By Daniel Locke
Photos by Cari Dean and Dawn Harrison

Heading into his fourth year at the helm of the program, Jake Ganus has high expectations for his Moody Blue Devils football team in 2025.

Fresh off a run to the Class 5A state championship game, the Blue Devils are looking to surpass 10 wins for the fourth year in a row, something they have achieved in each season of Ganus’ Moody tenure.

The standard for the program has been raised, and its head coach is a large part of the reason why.

Ganus’ playing background helps him coach effectively. The Chelsea native, who was a standout player at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Georgia, picked up multiple strategies from coaches he played for and has integrated them into his coaching style.

“You learn things that you didn’t know were probably important at the time or that would affect you in the long run like they do,” Ganus said. “My high school basketball coach, Michael Napp, taught me to be 10 minutes early as a rule of thumb. That’s something that carried me into college as a player and now as a coach. I expect my players to be 10-15 minutes early with everything.”

Growing up as a football player in the Birmingham area, Ganus is enthusiastic about leading a local program. While he isn’t from Moody, he has come to love the community and wants to give it the best on-field product he can on Friday nights.

“Being at Chelsea, we played Moody; they were in our region until a few years ago,” Ganus said. “When the opportunity came up, it was an opportunity I wanted to take. There is a pride in coaching at a local school. I’m pretty centrally-located as far as where I want to be professionally. This is an area that’s growing, and it’s a really, really good place to be. I do carry a lot of pride coaching at a Birmingham school.”

Beyond Friday nights, he loves helping his players achieve their dreams of playing at the next level and uses the relationships he has built to help make those dreams a reality. Despite the ever-changing landscape of collegiate athletics from a recruiting standpoint, Ganus’ college experience enables him to assist his players as they navigate that process.

“There is not one thing that’s the same from whenever I went through it to now,” he said. “Playing college football and having those connections and knowing a lot of different coaches, I’ve been able to grow the network in that way. I know that we get our kids exposure, and we get our kids seen. Getting our kids recruited is a passion of mine.”

Playing football in the Southeastern Conference also gave Ganus insight into the process of building a competitive roster. Putting together the deepest lineup possible and controlling the line of scrimmage paves the way for a team to get the job done.

“The biggest thing I tell people about the SEC is just the depth,” Ganus said. “When they get to the backups and are trying to keep the starters fresh, they can do that longer and outlast people. It’s just science; they’re bigger, stronger and faster.”

Ganus has been blown away by the support the football program has received from the community since arriving at Moody. From fundraising to showing up to home and road games alike, the Blue Devils are not alone in their efforts to succeed.

He has even started to see the improvement of Moody football stir a passion in the other athletic programs to work toward building championship contenders.

“The community is our backbone,” Ganus said. “To raise money, to show up on Friday nights, to support the guys for all the work they put in, all those little things. We’ve gotten better every year since I’ve been here, and what you’re seeing now is it starts to spill into the community—our culture. You’re starting to see it hit into the youth programs, hit into the other sports. You’re seeing success across the board.”

While bringing change on the football field was one of Ganus’ top priorities when taking the Moody job, he was also motivated to deliver a change in the classroom. Heading into his fourth season, his players are performing better than ever academically.

“This year we smoked our previous record for AP passing scores,” Ganus said. “That’s a testament to our teachers, our principal and our faculty.”

Prior to accepting the Moody position, Ganus spent five years as a defensive assistant coach for the Thompson High School Warriors, helping build them into the gold standard for high school football in Alabama.

The time Ganus spent working for Mark Freeman, Thompson head coach, helped him develop a deeper understanding of the coaching side of football and set him up to succeed when the time came for him to lead his own program.

“I came from the Mecca,” Ganus said. “I was completely green to the coaching game when I got on with Coach Freeman at Thompson. I had just gotten done playing with the (Minnesota) Vikings, and I was really, really blessed to get hired over there.”

Freeman took Thompson from a struggling program to one that has won five of the last six Class 7A state championships. Ganus was able to observe what went into building the program: a common goal.

“It takes hard work; it takes a vision; you’ve got to have a vision,” he said. “It wasn’t just Coach Freeman, it was Dr. Vickers, superintendent, Dr. Hester, principal. It takes unilateral visions. They’re all in a straight line; they all see the same thing; they all know what the end goal is. When you’re all pushing in the same direction, you can do amazing things. That’s kind of what happened over there and is currently happening.”

While replicating the exact same level of success Thompson has achieved may be a tall task, that has not stopped Ganus from trying to do so at Moody.

“I’m trying to replicate that in my own way,” Ganus said. “I can’t be Thompson, but I can do a lot of similar things, and I think we’re right on track. I’m not saying we’ll be Thompson at all, we got a long, long way to go, but I feel like we’re hopefully pushing in the same direction.”

The Blue Devils regular season kicked off on Aug. 21 and will continue each Friday until Oct. 24. Come out and support Ganus and the team as they rally their way to another successful season.