Former Tiger Chris Haddock Now Coaching Centreville High

Below is an article from www.fairfaxtimes.com on Chris Haddock.  Haddock graduated from Hampden Sydney in 1993. 

Sitting atop Centreville High School head football coach Chris Haddock's file cabinet is a relic from his former job as coach of the Fairfax High School football team.
It's a football emblazoned with a giant blue "F." The ball is signed by every player of the Fairfax team and reads "First win!"
"I'm not even sure what the score was," Haddock said. "But it was a pretty special moment to get that from the kids."...

The win, a 41-13 bruising of Washington-Lee High School on Sept. 14, 2007, signaled that the once-great, but then-struggling Rebels had a new direction for their program: up.
Fairfax finished 2-8 in the 2007 season, but since then, Haddock has turned around the program. The team finished 4-6 in 2008 and tallied a 6-5 record the next year, including a near upset of Lake Braddock Secondary School in the Northern Region playoffs.
Now, Haddock is in rebuilding mode at Centreville. And yes, he's setting aside space for another first-win football.
"Hopefully, it comes sooner rather than later," he said.
Coming into a struggling program is familiar ground for Haddock. Centreville's current situation isn't far off from what he faced at Fairfax in 2007.
In the past two seasons under Gerry Pannoni, the Wildcats won a total of four games. Pannoni's last two seasons also were the only two losing seasons in Centreville's 20-year football history.
"The situations are very similar," Haddock said. "Both are schools that have great tradition with football and have fallen on hard times. But I've found very quickly the ingredients are here for success."
Seniors Chance Roman, quarterback, and Chase Johnson, linebacker, are two of the Wildcats' team leaders. Both experienced Centreville's losing seasons as varsity players.
"We started to take the losses personally," Roman said. "People have been saying bad stuff about Centreville. People [say], 'Oh, it's the football team, you guys [stink].' We want to change that."
While Haddock's hiring was viewed as a step forward, Johnson said before the team could begin to rebuild, they needed to learn to trust their new coach.
"Last year, [there] wasn't a whole lot of trust with our coaches," he said. "Sometimes we didn't know what they were talking about, or they didn't make things clear to us."
The team is learning to trust a new offense and defense, which Roman said is "simpler" than the spread offense the Wildcats employed the past two seasons. The defense has gone back to the drawing board as well.
"We're going to make just a few adjustments after games," Johnson said. "We won't try to run a new defense every week. That's what we used to do and it was confusing."
If there's one place trust can be earned, it's on the field. During Centreville's Aug. 19 scrimmage with West Potomac, the Wildcats scored on the first play of the game.
"We went 80 yards for a touchdown and I think the kids were like, 'OK, this stuff works,'" Haddock said.
Haddock also has personal motivation to turn the Wildcats.
Born in Centreville but a 1988 graduate of Chantilly High School, Haddock has lived in the area for most of his adult life.
After graduating from Hampden-Sydney College in 1993, Haddock earned a master's degree at George Mason University and then spent time as a social studies teacher at Chantilly. In addition to teaching, he was a member of Chantilly's 1996 state title coaching staff and also coached baseball.
"Taking the Centreville job is exciting for me because I was born and raised here," he said. "Had Centreville been open when I was high-school age, I would have gone here."
Restoring Centreville's glory won't come easy.
Robinson Secondary School and Westfield High School are considered to be Northern Region title contenders, and the tough Concorde District schedule won't make Haddock's job any easier.
But the 17-year coach is confident his revitalized team is up to the challenge.
"I've always considered Centreville to be one of the elite programs in the area," he said. "Centreville football should be an elite program and will be again. Hopefully, sooner rather than later."