End of an Aaron: George looks back on fond memories, great experiences in 21-year run at Trinity

Aaron George isn’t leaving coaching, but will be doing a much different type of it next school year. 

The past season marked the end of his 21-year run as Trinity Christian School’s head soccer coach and athletic director. 

After wrapping up his final season with a state runner-up finish in the AA boys state tournament earlier this month, he’s moving on to a brand new opportunity with Edward Jones… the investment banking company, though the name could easily pass for another private school. 

In June, he starts a 12-week training program to become licensed as a financial advisor, after which he’ll become a representative at one of the company’s local branches. 

Instead of goal-scoring, his work will now be about goal-setting for customers looking for guidance in attacking their financial future. The subject matter of investments, mutual funds and retirement plans will differ from the nuts and bolts of soccer, though the core philosophy of the two professions is remarkably similar when it comes to the skills in strategic planning, training and motivation needed to be successful. 

“Basically you’re coaching people up with their money, building rapport, building relationships with your prospects, your clients, and finding out what their needs are and what you feel like the best route to go forward is based on their goals,” George said. “It’s about finding out what you as my client wants, and me helping you navigate how to get there with what we have to work with, and trying to formulate a plan and getting into believing that plan.” 

His departure ends one of Trinity’s longest and winningest tenures for a coach in any sport, and leaves behind some fairly large shoes for an athletic program he was instrumental in making go.

“Coach George’s impact at Trinity Christian School for the last 20-plus years is immeasurable,” said outgoing TCS headmaster Jeremy Blackstock. “Years ago, Coach George was given the tremendous responsibility of pointing student-athletes to Christ, working in the athletic department and maintaining our beautiful campus. It is fair to say he lived up to that calling admirably.” 

He, nor his family, will be uprooting from the Emerald City or the Crusader nation, though closing out a long and prosperous chapter in his current capacity this spring has brought some emotional goodbyes. 

“My soccer banquet was rough, and telling my team with a few weeks left in the season, man, that was the hardest thing I’ve had to do out here,” George said. “Just looking those kids in the face and realizing, dude, this is it.” 

A long journey at Trinity began way back in 2003, when George and wife Cat moved to Dublin while preparing to welcome firstborn daughter Kardyn to their young family. 

Like most things in the Lord’s will, the destination was not one they envisioned turning into as much a home as the places they both grew up, Aaron from Charleston, West Virginia and Cat from Peachtree City. 

The couple had met while attending and playing soccer at King College, a Presbyterian school in Bristol, Tenn. After dating as seniors, they were married not long after graduation. 

His connection to Trinity originated with a link between Pete Beers, his high school coach at Cross Lanes Christian School, and then TCS headmaster Rick Johnson, the two having become acquainted in the late ’90s while the latter was athletic director and men’s basketball coach at Tennessee Temple University. 

A few years later, in 2002, Johnson was just taking over at Trinity, and working on filling multiple coaching vacancies on the Crusaders’ athletic staff. Beers referred him to George, who would be offered the job, but declined it, at the time unintrigued by the prospect of moving to a small and unfamiliar town four states away, and Cat even less so. 

Both parties, though, would experience stubborn fortunes in their attempts to go a different direction over the following year. 

Johnson was unable to find the right fit for the opening, and coached the soccer teams himself that first season. George, meanwhile, continued his first post-college job in an entry-level role with Wells Fargo, and made little further progress toward finding another opportunity to make the desired jump into high school athletics. 

Johnson believes the doors, on either side, remained open for a reason. 

“It was providential,” he said. 

The two made contact again later that school year, and revisited the possibility that had been raised back during the summer. 

“At first, it was like, there’s no way we’re going here,” George said. “Then about three or four months later, after the Lord had worked on our heart a little bit and kind of circled us back around, it was still open. By God’s grace, no one had taken it yet. I reached back out, and he said, yeah, we’re still looking.” 

The move was still somewhat reluctant for both, who figured Dublin would be a mere stepping stone on the path to other places and things. Cat, he recalls, came “kicking and screaming.” 

“It took a while for her to embrace Dublin, but it grew on her, to the point where, now, she can’t imagine living anywhere else,” George said. “Loves the community, loves this school, the people in the area. There’s so much to embrace and love about Dublin. But I didn’t think we were going to last long.” 

Coaching proved to be some territory just as uncharted for a 23-year old doing it for the first time, and quickly figuring out how little soccer expertise mattered compared to one’s ability to teach, communicate and motivate. 

