ELBERTA — When Joel Williams signed up to be the head football coach at Class 5A Elberta in June 2025, he was welcomed at the school by 28 football players.

"By the end of June before we knew all the players' names and we were having to recruit them into the hallway," said Williams who is entering his 47th year as a football coach with both college and pro experience on his resume.

At what he considers his last coaching job, Williams has taken a unique approach as he tries to build Elberta's program from the ground up. The Warriors failed to win a game in his first season.

"This is not a young man's job," Williams said. "I'm not into climbing the ladders and all of that anymore. I'm here to build a program. And we do such a, I'll tell you one of the things that has changed so much is the culture here."

From those 28 players in the summer of 2025 to preseason 2026, Williams started his mission by staying with the goal — growing the program as it enters its seventh season.

"Our numbers, we've now got 70 on varsity," Williams said. "I've got 150 kids from seventh grade up playing football now. It's been great. We have some really good problems, like we had to come up with $5,000 because we didn't have enough helmets. And so, the program is just booming. It's growing."

But it's also young. Really young.

"We've only got seven seniors, 11 juniors, and then the whole rest of that 70 is freshmen and sophomores," Williams said.

Even both kickers are new.

To successfully build that foundation, though, Williams says he's looking to those seven seniors to lead the way. How can you go wrong with a stalwart senior named Moose?

"The leader of our entire football team is Moose Owens," Williams said. "That's beyond a shadow of a doubt. If there was ever a Tim Tebow made over, it would be Moose. He's our quarterback, but I'm talking about from a character standpoint. When he speaks, the entire locker room gets still and quiet and listens. He is just an athlete."

Others on the offense Williams will be looking to for leadership are a senior running back and junior offensive linemen.

"A running back, Landon Acorn, he's going to be a really good player for us," Williams said. "He's a senior, as Moose is. That's our two big seniors on the offensive side of the ball."

Williams says two juniors, Lucian Styron at tackle and DeMarjay Reed at guard, will provide leadership up front.

"I'm looking for big things out of Lucien Styron who's going to be a good player for us," Williams said. "DeMarjay Reed had a great offseason and looking for really good things out of him."

On defense, Williams will also rely on seniors to lead the way helping out young players. Like 6-foot-1, 230-pound sophomore defensive end Tay Daniels.

"I really think Tay Daniels can be an outstanding edge player," Williams said.

Others on defense include senior linebackers Logan Henry and Parker Harrison with help from sophomore John Carmona.

Logan Henry, I think he's got a chance to be a really good football player for us, has a good nose for the ball, very physical guy," Williams said. "Then the other linebackers in there that I feel like can be good players are senior Parker Harrison, and then sophomore John Carmona, I think his potential is limitless."

Backing up the backers in the defensive secondary will be seniors backs Jensen Sims and Sam Pugh.

Williams saw a glimmer of hope last season when the Elberta middle school team went out and won every game in 2025, something to build as 2026 looms.

"It's a very young program, and we're building," Williams said. "... I like where we're at, and I like where we're headed."

His young Warriors will be playing in one of the most competitive regions in the state in all classes in Class 5A, Region 1. Of the 64 teams in Class 5A, Elberta is No. 60 in student enrollment with 534 students, just below Gulf Shores at No. 40 with 682 enrollment.

The other six schools in the region are higher with Theodore the biggest at 904 or No. 13 out of the 64. The largest school in Class 5A is Florence with 1,036 students, and the smallest is East Limestone at 520.

WILLIAMS COACHING BIO

In Alabama, Williams' high school stops include head coaching jobs at T.R. Miller, UMS-Wright, Gadsden and Straughn with stops as an assistant at Foley, Fairhope and Mountain Brook. While at Fairhope, he coached quarterback Riley Leonard who went on to lead Notre Dame to a national runner-up finish after the 2024 season.

In professional ranks, he was an assistant in the World Football for the Birmingham Fire and has had college stops at Delta State, Ole Miss, Samford, Birmingham Southern and his last stop at his alma mater, Mississippi College.