Blackmon busy filling in staff with veterans

New Enterprise High School head football coach Ben Blackmon is filling out his staff and has added three more assistant coaches.

Tony Stonicher has been named his defensive coordinator. Stonicher is rejoining Blackmon after serving as the defensive coordinator at Spanish Fort for the previous six years and has coached with Blackmon for 11 years. He is a veteran defensive coordinator serving in that capacity for over 38 years in Alabama high schools. Prior to coaching at Spanish Fort, he served as defensive coordinator at Gulf Shores High School from April 2011 until June 2015 and as defensive coordinator at Robert E. Lee High School in Montgomery from June 2005 until June 2011.

His longest stint at a school was 19 years at Greenville High School as defensive coordinator from June 1986 until June 2005. During that time he helped lead the Tigers to state championships in 1987 and 1994 as well as a competing for the 5A championship in 1993.

Stonicher was the defensive coordinator at Spanish Fort when the Toros won the 6A State Championship in 2015. He had previously been on Blackmon’s staff at Gulf Shores.

In 2016, Stonicher was named Class 6A Assistant Coach of the Year by the Alabama Football Coaches Association. Overall he has been a part of seven state championships during his coaching career and 12 region championships.

Stonicher is a native of Sardis, attended Auburn University and then transferred to Jacksonville State University and received his bachelor’s degree there.

Chuck Dunn will take over the strength and conditioning program as well as coaching the linebackers. Dunn is also a veteran coach with 27 years of experience at both the high school and collegiate level. He has been the assistant head coach and defensive line coach at Ariton High School since 2017.

Dunn began his coaching career as a student assistant at Troy University from 1994-96. He coached defensive backs at Charles Henderson High School in Troy from 1997-99. Returning to the college ranks in 2000, he worked under Coach Larry Blakeney for two years until 2002. Upon completion of his graduate assistantship, Dunn joined Bill Clark and the Prattville High School staff from 2002-2008 where he coached linebackers. During his tenure at Prattville, the Lions won three state championships and seven region championships.

In 2008, he joined Joey Jones on the staff of the University of South Alabama working with the outside linebackers and assisting with the strength and conditioning program until 2011. In 2011 he coached at Oxford High School then returned to Charles Henderson for one season in 2012 serving as the defensive coordinator and linebackers coach.

He joined Clark again on the staff at Jacksonville State University as the inside linebackers coach in 2013 then moved to UAB with Clark in 2014. He served as the Blazers’ inside linebackers coach until 2017 when he came back to the high school ranks at Ariton. He is a native of Troy and attended Pike Liberal Arts.

Cole Weeks, a native of Freeport, Fla., is coming from Troy University where he was an offensive assistant coach for three years. He will be the Wildcat quarterbacks coach. Weeks was a quarterback at Southern Miss from 2011-14 where he received his bachelor’s degree in 2014.

He began his coaching career as a graduate assistant working with quarterbacks at Southern Miss in 2015. In 2016 he coached quarterbacks at Jones County Junior College before moving to Auburn University as a graduate assistant in 2017. Weeks primarily worked with the quarterbacks at Auburn during his stint there including Jarrett Stidham. He earned his master’s degree at Auburn and moved to Troy with Chip Lindsey in 2019. Weeks has coached the running backs and tight ends at Troy for the last two years.