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By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor

ALABASTER – The Calera Eagles have announced Jerad Holder as the interim head football coach for the 2023 season.

Holder led the Calera delegation at Birmingham Football Media Day on Monday, July 31 after being named the head coach last week and confirmed the news during his team’s availability at media day.

Holder takes over for Jason Hamlin, who stepped down as head coach on Tuesday, July 25 to take an assistant coach position at Hoover. Hamlin was board approved on Thursday, July 27 to join the Bucs coaching staff ahead of the 2023 season.

Holder was the receivers coach originally at Calera before becoming the offensive coordinator last year.

During his time leading the receivers unit, he helped coach Kobe Prentice on offense and then became the offensive coordinator last year, working with quarterback Preston Stokes and receiver Braylyn Farrington.

Stokes threw for 2,259 yards as a junior and scored 26 touchdowns and put together another solid season as a senior as the Eagles reached the playoffs in both of his seasons at quarterback.

Prentice finished his senior season in 2021 with 1,231 yards and 18 touchdowns before graduating and heading to the Alabama Crimson Tide, while Farrington, an Auburn track commitment, was the leading receiver in the county last year with 848 yards and nine touchdowns and also added four kick return touchdowns.

Calera’s offense scored 20.7 points per game last year, and they will look to continue that evolution under Holder. Holder was one of the key play callers last year, and he will continue to have a role in that, but he said that he will look to delegate that to an assistant to be named.

At this time, no other changes have been made to Calera’s assistant coaching staff, but more additions are likely to be made as Holder builds the staff he will take into the future.

For now, Calera will prepare for fall practice to start next week before their season opener against Spain Park at home on August 25. This is the second time in the past three seasons that a new Calera head coach has been named over the summer, as Hamlin stepped into the head coaching role in June 2021 in a similar situation and guided the Eagles to a 7-4 record and to the Class 6A playoffs.