“As a young coach, I had goals, and I didn’t hit a one,” George said. “I played sports, and I was successful at sports, but coaching is very different… I had a lot to learn early on. I think it took a while for me to learn obviously where I’m at today.”

A lot rubbed off from fellow Trinity coaches he had the chance to work around, early on Trinity’s two-time state champion head football coach Steve Price, who passed along valuable principles of organization and leadership. 

George’s first assistant coach, bi-vocational pastor Todd Bishop, remains a mentor to this day. 

“He and I talk weekly,” George said. “He’s one of the greatest role models I’ve had in my life. Outside of coaching, he’s counseled my wife and I. He’s prayed over me, and poured into my kids. He’s just a true brother in Christ for sure.” 

More recently, George has brought on longtime local soccer coach Eric Cannada as his assistant. 

Their partnership began somewhat informally after Cannada had retired as head soccer coach at Dublin High School, and volunteered to help out in various ways around the program while son Jon-Luke was a Crusader player. He’d mostly chip in by filming games, but also helped run practice for either the girls or boys team when George was traveling with the other (the two, at that time, competed in separate regions). 

Though Cannada never intended to become his right-hand man, that support role – pausing briefly after Jon-Luke graduated but re-starting once Kate began playing in middle and high school – ultimately brought him back onto the sidelines. 

At first, it was only in a pinch during games like one at Westfield when George was unexpectedly red-carded, and had to call him down from the press box to take over. Continued involvement, and an increasingly strong sense of chemistry that developed between the two, turned Cannada into a trusted advisor. 

“It just kind of grew and grew, and all of a sudden I looked back and it’s been 13 or 14 years,” he said. “I just kind of stuck around.” 

The coaches, whose families shared just as close an off-field friendship, would over the years become two peas in a pod, with complementary personalities and a shared philosophy that often made them interchangeable. 

“We had similar styles, and man I learned a lot from him,” George said. “He brought a tenacity and just kind of elevated the program out here, just from his influence and knowledge of the game.” 

Cannada, who will also be stepping down to call it a soccer career with this program transition, is grateful for the chance the opportunity afforded him, after coaching his oldest son Briceton at Dublin, to do the same with his youngest two. 

“That’s something I can really thank him for, because it would’ve been easy for him to say no,” he said. “He’s not egotistical. If I wanted to say something, he let me. I could say what I wanted, and usually we agreed, so we were both pretty much saying the same things, it was just a different voice.” 

In 21 seasons coaching both girls and boys varsity teams, George would compile a record of 440 wins, 250 losses and 24 draws. His teams won six region titles, three by each, and appeared seven times in the state semifinals. 

Of the five girls teams to reach the last four, two advanced to finish state runner-up. All three boys squads went on to the title match, though just one – in 2009 – was able to win the last one, proving just how tough a championship is to get. 

That team was perhaps the least likely of candidates to do it, as a severe underdog to a Pinecrest club that was easily better on paper, and probably was on the field that particular day, as well. 

But the Crusaders somehow hung with them, trailing by just a goal until a game-tying score in the last minute of regulation, then sneaking home a winner late in overtime to pull out a shocking 2-1 victory. 

“It’s one of those games where if I just slid the stat sheet to you, you’d say there’s no way Trinity won this thing,” George said. “The stats were completely dominant in Pinecrest’s favor, but that’s the beauty and the curse of sports, depending on which side you fall on.” 

This was also the first year since the GISA’s move of boys middle and high school soccer seasons to spring, after playing them in the fall, separately from girls’ in springtime, up until that point. 

“I’m not sure how you would do that today with football,” Geoge said. “It’s mind-blowing to me how we did it back then.” 

Upon coming to Trinity in ’03, George served as head coach of teams at both levels in the separate seasons. Starting with the unique ’08-09 school year, when boys soccer was played in both the fall and spring, he took over handling the varsity teams only, as Trinity hired separate coaches to oversee the middle school programs in an arrangement that remains today. 

“I was not a fan of moving everything to spring,” George said. “And then we win it all, and I think, maybe I’m OK with this.” 

George was named region coach of the year seven times, and state coach of the year twice. 

Plenty more teams on the boys and girls sides made some nice runs in the years since, though none would be able to capture a coveted second state crown. 

Each of the last three seasons has brought some close brushes. The Lady Crusaders reached the semis in ’22 and ’24, with a heartbreaking loss in between to Westminster Christian on penalty kicks to fall just short of the title in a lone finals appearance last year. 

