St. James tabs Stockton as new head football coach
Hayden Stockton becomes the new head football coach at St. James, replacing Larry Ware, who was an interim coach this past season. (Tim Gayle)
By TIM GAYLE
New St. James football coach Hayden Stockton promises a Trojan team that will pay attention to detail and translate that focus into wins.
“I think it’s being meticulous about how I want to do things,” Stockton said. “We’re going to dress a certain way, do things a certain way. The details, I think, have been lost because of change. And the details are fixing to come back. The goal is to not be beat mentally because we’re too smart. We’ve got too many good kids to lose a game mentally.”
Stockton, the Trojans’ strength and conditioning coach the last six months, was introduced on Wednesday afternoon as the head football coach.
“We’re really excited about what he’s going to bring to this program,” St. James head of school Larry McLemore said, “and this was a very easy decision with lots of really qualified applicants. We had a number of great coaches to look at. We talked to several applicants about their vision for the football program. Even with so many good candidates, it was very clear to see that Coach Hayden Stockton was the right man to lead our football program.”
Stockton was hired last spring by former coach Aubrey Blackwell and will now replace Blackwell, who left days later to become the offensive coordinator at Spanish Fort. After Blackwell’s departure, Stockton was a potential candidate to become the Trojans’ head coach, but McLemore made the decision to let athletic director Larry Ware serve as the interim head coach and postpone a coaching search until December.
“We wanted to do due diligence when we interviewed people for this job,” Ware said, “and we didn’t want it to be a short process. We needed to take our time and get it right.”
The school had more than 60 applicants for the job but Ware said Stockton was a logical choice to lead the Trojan football program.
“He’s dependable, he’s reliable, he’s resourceful,” Ware said. “He has a lot of characteristics about himself you would almost look at as military. He’s very methodical in the things that he does. His strength and conditioning program has been really good for all of our athletes. That just shows the detail that he puts into what he does.”
The Double Springs native was a walk-on for Hall of Fame coach Gene Stallings at Alabama, breaking into a starting role as punter in 1995 and 1996, averaging 40.9 yards per punt and 42.3 yards per punt respectively, in his final two years.
He got his first taste of coaching as a strength and conditioning coach and a linebackers coach at Jacksonville State in 1998-2000 before moving into the high school ranks with Bill Clark’s Prattville squad (2001-04) as a linebackers coach and special teams coach. He served as defensive coordinator at Clay-Chalkville (2005-07) and Stanhope Elmore (2007-09) before accepting a head coaching position at West End, going 3-7 in 2009, 4-7 in 2010 and 3-7 in 2011
He moved on to Enterprise as a defensive coordinator and then took a job at Central-Phenix City, first for Jamie DuBose (2018 and 2019) and then for Patrick Nix (2020).
A year later, he was the head coach at Marbury, coaching the Bulldogs to a 4-7 record in both 2021 and 2022. He spent the next two years as an assistant coach at Greenville before retiring from the public school field and taking a job at St. James.
Stockton, sounding a lot like his college coach, promised the Trojans would have success if they followed his work ethic.
“On the other side of ‘hard’ is where your dreams come true,” he said. “Today, I’m going to tell you right now: We’re going to have something that’s going to be hard. On the other side of ‘hard’ is exactly what you’re looking for. You just can’t cheat.”
The Trojans won the 2022 Class 3A state championship under Jimmy Perry and was a championship contender under Neal Posey in 2023, but the talent level dropped the past two years as Blackwell went 6-5 in 2024 and Ware went 3-7 in 2025.
“I think stability is the first thing we’ve got to have,” Stockton said. “The last four years, it’s been four different coaches that have been here. We’re looking to bring in a few guys that have been around the game for a while that are familiar with this area … and stabilizing the ship a little bit and start getting our kids in a situation where they can win. Uncertainty creates a lot of doubt, which creates a lot of people not wanting to play.”
Stockton said he needed to talk to McLemore before discussing possible staff changes, but the lifelong defensive specialist promised a different defensive scheme in 2026.
“That is something we’re going to talk about,” he said. “We haven’t fully discussed it. There are some people here on staff we’re probably going to keep. We’re going to have to change everything we’re doing (defensively) because my terminology is about to go into everything.”