On Wednesday, a 14-year-old suspected gunman walked into Apalachee High School in Winder, killing two fellow students and two teachers. He also injured nine others who are expected to fully recover from their physical injuries.
One of the teachers killed was Ricky Aspinwall, a defensive coordinator for the Wildcats’ football team. He leaves behind a wife and two young daughters.
Apalachee, which is just an hour to an hour and a half away from Raider Stadium, has been a region opponent for Habersham Central High School football every year since 2016, with exception of the 2020 and 2021 seasons when both teams played as non-region opponents.
“It was, I think, eye opening for our guys,” HCHS Head Coach Benji Harrison. “You seem to hear a lot about those type of things, but they never really hit close to home. This one does.”
Harrison said the shooting affected his players and his staff.
His players, according to the head coach, “had a different look in their eye” as he and the coaching staff discussed the incident with them.
“Coaches try to be, in the school building, problem solvers. That’s what we do,” Harrison said. That’s what Coach (Aspinwall) was doing down there. He was trying to fix a problem and found himself in a bad situation that was just terrible.”
Harrison said his conversation with his team started with reminding them all that “life is very fragile and you don’t know what each day holds.” He also challenged his players to act out of kindness to all they encounter.
“That kid was in a very dark place and there’s kids like that in every school. I challenged our kids to be that kid that reaches out to that young person that nobody is talking to. Be kind, be nice. You may say the perfect thing to that kid on a day where he was feeling really bad about life,” Harrison said. “I challenged our kids to be nice to everybody that they come across because you never know what people are going through.”
The head coach said his fellow coaches were mostly expressing feelings of shock and “just realizing that guy was doing what we do every day, trying to do the right thing and trying to keep kids safe.”
Harrison said some of the coaching staff knew Aspinwall, but not well. Many of them know people who did know him well.
“In (the coaching) world, we compete against each other really hard, but there’s a camaraderie among coaches that’s unique to a lot of other professions,” Harrison said. “You feel for his family because we know the sacrifices that coaches’ families make anyway and for that family to make the ultimate sacrifice while their dad, her husband, was trying to do right by young people, it really is eye opening. It just hurts you. It makes you feel bad for that family and for those kids.
“It’s something that you don’t wish on anybody. You hope and pray that it never happens to anybody. Unfortunately it did, and our thoughts and prayers are with Apalachee.
The Raiders will honor Aspinwall and the Apalachee community with a commemorative logo sticker on the back of their helmets Friday against Cherokee Bluff. Either a pregame prayer or moment of silence will be held with both teams on the field ahead of kickoff.
