Jeremy Bosken accepted the job of head football coach at Halls High School only a couple of weeks ago, and he’s already hard at work getting to know parents, the school, and of course the players both on and off the field. Spring practice started May 7.
“Meeting the team was great,” said Bosken. “They’re paying attention. They’re not looking at their phones or staring at the ground. They’ve got good eye contact and good attention to detail.”
Bosken graduated from high school in northern Virginia where his father was stationed at Quantico Marine Corps Base. He played football at Carson-Newman University 2000-2001, then transferred to ETSU. When the school announced it would be dropping its football program, Bosken went into the Marines himself, served six years and finished his undergraduate degree in sports management.
He landed a front office staff internship with the Cincinnati Bengals, then got a job with the Indiana Pacers. But, shortly after that he and his wife found they were expecting their first child, and the job didn’t offer health insurance for the first year. He worked on a master’s degree, then a friend suggested that he go into coaching.
“I was hooked, and I didn’t want to go back,” he said. “I missed just being on the field with the guys. Some of my biggest influences in my high school life were my coaches. I figured I could do the front office stuff anytime.”
He started coaching at Science Hill High School to “rebuild the program” under head coach Stacy Carter, he said. After that, he was offensive coordinator in York, South Carolina, which he called a “prestigious, high-level talent” program where he learned a lot. Then, he took a chance and became head coach at
David Crockett High School in his wife’s hometown of Jonesborough.
“At that time, it was the worst program in Tennessee,” he said. “They had gone to one playoff in 46 years. I was warned that it was career suicide. But I was at the point where I didn’t know if I was a good coach. Did I just have good players, or was I a good coach? I wanted to take on a program that had a bad reputation and try to turn it around. It was a good time. We had a lot of good players coming through, and we were the winningest staff in school history in just four years.”
After Crockett, Bosken went on to coach at Cleveland High School, where he was coaching when he heard about the Halls job. As the halfway point between his family in Cleveland and his wife’s family in Jonesborough, “it seemed like a really good fit for us.”
“I’ve always kind of admired (Halls High) from afar,” he said. “Just the way it’s set up with the middle school and the high school right next to each other, the tight-knit community. The administration with (Mark) Duff and Ms. Booth was a big selling point. And (outgoing coach J.D. Overton) did a great job of laying a good foundation with facilities and community support.”
As for future plans, Bosken said he’s going to focus on team-building and leadership development at first and work to build on the strong coaching foundation at Halls.
“There’s a lot of good coaches on staff, and the more I get to know them, they really are good coaches. I really just want to help them, empower them and help teach the lessons that I’ve learned,” Bosken said. “I’m going to emphasize small unit leadership, real Marine Corps values, with the kids, too.”
When he’s not coaching, Bosken enjoys spending time with his family and helping his kids participate in sports like softball and wrestling. He and wife Alison have three grown foster children, Shannon, Ben and James; plus three biological children: Brady, 11; Della, 8; and Breelyn, 6.