: “What is working with Coach Roth like?”
AM: “We get along great. He’s got this dry sense of humor. When he interacts with the kids, sometimes he comes across as serious, but he’s not. Part of the reason for his success is his organization. He has everything thought out to the minute detail as far as what we’re doing, who’s playing, etc. He is very consistent with how he treats players. He (the player) could be Julian Fleming or player number fifty out of fifty players and he’ll treat you the same. His organization, his consistency, how he interacts with the kids, and also the coaches”
“He lets the coaches, coach. He’ll offer suggestions, but he doesn’t interfere with say, running back or offensive line drills. I think the coaches appreciate that. He’s not a big pre-game or half time rah-rah, go get ‘em, get them all fired up type of guy. He’s not that type of coach. He thinks that a lot of mental preparation the kids have to go through, the kids should do on their own. He is really good at making in game adjustments and at half time, especially with blocking schemes.”
PM: “Is there something about you that most people don’t know?”
AM: “I don’t know. I don’t like the limelight. I like doing what I do and laying low. Let the kids have fun and let the kids have the credit. That’s been kind of my philosophy all along.”
PM: “What is your favorite meal?”
AM: “I like salmon.”
PM: “What is your favorite dessert?”
AM: “I’m not a big dessert person. I do like to eat those Klondike squares. If I had to pick a dessert, it would be shoo-fly pie.”
PM: “What is your favorite movie?”
AM: “There’s probably two. I like the ‘Dirty Dozen’ with Jim Brown and Charles Bronson and ‘The Great Escape’ with Steve McQueen. As a series of movies, I love James Bond.”
PM: “What are your favorite sports team or teams?”
AM: “I like the Phillies and I like the Eagles.”
PM: “If you could go back into time and meet anyone, who would that be?”
AM: “My dad died when I was five. He was 32 and had a heart attack. I would have liked to gotten to know him better.”
Andy Mills’ dad was Tom Mills and played pitched in the minor leagues at the Class A level which is equivalent to AAA today. Andy’s uncle, Ray Bortz played 3rd base in the Milwaukee Brave organization, but was back-up to Hall of Famer, Eddie Mathews.
PM: “What do you do with your spare time?”
AM: “I try to exercise as much as I can. Plus, I help out with the road crew on the township.”
Coach Roth had this to say about his coaches and Andy Mills in particular in an article by Dave Fegley for The News Item, “This staff is very dedicated to the art of coaching, and I can’t thank them enough for the work that they have done. I have been very fortunate to have these guys helping me. Andy is the one guy that has been with me the whole time. You won’t find a better defensive coordinator anywhere.”
Coach Roth and the Southern Columbia football nation are blessed to have a man like Andy Mills who has so much dedication to the program. Most people would have moved on to a head coaching position or gone somewhere else, but Coach Mills stayed and has been an integral cog to the success at Southern.
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