UPDATED: Summers lands ACA football head coaching job

Michael Summers spent 17 years on the Alabama Christian staff. He takes over as head coach after the announcement on Monday. (Tim Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE
Alabama Christian Academy head of school Greg Glenn looked over a list of candidates from all over the country but ultimately decided the best person to lead the Eagles’ football program was already on the coaching staff.

ACA promoted defensive coordinator Michael Summers to the head coaching position, marking the first time in history an ACA graduate will lead the program. Summers, who has served the past 17 years as an assistant coach, including the last 10 as defensive coordinator, was selected from a list of candidates that included nearly 50 candidates from both the high school and college ranks.

“We had a lot of good people show interest in this job,” Glenn said, “but as we continued to let the cream rise to the top, Michael would just outdo those guys. It was important to me to not give Michael too much of an advantage and not to hold him back. I think the process that all of our folks went through and stepped up to interview for us, it was unanimous. It wasn’t close. He was out in front and he was in my mind, too, but I needed to be validated through all of that.”

Summers, the school’s 17th head coach, has served the previous six head coaches in a variety of roles that include assistant head coach, junior varsity head coach and offensive line coach. His tenure includes some of the toughest times in ACA football history -- a 4-16 stretch in 2014 and 2015 in Class 5A -- as well as some of its most successful times in the last four years under Nate Sanford that included two of the school’s three trips to the quarterfinals of the state playoffs.

 “There’s a lot that goes through your head as you’re going through this process,” the 2000 graduate said. “I can remember in August, 1997, I was 15 years old and walking through these doors. My parents, who are here today, worked two jobs so I could go here. That’s how much they thought of the school. From the moment I was here, I had an appreciation of what this place is. This is not a job to me, this is doing what I love somewhere that I love for people that I love.

“And though I love ACA just the way it is, we’re not going to leave it there. We’re going to strive every single day to not keep it where it’s at, we’re going to strive to make it better.”

While Summers has made his mark over the years as a top assistant, he said there are some goals he wants the football program to achieve now that he’s running it.

“We’re not going to reinvent the wheel,” he said. “We had one of the top offenses in 4A, we had one of the top defenses in 4A. Are there things we’re going to try to do better? Yes, but reinvent the wheel? Absolutely not.

“We’re going to start from the bottom and try to boost our youth league, get really good coaches in that youth league, try to put a lot more in our middle school program and get the foundation laid so that when they come up here (to the varsity high school level), there’s no glitch.”

Summers and his wife Valerie are tireless supporters of ACA athletics and their children Tyson, Ryder, and Levi are all current ACA students. Summers hosted an evening book study for ACA faculty throughout most of this year and he is a constant fixture at ACA sporting events.

“We began this important search believing that the Lord had already prepared the right person for the job, we just had to prayerfully discern the name of that person,” said Al Crosby, chairman of the school’s board of directors. “The ACA board would like to thank head of school Glenn for skillfully leading us through a comprehensive search and all the ACA staff who invested time and prayer in this beautiful process. The Lord brought several highly qualified and terrific candidates our way and in the end guided us to our own Coach Michael Summers. Coach Summers is a man of character who understands that Christian values are utmost at ACA. He has a dynamic vision for what the ACA football program can and will be.”

With Summers’ promotion, it creates a new vacancy at defensive coordinator, but Summers didn’t think long before naming Greg Howard as his replacement.

“He’s been my co-defensive coordinator the last two years,” Summers said. “He’s been my right-hand man for a long time. He knows that defense in and out. He’ll probably do a better job than I did.”