"We Coach, They Poach": Florida HS coach goes viral taking stand at media day after having 20 players transfer

Media days are usually for optimism. Coach-speak fills the air as coaches talk up their returning starters, their schedule, the culture they've been building since January. 

However, Tavares HS (FL) head coach Gavin Jones used his moment at Central Florida Media Day to say something a little different, and he did it with a t-shirt stealing the spotlight.

Jones showed up to the Lake County portion of the event, held in Lake Mary, wearing a t-shirt that read "We Coach, They Poach." The shirt was a protest of the player losses the Bulldogs have taken to transfers this offseason, and it did exactly what a three-word shirt is designed to do. It went viral, and it got other coaches talking. 

The numbers behind the shirt are what make it sting. Jones said nearly 20 players left the Bulldogs roster this offseason, with many of them landing at other Lake County schools or nearby programs. That is not a couple of role players chasing more snaps. The departures included 1,400-yard rusher Tamauri Collins, who left for The First Academy (FL), and linebacker twins Jelani and Ari Bentley, who went to Hawthorne (FL). Other local reports share that another five players headed to South Lake (FL). 

Losing a back who put up 1,400 yards is a program-altering hit at any level. Losing him along with a pair of your best linebackers, in the same offseason, is the kind of thing that can pull a roster apart. Tavares dressed around 27 players for its spring game and expects to have close to 40 heading into the season despite the mass exodus.

Jones did not hide his frustration. 

"Everybody is taking our kids because they know we got some good players, that's why I'm wearing this shirt," he said. "I guess they think the grass is greener on the other side. I just don't understand it." He said he came close to considering this his last season, and he canceled a scheduled game against South Lake, the program that picked up several of his former players, to avoid the bad blood spilling onto the field. 

Here's the part that should land for anyone who has gone through something similar, especially those coaching in Florida right now. This is not a bottom-tier program crying about losing games. Jones took over Tavares after an 0-10 season in 2022 and pushed the win total up every year since, going 5-5 in 2023, 7-3 in 2024, and 6-5 last fall. He built something real, and the results are exactly why other schools came to poach his roster. 

That is the frustration a lot of coaches are feeling, and Jones is just the one wearing it on a shirt. Winter Park's Tim Shifflet and others referenced the broader transfer problem at media days, pointing to Florida's open-enrollment rules, the limited authority the FHSAA has to police movement, and the trickle-down from college transfer and NIL culture that has mid-tier programs feeling like the deck is stacked against them. 

Still, there will be some that point to coach Jones and his coaching style or his approach as the reason so many players from his program sought to take their abilities elsewhere.

There should be levels to all of this. A kid moving for a genuine academic fit or a family relocation is one thing. Watching your best players get recruited off a roster you spent three years rebuilding is another, and telling the difference is getting harder every year.

The transfer conversation is not a college-only problem anymore (and high school coaches know it hasn't been for a while now), and the programs doing the developing are increasingly the ones getting picked clean. Whether a shirt changes anything is another question, but Jones got people talking, which is more than most coaches manage from a media day podium.

Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.