Slaughter New Coach At Soddy-Daisy

It took Soddy-Daisy longer than expected to find a new football coach.

But the wait might have been worth it for the Trojans.

Red Bank offensive coordinator E.K. Slaughter was announced as the new head football coach at Soddy-Daisy High on Thursday.

Slaughter comes from the Lions where he helped to engineer one of the top offensive teams in the state the past three seasons.

“I’m very excited to be going to be in a community that loves football,” he said.

Slaughter said this is the right thing for him to do at the right time. He said he understood that the Trojans and Lions are rivals, but he leaves behind a lot of players, friends and coaches at Red Bank.

“First, beyond the rivalry there are people at Red Bank that I care about,” Slaughter said. “I loved working with them and will always treasure those relationships. I have all the respect in the world for Red Bank.”

Slaughter, 31, is a Notre Dame and UT-Chattanooga. He first coached under Lamar Brown at Notre Dame and was an assistant at Soddy-Daisy under Glenn Ryans while doing his student teaching at Soddy-Daisy.

Slaughter coached one year under Ron Wheeler at Northwest Whitfield in Tunnel Hill, Ga. before coaching with Todd Windham at Hixson and the past three years with Tim Daniels at Red Bank.

He has worked both as an offensive and defensive coordinator. Nevertheless, expect his offense at Soddy-Daisy to be wide open.

“We will run some from the spread (formation) for sure,” he said. We want to develop quarterbacks and run a multiple offense.”Slaughter said he was going to work to round up the people who care about Soddy-Daisy and the football team.

He replaces the legendary Tom Weathers at Soddy-Daisy. Weathers stepped down following the 2007 season. He was offered an assistant coaching job at the new Heritage High School in Catoosa County. However, when his former Red Bank player Bill Price was named the head coach at the new Signal Mountain High Weathers decided to join his staff as an assistant.

Slaughter’s wife Arlene is seven months pregnant with the couple’s first child.

“It’s a boy and his name is Brayden,” the proud daddy said.