A Family Man
John Adams poured everything into coaching football at Woodstown and it showed in the Wolverines’ performance. Over the last few seasons, the Wolverines made history capped by the 2023 campaign when Woodstown won the first sectional title in school history.
Now he is leaving with the program in good shape. Earlier this winter Adams resigned as head coach for the reason many often leave—to spend more time with his family.
Adams loved coaching. He was the head coach for 14 seasons. A 2000 graduate of Pitman, Adams attended Temple, where he was originally a walk-on for the football team before eventually earning a scholarship. After college he was an assistant at Pitman for one season and then served four years as a Woodstown assistant before being named head coach in 2010.
He will remain a math teacher at Woodstown, but wants to spend more time with his family, especially watching his own children in activities. He has a 4-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son who are beginning to get into activities and Adams wanted to be there for them.
“People used to ask me how long I would coach, and I said ‘I will coach until my kids start getting into things and I will re-evaluate,’” Adams told Southjersey.com.
The evaluation led to the decision that this was the best time to move on from coaching.
What Adams is happy about is where the program has gone and what lies ahead.
The Wolverines earned sectional championship appearances in 2021 and 2023, with the aforementioned title this past season. In addition to winning this past season’s South Jersey Group 1 title, Woodstown also captured the West Jersey Football League’s Diamond Division, considered among the best small-school (enrollment-wise) leagues in South Jersey.
“I feel in my heart I made the right decision and even though we had a really good group of seniors leaving us, there are some really talented incoming seniors who can handle the transition like this,” Adams said. “When we played Penns Grove before the playoffs, we had eight underclassmen on the field.”
A high school football coach’s job lasts year-round. Not soon after the season, the weight-lifting program is in place. The team also has workouts in the summer. In Woodstown’s case, that was three days per week.
There is also a considerable time helping those players with recruiting.
Adams wasn’t complaining about the hours, he knew it was part of the job. It’s just that he didn’t feel he could do both the football program and his family justice at this point.
He leaves with a 91-56 career record. Over the past three seasons, Woodstown was 26-8. Among the reasons for the success over his 14 years, was great stability.
Three assistants, Zach Garron, Steve Ordog and Frank Costello, have been with him since his first season as head coach.
“We had stability, a good connection with the youth program and the kids coming in knew what we expected, and they knew our offense and defense,” he said. “Over the years, we were able to do some pretty special things and hopefully those who participated will remember that for the rest of their lives.”
Photo: After Woodstown beat Salem 20-14 in the final Thanksgiving game between the two schools in 2021, OL-DL Matthew Telsey and coach John Adam’s display the trophy for winning the game.
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Author: Marc Narducci
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