Trinity’s boys reached back-to-back championship games, also being denied in a shootout in ’23 before falling a goal short of the Lions in regulation, 3-2, in a rematch earlier this month.

“We came close to winning one a couple of times,” George said. “I hoped we’d get at least one.” 

He was tapped by Johnson to take on the added role of athletic director in 2010, working in tandem with cohort Krista Meadows for a decade before the longtime Crusader softball and track coach left for a new opportunity in 2020.  

Since that point, he’s handled most of the position’s ever-increasing duties solo, with some support from various helping hands including Cat’s, as athletic secretary for several years. 

The tasks of keeping athletic fields cut, lined, watered and trimmed were in themselves “a massive job.” Other of George’s non-soccer responsibilities have included running scoreboards and shot clocks, stocking concession stands, serving as a game administrator and solving any other issues coming up at random. 

“He is so organized,” Cannada said. “He takes care of his teams, of course, because he has to. But seeing him take care of the fields, the other coaches, the region meetings, all the little things, it’s going to be hard to replace all the stuff he did, because a lot of stuff, people don’t even realize he was doing and taking care of.”  

As a whole, Trinity’s programs have sustained an overall tradition of success under George’s oversight, though their competitive standing has fluctuated with reclassifications bouncing them upward to AAA, the GISA’s largest classification, in 12 of the last 16 years. 

An expansion of the association, coinciding with its rebrand as the GIAA, in 2022 placed the Crusaders back in AA, where they were once again a big small school, rather than a small big one. And that transition has brought about a major renaissance over multiple sports during the last two seasons, which have featured 21 different region championships, multiple state titles and almost as many finishes as runner-up. 

“Maybe we got spoiled a little bit because of the success we had as a AA school,” George said. “We had some dry years overall, but these last few years, we’ve kind of rallied.” 

He was also named the GIAA AA Athletic Director of the Year by the GACA for 2023. 

Most memorable among non-soccer experiences in 21 years at Trinity start for George with some seasons of football dominance going back to the Price era. 

More recently, a definite highlight was witnessing the Crusaders’ 2023 basketball squad – with son Will as an all-state guard – pull off their improbable upset of Central Fellowship to claim the first boys state title in school history. 

“I loved all the athletics out here,” he said. “It wasn’t like I was a one- or two-sport guy. I embraced it all. I pulled for our teams all the time. I wanted everybody to have success.” 

Despite what some may assume, George considers himself the last thing from a soccer nut, and admits that even though he’s played or coached it most of his life, the sport ranks behind others on his list of favorites. 

It, alongside basketball and track and field, made up his three-sport mix at Cross Lanes, the tiny institution where he came up before talent for the beautiful game led to an opportunity at the college level. 

It’s the calling to coach, more than the sport itself, that made his job satisfying. 

“I do love soccer, and I love the fact that I was able to coach kids,” he said. “I hope I had an impact on kids.” 

Hard work, a value George credits being instilled by his parents, has been in his DNA from an early age. 

Growing up, he and his younger brother made jobs of cutting lawns and running newspaper delivery routes, both morning and afternoon, for years between middle school and high school, and even into college, when the collection of part-time gigs also grew to include a shift working in a local coal mine three days per week, around classes the other two. 

He was also the oldest of six siblings, and often the de-facto third adult in the household, giving him good bit of experience working with kids before he even finished being one himself.

All those influences, plus a love for sports, drove him in the direction of the coaching profession, and a chance to directly and indirectly influence hundreds of players and students. 

“His servant’s heart, I think, is paramount to success in education, whether it’s teaching, coaching or administrating,” Johnson said. “I thought he really demonstrated that throughout my time there. And I have no doubt that it continued for him, to spend 21 years. Watching his family grow there, and develop, and of course the impact they’ve had on the athletic program has been a blessing to Trinity as well.” 

There comes a point in every coach’s career when it’s time to seek out a new challenge, though this one, for George, will take him into a much different field of expertise. 

His college degree in business, with a focus of sport management, and the very early work in the banking industry provided a foundation that made a return to the field realistic if the need ever came to do so.

“I got a little taste of it early, but my heart was still athletics and kids,” George said. 

This, another of many doors to open over the years, had presented itself multiple times, and did again late last year when he began to seriously consider a change. 

As some long conversations were taking place with both his family and prospective employer, George also reached out to some trusted friends. 

