VALDOSTA – The Valdosta High School football team, the Wildcats, received a timely message about understanding and reacting to change.

As the Wildcats went into an afternoon practice recently, former assistant coach Shelton Felton assumed the position of interim head coach after Rush Propst’s contract was not renewed.

Felton recognized the Wildcats, a team of more than 160 teenagers, had been through a lot of change since the start of the year. They needed a helping hand.

Enter REACH Two, a local program, with its leader, Aaron Winston Jr. REACH stands for Restoring Every Adolescent Child’s Health.

“Basically (with) his story (and) his program, we felt like it could reach our kids and young men,” Felton said. “He has a great story and testimony.”

Though Winston came from a good home, he said, he fell in with the wrong crowd which led him to the streets doing things he wasn’t proud of like dealing drugs. It eventually landed him in jail.

In 2020, with the death of his mother, Winston began to take a deep look at his community. He saw children going down the same path he did, selling and doing drugs, and joining gangs, he said in a past story.

He had to ask himself what took him off that path. It was a mindset of seeing and being the change you want. In translating that to youth, Winston’s mission became showing them they are loved, but also showing what’s available to them.

With the Wildcats, Winston offered a meal and two words – confidence and finish.

“You have to understand it to get confidence in your mind,” he said. “Confidence means believing in one’s self and in that we came up with finish – completing something.”

If you believe in yourself, you can finish what you started, he said. Winston said this to the team and brought the conversation full circle in talking about hard work.

Hard work still pays off.

“In hard work paying off, do something and be remembered,” Winston said. “But do nothing and be forgotten because he who works the hardest deserves the most.”

That phrase isn’t just a simple notion either. It’s Winston’s personal motto and way of life. In expressing that to the team, he saw kindred spirits.

To him, these are young men who had to believe in themselves to make the football team whether it be varsity or junior varsity; so these young men can finish the team, too.

“Finishing” means staying out of trouble, keeping accountable and holding it together while believing in Christ, Winston said, referencing the prayer he and the team took after the talk.

“All we want to do is build our youth and in building them we’ve got to understand that we have to listen to them,” Winston said. “Everything is learned behavior and some of them are a product of their environment.”

It’s about giving them hope.

Felton said it was important to bring in Winston, showing the team that someone can make mistakes but subsequently learn and grow from those mistakes.

He saw the team really take to Winston’s message.

“They realized he’s from where they’re from and he told a story that opened a lot of the guys’ eyes,” Felton said. “It’s giving them a chance to realize that it’s a cruel world out there, but at the same time, it’s a world where you can make mistakes and still be successful.”

Felton said he’d like for Winston to come back anytime and Winston is happy to oblige.

He said he’s always tried to live by the motto “reach one, teach one,” adding if you reach one, you’ll reach 1,000. If you reach two, you’ll reach 10,000.