Hollingsworth family has become good at balancing family, football

JACKSON – Bryant Hollingsworth is the head football coach at Lexington now, but he spent five years as an assistant before being promoted in 2008.

Before then – and before the invention of Hudl.com, a website used for exchanging game film between football teams and allows players to have their film readily available for scouts – Hollingsworth was usually the coach on staff involved in swapping film with the other team each Saturday morning preceding the next game on the following Friday night. This was a normal practice to give each team a chance to scout their upcoming opponent each week.

But his wife, Della Hollingsworth, embraced Bryant’s Saturday morning role and turned it into a positive for the family, which includes three daughters.

“We’d get up and go with him,” Della said. “We’d get up and go get breakfast somewhere and ride with him to wherever he had to go to trade film.

“Sometimes it was somewhere like in Hohenwald or a lot of times it was closer. But it would always get interesting when the playoffs would come around.”

Now that Bryant is the head coach, Della and their daughters have embraced the role as the head coach’s family.

“I don’t know what coaching is like without a supportive wife who’s all in with it,” Bryant said about his wife during an interview last fall. “I try to be at home as much as I can during the season and during the preseason, but she does a great job handling things at home when I’m with the team.

“And I’m glad she seems to like helping with the program.”

No matter what is going on with the Tigers football program, Della Hollingsworth is there.

Quarterback club meetings every Monday during the season, spring scrimmages in March, 7-on-7 scrimmages in July and of course Friday night games from August to November hardly ever happen without head coach Bryant Hollingsworth’s wife there watching.

“You’ve been around long enough to know about Lexington, and it’s like we’re a big football family,” Della Hollingsworth said about the program. “And (Bryant Hollingsworth) does a good job of making sure the coaching staff has plenty of family time during the season.”

Before Bryant was the head coach, the Lexington coaching staff would meet after each game on Friday late into the night and well into Saturday morning (which didn’t give Bryant a lot of time for sleep before those trips for family breakfast and film swapping). There would then be meetings on Sunday each week that would take up nearly the entire day. And the time he’d get home after practice during the week was never set in stone.

That’s not the case now.

“When the game is over on Friday night, he tells all the coaches to go home,” Della said. “Each one of them can look at film on Hudl on Saturday at their own pace, and then they come back together at 2 on Sunday afternoon to meet.

“Usually they’re done by 5. If it’s a team they’re not familiar with like in a playoff game, he might not get home until 6. And he might get home late every now and then during the week, but they’re good now about setting a schedule and sticking to it.”

Della said that’s not just for the Hollingsworth family’s benefit.

“All the coaches have families they want to get to, but these football players also have homework to do and tests to study for,” Della said.

She said balancing between football and raising three daughters between the ages of 12 and 16 isn’t difficult. There’s plenty of help to get things done on game days and in preseason, so she’s involved and helps coordinate things. But she’s not in a situation where she’s trying to get everything done.

“Kerry Mallard is our quarterback club president, and he does a great job of making things happen, and we all just do what we need to do to help get things going,” Della said.

There’s one daughter who plays middle school softball, whose games are usually on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday in the fall. She started playing travel ball on Saturdays last fall. Bryant was at almost every game.

“Now on those Saturday games he might’ve been there with his iPad hoping for wifi so he could watch a little film between innings, but he was there,” Della said. “And he does a good job of being husband and dad when he’s home.

“He helps with laundry and helps with dealing with the girls when that needs to be done. He takes care of dinner a lot when he can too because he loves to grill. There just may be some time where he’s not there during practice for a little while that I either take care of stuff while he’s gone or wait until he gets home and let him handle it.”

But Della said she’s glad to step in and help deal with things for the program behind the scenes.

“There are a lot of people who are involved in stuff behind the scenes that I doubt a lot of fans realize what all goes into it,” Della said. “But it’s fun being a part of all of it, and we’re glad to be a part of Tiger football.”

Reach Brandon Shields at bjshields@jacksonsun.com or at 425-9751. Follow him on Twitter @JSEditorBrandon or on Instagram at jacksonsunsports.