Coach Phillip Lolley spent his career working at every level in football, but he still considers himself a high school coach.

“That’s what got me started in this journey, is being a high school football coach and just the impact that you can make when it’s probably the most important time in any of our lives,” Lolley says. “When you start dealing with 14- to 18-year-old kids, you’re molding the leaders of our future.”

In 1988, Lolley became the first head coach at North Jackson High School when it was created through the consolidation of high schools in Bridgeport and Stevenson in Jackson County. Officials noted the merging of the 2 rival high school teams when Lolley was inducted into the Alabama High School Sports Hall of Fame earlier this year.

The former North Jackson coach was 1 of 12 inductees in the 2024 class selected by a committee chosen by the Alabama High School Athletic Directors and Coaches Association, which sponsors the Hall of Fame program along with the Alabama High School Athletic Association.

There was a lot of competitiveness between the Bridgeport and Stevenson teams—2 strong teams within 10 miles of each other. And, sure, there were challenges with consolidating the 2 schools, but Lolley says they were managed as they came up. He says he always tried to keep the politics of consolidation out of the team sport and insisted the players work to get along, regardless of what school they had previously attended. The students, he says, were eager to play on the new team.

“We wound up having close to 100 that first year,” Lolley says. “Everybody there wanted to play football for the North Jackson Chiefs.”

It didn’t take Lolley long to build a champion, as the Chiefs finished their 1993 season winning the Class 4A state title. Lolley remained in his position at North Jackson High School until 1999, compiling a 90-36 record in his 11 seasons.

Raised in Choctaw County, Lolley graduated from South Choctaw Academy in 1972 and graduated in 1977 from Livingston University, which later became the University of West Alabama. He earned a master’s degree from West Alabama in 1981.

Lolley began his high school teaching and coaching career at his alma mater in 1977. Lolley moved to Warrior Academy in 1978 and joined the faculty and coaching staff at Demopolis High School in 1982. Lolley also served as the head football and baseball coach for Stevenson High School, then took on the job at North Jackson.

Lolley says he would have remained at the high school level had the opportunity to join the Auburn University coaching staff not come his way in 1999. As a member of the Tigers’ coaching staff, he helped the Auburn team win the 2010 BCS National Championship. Lolley’s coaching career then took another turn when he was offered a coaching job with the Canadian Football League and was the linebacker coach for Edmonton’s 2015 Grey Cup championship team.

Winning games, he says, was clearly an important aspect of his job as a coach, but it wasn’t the only thing, especially when working with young athletes.

“There’s other things that are tremendously important besides just the game itself,” he says. “How you mold these young men and women—they think for themselves, but you show them the right way to do things.”

While high school, college, and professional football are different in their own ways, Lolley says his approach to coaching remained the same at all levels. Structure and discipline were always a part of his approach, which he feels made a difference in the lives of players.

Even at the professional level, he says, the athletes responded to the structure he provided because they were working to support their own families. Lolley says he was demanding, and he didn’t tolerate players who were not team-oriented.

Lolley says he believed in leading from the front by working as hard as his players.

“You work at it all the time,” Lolley says. “You get up every morning and you work at it.”

Now 69, Lolley lives on Lake Martin near Auburn. Retired other than coaching private football camps with aspiring players and watching game films, Lolley says he stays in touch with many of his former players from all levels he coached.

“I’ve been blessed,” he says.