Holy Spirit Preparatory School has made a change at the top of its football program for the first time in school history.

Jim Falcetti, a defensive assistant for the varsity and the head coach of the junior varsity program last year, will lead the Cougars beginning this season. He replaces Dan Pepitone, who left the school.

Falcetti, 26, has been coaching football for four years, three of which were spent in Baton Rouge, La., and plans on bringing a lot more creativity to Holy Spirit.

“We are going to try to do more in terms of formations, in terms of setups and in terms of everything else,” Falcetti said. “If there’s one thing that we have at Holy Spirit, it is a wealth of intelligent, disciplined and curious kids who understand the game and want to understand every part of it.”

After speaking with Falcetti, it became clear that he wants to take full advantage of the gifts his athletes possess.

While playing in GISA, the Georgia Independent Schools Association, Falcetti won’t have the size and strength that he had during his three years in Louisiana, but he will have an abundance of intelligent kids.

“When you have 11 guys on the field who all know exactly what to do against every defensive lineup, you can do a lot of damage,” he said.

Falcetti grew up in the Northeast and got his master’s degree in education from Notre Dame. After graduating he spent time in Louisiana, where he learned to appreciate the beauty of great defense.

“The team I coached in Louisiana was a defensive team with defensive tradition,” Falcetti said. “That’s what I love; I was born defensive.”

One thing that Falcetti has had to deal with is being, as he put it, “the dude.”

By this he means the guy in charge of it all. As a head coach he has to deal with the handling all of the administration aspects of the team, something that wasn’t the case when he was an assistant.

“Part of me honestly misses the assistant role where it’s just X’s and O’s,” Falcetti said. “Don’t get me wrong. There’s no place I’d rather be, but as a head coach, if you’re doing it right, it does not stop when you go home.”

The Cougars have been firmly entrenched in the GISA playoffs, and Falcetti said he expects nothing less this year.

“It is my expectation that we will always be in the playoffs,” he said.