Gators head coach Jon Sumrall in his No. 2 jersey during his time at Grissom High School in Huntsville, Ala., where he spent his formative years. (Photo: Courtesy of the Sumrall family)
Jon Sumrall Series, Part III: He Left Huntsville, But Huntsville Never Left Him
Monday, August 31, 2026 | Football, Scott Carter
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By: Scott Carter, Senior Writer
Editor's note: This is the third installment in a series of stories that tell the journey of Gators head coach Jon Sumrall, from his birth in Texarkana, Texas, to his formative years in Huntsville, Alabama, to his time playing and suffering a career-ending injury at the University of Kentucky. From there, the series discusses the birth of his coaching career in Lexington and San Diego. Finally, his multiple stops at Troy and Tulane paved the way for him to the University of Florida.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Huntsville-Madison County Sports Hall of Fame members did not know each other when they met 30 years ago over the winter of 1996-97.
Melanie Donahoo had recently finished her basketball career at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. Jon Sumrall was an eighth-grader at Whitesburg Middle School.
Coach, meet one of your new players.
"Gosh, if they were all like him,'' said Donahoo, now the athletic director and volleyball coach at Huntsville High School. "He was the hardest worker. He was just really, really tough. Played the post for us. I mean, just tenacious. Nothing got to him."
In a rarity that produced local headlines that year, the 25-year-old Donahoo added boys basketball coach to her résumé. She already coached volleyball and girls basketball.
The school needed someone to take over, and for a team that hadn't won a game in two seasons, Donahoo seemed a logical choice to parents who approached the principal to gauge her interest.
Donahoo accepted the additional duties, but not every parent backed her.
"I'm sure you can imagine,'' she said recently. "I had some dads that were wanting to hang around the gym and coach from the side, and so I went to my principal and said, 'I'm going to have to close practice.' And Jon's dad was one of the biggest supporters. He's like, 'Absolutely, it's your team. You've got to manage it.'
"It was a good experience for me."
Jon Sumrall, No. 36, growing up in Huntsville, Ala. (Photos: Courtesy of the Sumrall family)
The Lions finished 6-10, with five of the losses by five points or less. Sumrall provided leadership and resilience while averaging 14 points and 10 rebounds to rebuild some respect for the battered program.
He was young, but Sumrall recognized what good coaching looked like. He first noticed how Jim Brinkley, his coach with the Huntsville Eagles youth football team, made the game fun and competitive. Then Donahoo's handling of the Lions and the unique situation resonated differently.
"She was a really good basketball coach — and coached hard,'' Sumrall said. "She was awesome, and yeah, we had a blast."
Sumrall's time at Whitesburg Middle was when he emerged as a promising young athlete. He was occasionally mentioned in the local newspaper, the Huntsville Times, for his exploits in baseball, football and basketball. Sumrall played soccer too, and later dabbled in wrestling at Grissom High School.
But Sumrall was more than a jock. He was Student Government Association President at Whitesburg in eighth grade and stayed involved in student government in high school, serving as class president as a freshman, sophomore and junior at Grissom and as SGA President as a senior. A clipping from the Huntsville Times via Newspapers.com.
His competitiveness followed him wherever he went.
Between his freshman and sophomore years at Grissom, the most popular girl in his grade decided to run against him for class president. Sumrall took on the challenge head-first.
"I could get my butt kicked here,'' he said. "I had some strategic advantages to my campaign, and I won that race."
Sandy Sumrall, Jon's mother, recalled his determination to maintain his spot.
"When he was running for office, he would go through that student directory,'' she said. "He would pick the ones that he knew were going to vote for him, and the ones he was iffy about, he might get on the phone and call them."
Of course, it was at Grissom where Sumrall rose to prominence on the football field and began to carve his path toward his opportunity to become Florida's head coach.
He was a standout two-way player for Grissom, which hired head coach Ronnie Massey, a former quarterback at Livingston University (now known as the University of West Alabama), before Sumrall's junior season. The Tigers were 4-16 in Sumrall's first two seasons, and Massey was brought in to reverse their fortunes. Massey had played at Livingston for head coach Mickey Andrews, who, when Sumrall was in high school, was Florida State's celebrated defensive coordinator. Massey won an NAIA national title in 1971 as a backup quarterback and led Livingston to the NAIA semifinals as the starter in 1972.
