GAINESVILLE — Gainesville High athletics continued to fill its ranks this week when Scott DeGraff was introduced as the Red Elephants' new wrestling coach.
DeGraff joins Gainesville from Chestatee High, where he helped coach the program he once competed for as a 2008 War Eagle graduate. He replaces Shane Millwood, who resigned the position following the 2017-18 season.
"I'm excited to be here; it's something that happened really fast," DeGraff said. "Chestatee is a place I've been my entire life, but I have an opportunity here, and it's a great opportunity, and I'm thankful for (Gainesville athletic director Adam) Lindsey and all the staff here, and I'm ready to hit the ground running."
DeGraff is steeped in Hall County wrestling and is looking to make that experience count with the Red Elephants.
"I've worked with some great coaches. Right now I work with coach (Kyle) Barr at Chestatee; he's a great guy," DeGraff said. "We also have (longtime Gilmer coach) Sam Snider on staff over there, so I've learned a lot from both of those guys. I've coached for coach (Carey) Whitlow, who was at North Hall for some time, coach (Paul) White who's been at North Hall for a while, so I've been molded by some really good coaches. And I'm hoping to use those experiences to help build the program here.
"Wrestling is continuing to grow here in Hall County. The sport continues to get bigger bigger; I know there was a time when wrestling wasn't as big, but I'm glad to see the community rally around wrestling."
With that in mind, DeGraff, who starts in August, already has big plans for Gainesville.
"One of the things we talked about first and foremost is I want to get a youth program started here," DeGraff said. "They've got six feeder schools, and there's no sense in not having a place for those kids to be able to wrestle. We'rd going to continue to develop the middle school program. I know they've been doing a great job there, so we want to continue to recruit and love on those kids and hopefully transpire that at the high school. And then I'm going to go out in the halls and recruit like crazy and see if we can make this thing work."
Gainesville has recently hired new head coaches for football (Heath Webb from Winder-Barrow), baseball (promoted assistant Adam Miller) and softball (Katie Jo Gentry from Stephens County).
