Back at Mount de Sales, legendary coach Slocum seeks resurgence

As soon as you pull up to Mount de Sales’ sports facilities at Cavalier Fields in west Macon, it’s easy to see the impact Robert Slocum had on the program.

For starters, the coach’s name is on the side of the field house in broad, white lettering.

Once you go inside, you’ll find the trophies he’s won — a state championship in 1996, some coach of the year awards and more. He also has a plaque showing him in his football uniform from his playing days, denoting his induction into Mount de Sales’ hall of fame.

The reverence is well-earned. Slocum won 134 games with the Cavaliers as head coach and many more as a standout rusher. He reached the state title game twice and won it once against a local rival, the Tattnall Trojans, as the head coach. That trophy came in addition the ones he snagged as a player in the 1970s.

One thing that might not be immediately apparent, though, is that Robert Slocum has returned.

The legendary head coach signed on with the Cavaliers again in March. The man who led Mount de Sales’ football team into battle for decades is back at the helm.

But make no mistake — this return to his alma mater is no glamorous trip of nostalgia for Slocum.

“This team has had some tough times recently,” the Cavaliers legend said. “We want to change that.”

How it happened

While Slocum’s coaching days at Mount de Sales ended in 2013, he remained heavily involved with the school until he left entirely in 2021. He then worked with the GISA — which became the GIAA for the 2022-23 year — in multiple roles.

“I never really fully stepped away from Mount de Sales, though,” Slocum said. “The AD would still call me and pick my brain for things. I never snoop or pry, but if they ask my opinion, I’ll give it to them.”

This meant that when the school began a football coaching search earlier this year, it was an easy decision to call Slocum to ask for advice. He gave some names. Mount de Sales thought they had the right candidate in place, but the hiring fell through just two days before a contract was supposed to be signed, Slocum said.

From there, the phone calls started to have a different tone.

“They asked if I would be interested (in being the head coach). I told them, ‘Let’s just take it a couple more weeks. … If it doesn’t work out, I can give you a couple years,’” Slocum said. “They knew I wasn’t in it for the long haul.”

And yet, when other potential coaches recommended by Slocum didn’t work out, the lifetime Cavalier answered the call.

As he told Mount de Sales himself, Slocum doesn’t think he’ll be in the head coaching role for more than a few seasons, certainly not as long as his original coaching stint with the Cavs. But there’s work to be done, and he agreed to be the man for the job.

A long road

The Cavaliers have struggled on the gridiron of late in an oft-shifting football landscape, failing to secure a winning season since the 2020 campaign under Keith Hatcher, who is now the coach at ACE. Even that was a 6-5 effort — Mount de Sales football has achieved double-digit wins just twice since the turn of the century, and one of those occasions was when Slocum was still the head coach.

The Cavaliers have gone 2-8, 3-8 and 1-9 in their past three seasons.

“I like this program. I want to see it do well,” Slocum said. “But it’s a hard sell because of the way it’s been going. We’ve had seniors decide not to play because of their past experience. … That’s what we’re fighting against now, is changing the culture.”

“People might think we’re rivals, but we developed a relationship where we’re friends. On Friday nights we might not be, but the next day … people would see us getting breakfast together and give us that weird look, like, ‘What are you up to?’” Slocum said of Hester. 

Their relationship was so close that when Hester returned to Tattnall last year, he picked up the phone and punched in a familiar number.

“(Barney) approached me about coming over and helping him,” Slocum said. “I told him: ‘Barney, the people at Mount de Sales would burn my house down.’ But I’ve learned a lot from Barney. We’re friends.”

Friends or not, that matchup against Tattnall is one of many fierce rivalries in town that Mount de Sales wants to be competitive in again. It won’t be all rosy for Slocum in his return to these halls, but his dedication to the program might offer an opening to turn things around.

Slocum went to Mount de Sales himself. So did his sisters and brothers, his son and daughter. The Cavaliers hired a basketball coach this spring as well, one who just so happens to be the star quarterback from Slocum’s state championship team, Michael Walton.

There’s also familiar faces on opposite sidelines. The man Slocum so often clashed with in championship games of epic proportions, Tattnall legend Barney Hester, is back with the Trojans as well. 

All that time spent as a Cavalier, he hopes, will impress his mindset onto the young players donning the blue-and-gold this season. 

Slocum’s love for Mount de Sales will have to catch on with the roster quickly. Because of how the hiring process played out, the head coach couldn’t have spring practices and was busy finding a coaching staff instead.

“Now we’re just learning names, seeing what things we might need to improve and things like that,” Slocum said. 

Ultimately, Slocum’s situation boils down to that of a legend trying to rekindle a program’s fire, one that’s been doused for decades. He loves to coach

“I don’t relish it,” Slocum said. “It’s like I’m new again. There’s new formations, they might have added a wrinkle here and there.

 “But at the end of the day, you still got to block. You still got to tackle. It’s the same game.”