“I needed my prayer warriors, because if this is gonna happen, I need some people praying for me,” he said. “I didn’t want to be influenced by the outside. I wanted this to be, if this is supposed to be where I’m supposed to go, I didn’t want to be influenced by anything but God opening and closing doors and me and my wife praying through it and sorting through it, and seeing if this is really what’s going down.” 

After all was said and done, the signs were clear that this was the right time. 

A number of factors played into the decision, one of the biggest being the strain of handling everything that makes up his job’s demanding day-to-day workload. But the Lord’s leading, he said, was the biggest piece of the equation. 

Forging into a drastically different part of the working world, and getting the hang of a brand new business, will be one of the many adjustments, not the least of which is wearing a tie to work a good bit more often. 

“It’s going to be different, learning a new thing and being in an office all day,” George said. “I’m excited, and looking forward to it… I do know I’ll have to dress well beyond what I’ve done here the last 21 years.” 

But each member of the George family will remain a familiar face around the Trinity campus, as his three youngest continue middle and high school, and play soccer and basketball, among other sports. 

Going forward, he plans to be available to help out the programs – as a parent and volunteer – in any way needed, but will leave the coaching to whoever follows him in the role. 

“I want the next coach, for it to be their show, their road, their philosophy,” he said. “I don’t want to be involved whatsoever, it’s just a good, clean, healthy break.” 

Trinity’s plans for the soccer program remain up in the air, though George will be handing off athletic director duties to incoming Crusader head football coach Bruce Lane, who will have his predecessor’s assistance and expertise only a phone call away as long as needed. 

“I’ll be out here as much as I can be out here,” George said. “I’m still going to want things to run smoothly out here just because I’ve been a part of it so long. I’m about presenting well, will still do my part when I can, and will do my part to make this place special.” 

But attending a Trinity soccer game as a fan will definitely be a different feeling. 

“I think it’s going to be weird the first time,” he said. “It’s going to be nice to have zero responsibility… I’m excited about it. I’m still excited to watch these kids play. Mine, I’ve still got at least eight more years out here, watching our kids finish up.” 

Finishing out a last soccer and athletic season this spring has called for plenty of reminiscence and reflection, on both the part of George and his colleagues and former players. 

“You could fill pages about what Coach George has meant to the Trinity Christian School community and what he has done for so many,” Blackstock said. “The constant presence of Coach George on this campus will be missed, but we rejoice that God is leading him in this opportunity, and he will still be a regular fixture in the Trinity community as Maddie, Jag, and Avery continue at Trinity Christian School.”

He feels that the emotions of send-offs by his team, after a final home game in the boys’ state semifinal against Gatewood, and the school, with a reception earlier this week, have been ones he’s been able to handle well. 

The kind words and best wishes have been much appreciated, though George admits he doesn’t feel deserving of all the cake, punch, speeches and cards. 

“I don’t like the spotlight,” he said. “I like being behind the scenes, doing what I do, doing what’s expected. I did my job, that’s what I did out here. 

“I get it, it’s part of it, but it’s been nice to read comments online and get texts and feel like you’ve had somewhat of an impact, like these kids have impacted me. And the people I’ve gotten to work with, they’ve had an impact on my life. It’s been nice, not necessary, but definitely nice.” 

He makes a point of expressing gratitude to Cat for bearing with him in a life revolving around athletics that’s not an easy one for a spouse to manage. 

The blended role of husband, dad and coach offers plenty of blessings, chief among them the chance to coach your own kids, but also some difficulties in the overall balancing act.

Johnson, as a longtime coach himself, knows well the stress that all of that  can place not just on a coach individually, but his or her family. 

“Your time is consumed with so many things,” he said. “To be able to maintain that balance like he’s done, and with Cat’s help, it’s a blessing. It’s something that I know they’ve got to be proud of as far as their relationship, but they’ve also got to be understanding of the witness that it’s been to other people.

“For students and young people to see how he and Cat have led their lives, that just has had to have had a tremendous impact. For them to have this relationship that they’ve spent incredible hours to build the program, continue to develop not just soccer, but the athletic program, and to have her right there by his side, is just a great testimony.” 

In the end, the rewarding takeaway of seeing athletes enjoy fruits of their labor on the field, and go on to lead great lives in the years after their high school experience, has made George’s journey in coaching 21 years well-spent. 

“To be able to watch your players have success, that’s what it’s all about, seeing them rewarded for the work they put in,” he said. “Everybody I’ve gotten to coach is special, and has made this trip worthwhile. I’ve tried to show them that I love them, that I care for them.”