MOULTRIE — Last winter, as he was mulling an opportunity to return to his high school alma mater as offensive line coach, then-Lowndes High assistant Bryce Giddens was approached one day by his 5-year-old daughter Baylor, who was wearing a Colquitt County T-shirt.

“Daddy,” she said. “I sure wish you coached for the Packers.”

“That,” Giddens said following Colquitt County’s spring practice on Wednesday, “sealed the deal.”

Not that he wasn’t already leaning heavily toward returning to his home town and joining the staff that new Colquitt County football coach Sean Calhoun was assembling.

It seemed the time for a homecoming for Giddens, who had coached the last two seasons at Lowndes and the season before that at Valdosta.

“They got the best out of me,” Giddens said of his time with the Wildcats and Vikings. “I gave everything I had to those schools. But there is something about being in Colquitt County.

“My hope that these young men that I’m coaching will learn to love this place and feel the same way about as I did when I left. And how I still feel about it. I want them to understand that the tradition and history here are unlike anywhere else and what it means to be a Packer.”

And it’s not as if Giddens is any former Packer.

He started at center for four seasons from 2008-2011 and was a key pillar in the rebuilding of Colquitt County’s football fortunes.

He snapped the football in the 2010 state championship game against Brookwood in the Georgia Dome, the first time the Packers had played for a state title since 1994.

He is regarded as one of the finest Packers ever and has done nothing to tarnish that assessment in the years since he graduated in 2012.

He accepted a scholarship to Arkansas State and took over the starting center position late in the first half of the first game of his freshman season.

What appeared to be a bright future for him in college football was cut short by a series of injuries.

He remained in Arkansas after his playing days were over and was briefly in the insurance business.

But he was aware that his future was likely on the sidelines.

“I knew I was going to coach,” he said. “It was just a matter of time.”

He returned to Moultrie in 2017 as an assistant helping Joey Bennett, one of his mentors, work with the Packers offensive linemen.

But he still harbored some interest in the college game and spent the 2018 season as a graduate assistant at Auburn.

But he was back to South Georgia the next year, working for head coach Alan Rodemaker at Valdosta.

When Rodemaker was controversially released after that season, Giddens said he was fortunate to find a job across town at Lowndes.

“We were successful,” he said of three seasons coaching for Colquitt County’s two most intense rivals. “The last two years were good ones.

“But it was time to be back home. Packer blood runs deep. And I’m working for a really good group of men.”

Giddens is one of four former Packers that Calhoun has hired for his first Colquitt County staff, joining tight ends coach Kiel Pollard, receivers coach Quin Roberson and linebackers coach Bull Barge.

Like them, he is getting used to coaching some unfamiliar players.

Veteran that he is, he is rapidly sorting them out.

The offensive line lost two starters from last years team, including left guard Isaiah Palmore and center Cameron Strange, who has been helping Giddens deal with the large group of players during the early days of spring drills.

Giddens likes his group of rising seniors, including Keshaun Palmore, the returning starter at left tackle.

“He’s the bell cow,” Giddens said.

Cole Holmes primarily played guard last season, but has moved into the center position.

“Actually, he could probably play any of the five positions,” Giddens said.

Other rising seniors battling for playing time are Hunter Clark, Jacolby Edwards, Romel Guerra, Isaiah Hightower and Dylan Holweger.

Ja’Quavion “Turk” Daniels is back as a rising junior after having started every game at the right tackle position the last two seasons.

Giddens also is giving Daniels some one-on-one instruction on the art of snapping the football in case the 300-pounder is needed at center.

Other underclassmen who could contribute in 2022 are rising juniors Ja’Nas Daniels, Xavier Nickerson and Jayden Williams.

Giddens also is expecially high on 6-foot-2, 250-pound rising sophomore Kahlil Collins.

Those players are the beneficiaries of coaching philosophy  that Giddens constructed while playing for two outstanding former Colquitt County assistants who held the job he now has.

One, of course, was his father, Kevin Giddens, who arrived in Moultrie in 1994 just in time to help the Packers win the first state football championship in school history.

He remained on the Packers staff to help train his son on the intracacies of snapping and blocking.

Also on head coach Rush Propst’s staff during the younger Giddens’ high school career was Joey Bennett, another highly regarded coach steeped in the skills few fans appreciate from the grandstands.

Giddens said he honed his craft with contributions from both.

“Daddy taught me how to play hard, how to finish blocks, how to be accountable and how to play with mental and physical toughness,” Giddens said.

“Joey taught me all that as well, plus more about the game, about the X’s and O’s.”

Bryce will send out his first group of Packer OLs on Saturday in a 10:45 a.m. scrimmage on Tom White Field at Mack Tharpe Stadium.

If there is a little girl and her baby brother wearing replica Packer jerseys with No. 68 on the front back walking off the field with Colquitt County’s new offensive line coach, they would be Baylor and Bo.

One of their daddy’s wishes for them?

“I want my son and daughter to grow up to be Packers,” he said.