Jonathan Simmons’ bold plan: make Palisades High a destination program in Charlotte
The high school football season is still a few months away, but the players at Palisades High School know exactly what they want to do this fall.
“At the end of the day, we just want everybody to respect us,” quarterback Cole Hough said before spring practice recently. “We have a lot of confidence, you know, just to show that (the past two years) were not a fluke and to show that we’re really an above-average team in Charlotte.”
Hough then thinks about what he just said. Then he explains he didn’t mean just “above average.”
“I feel like we’re one of the top programs in Charlotte. I feel a conference championship is absolutely a must, and I feel like that’s something we can definitely get done, plus an extremely deep playoff run,” he said. “It’s just the confidence I’ve got to play with. If you don’t think you’re going to beat every team, it’s like, what are you doing?”
Palisades is tired of the ‘close calls’
This fall will be Year 5 for the Pumas, who were 1-9 in 2022 and 3-7 in 2023. But in the past two seasons, Palisades was 8-4, fighting with some of the middle-tier teams in Charlotte, hoping to jump up with the big dogs.
And last year, the Pumas — who won the second playoff game in school history — were really, really close.
Consider:
Three of Palisades’ losses last season were by a combined 15 points, and Palisades led late in each of those games:
— Against S.C. power Clover, for example, the Pumas lost, 21-19, after giving up a 97-yard drive in the final two minutes. Clover scored with 11 seconds to play.
— Palisades led 20-13 over N.C. power Independence with less than seven minutes left. Independence scored twice to win, and eventually the Patriots reached the state playoff quarterfinals.
— And Palisades, closing in on an outright league title, led Providence 28-7 last October but lost 34-28 in overtime. Providence won the conference championship and was a second-round playoff team.
So to reach their goals, to become that true regional power, the Pumas know none of that can happen again.
“We’ve got to finish,” Palisades coach Jonathan Simmons said. “We’ve progressively made strides, so now it’s about finishing. If you watch the games, we’ve been right there, so that’s kind of our emphasis this offseason and this spring. It’s just finish, finish, finish.”
Lots of talent returning to the Pumas this fall
Simmons said 15 lettermen and 10 starters are back from last season’s team, including Hough, who threw for 2,100 yards and 17 touchdowns in his first year as a starting QB. Also back is starting left tackle Ephraim Holmes, a 6-foot-4, 290-pound 16-year-old who is fast rising up the recruiting rankings.
Holmes has offers from schools including Appalachian State, Buffalo, East Carolina and Temple, and he’s not yet begun his junior season.
“It’s fantastic,” Holmes said of his recruitment. “Feels nice to have someone other than my family and friends to want me to play at their college and put trust in me. So it feels amazing.”
Holmes said he feels that 2026 Palisades will have even better player leadership than last year’s team did. He said winning is a great teacher, and said that he and his teammates are determined to build something Mecklenburg County has never really seen: a consistent state power on its southwest wing.
In the past 40 years, the public school state powers produced here have been near the center of the county (West Charlotte), in the north (Chambers, Hough, Mallard Creek) or the east (Butler, Independence).
“The first two seasons here weren’t really good,” Holmes said. “We were a newer school. Now we’re, you know, starting to get even. This is our fifth year. People just always want to hate on a new school, but we’re showing them we can hang with the big boys. No matter what side of town you’re from, we’re showing up.”
‘We’re going to get our just due’
Palisades was ranked in The Charlotte Observer’s “way too early” Sweet 16 poll at No. 9 last month, a ranking that would make them the de facto favorite in the Southwestern 7A/8A conference race.
All of this is new territory, but according to Simmons, it’s all part of the plan.
He very wants to make his school a destination spot on his side of town.
“It’s just the belief that it can be done,” Simmons said. “It’s not necessarily about whether we physically have the talent or not. We’ve seen for years that Olympic would pop up with teams every now and then. It’s just about consistency, and sometimes that’s beyond a coach’s power. But for us, we’ve been 8-4 two years in a row.
“Now we just want to take it a little step further.”
Simmons is from Five Towns, New York, a community of about 50,000 people on the south shore of western Long Island. It’s 17 minutes from John F. Kennedy International Airport.
He’s as brash and as confident as any high school coach that’s come through Charlotte in recent years. He played college football at Johnson C. Smith and coached, as an assistant, at several Charlotte stops — Berry, Hopewell, Chambers and Hough.
In June 2021, he posted a tweet: “Late night manifestation. I will be a high school head football coach within the next 18 months.”
Less than a year later, in May 2022, he got the job at Palisades.
His latest manifestation? He’ll make Palisades a year-in, year-out power and his 2026 team will finish the close games his ‘25 team just missed out on.
“People know what I’m about,” Simmons said. “I’m not going to say I’m in the same breath as some of those coaches, more recently, who people have been talking about. But people know I’m going to coach my kids hard. They’re going to develop, and they are going to play physical and to the whistle. So I don’t think we’re a sleeping giant. I think, if anything, people don’t give us our just due, at least on Fridays.
“This year, I don’t know about in the media, but on Fridays, we’re going to get our just due.”