At Grissom, Massey quickly rebuilt the program with help from Sumrall on defense and young receiver Jayson Swain on offense. The Tigers went 3-7 in 1999, Sumrall's junior season, but exploded to finish 12-2 his senior season and advance to the state semifinals, the program's best season in two decades. On Fridays before school, George and Sandy Sumrall had the team over for breakfast before what was called "Tiger Walk." The team marched to school in their jerseys afterward, and the Sumralls continued the tradition for a few years after Jon finished at Grissom.
Swain would go on to become a standout receiver at the University of Tennessee and now serves as the color analyst on UT's radio broadcasts.
"Jon was just an unbelievable leader,'' Swain said. "He wasn't the quickest or most athletic, but man, he knew how to get to the ball for us. I didn't necessarily love [football] like he loved it. I was just good. I had to learn how to lead. I learned a lot from Jon, honestly, just watching him."
The players and fans still talk about the game Sumrall had against defending state champion Clay-Chalkville in the second round of the 2000 playoffs. Grissom won 20-17 as Sumrall made 15 tackles and intercepted a pass.
But that's only part of the story. He caught a game-winning 20-yard touchdown pass in the final seconds from quarterback Tyler Weaver.
"It's pouring down rain,'' Weaver said. "I was just scrambling. I mean, I could barely even throw the ball because it was so heavy. I just kind of threw the ball up, and the ball got tipped, and he came back and caught it. It was an incredible catch. And then his celebration where he was high-stepping. We would watch that film just cracking up … because he didn't do stuff like that."
Sumrall smiles at the mention of his most memorable high school victory.
"Every time I go to Clay-Chalkville High School to recruit, I walk in, and I have flashbacks,'' he said.
Mark McCarter, a retired sports columnist from the Huntsville Times and, like Donahoo and Sumrall, a member of the Huntsville-Madison County Sports Hall of Fame, could see early on that Sumrall was going to be a success at whatever he chose to pursue.
Sumrall was a go-to quote after Grissom games and exuded a mature, respectful nature his parents instilled at home and in the community.
Something Sumrall told McCarter when he was inducted into the local hall of fame in 2023 echoed deeply. Sumrall had doubts about joining the woeful Grissom program and wondered if it was best to play somewhere else – school zoning rules were lax at the time – despite the family living in a neighborhood across Bailey Cove Road from where Grissom High was located at the time.
"You go somewhere and change the place,'' George Sumrall told Jon. "Don't let the place change you."
"You can apply that quote to Jon's freshman year at Grissom. You can apply that to him stepping into the middle of things at Troy," McCarter said. "And now you can apply that to his days at Florida."
Jon Sumrall, right, and his older brother, Joe Sumrall, after one of Jon's workouts in high school. (Photo: Courtesy of the Sumrall family)
The site where Grissom High was when Sumrall played for the Tigers is now the Sandra Moon Community Complex, a campus that has a civic center, library, tennis courts, pickleball courts and athletic fields.
On a Sunday morning in July, the practice field in the shadows of the Huntsville Mountain and Green Mountain rested quietly. Once, it was the place where a boy mastered the skills to become a local hero before he was a man.
Huntsville is where Sumrall became the person people remember, and where he first met Ginny.
The Sumralls moved there when Jon was in elementary school for his father's job at the Redstone Arsenal, a chief U.S. Army and defense hub that drives much of Huntsville's high-tech engineering and aerospace economy. It's where he developed into a leader, helped Grissom rise from mediocrity, and first met the person who has been on this journey with him for the past 15 years: his wife, Ginny Sumrall.
The couple married in June 2011.
Virginia Gayle Nixon grew up in Huntsville and, like Sumrall, attended Whitesburg Middle and Grissom High. She was also SGA President at Whitesburg and Grissom. But she was a freshman when he was a senior, so they knew many of the same people but did not hang out regularly.
But they did on at least one memorable occasion. Weaver, Grissom's quarterback and a good friend of Sumrall to this day, has a younger sister who was in Ginny's grade and a devoted friend. The night of Sumrall's senior prom, the group ended up at his future in-law's house for pictures. In one photo, which hangs in the foyer of Ginny's childhood home, Jon and Ginny are together – sort of.
"I wasn't with my wife. I was with one of her friends. She was with one of my friends,'' Sumrall said. "A little bit of family lore over the years."
It all worked out several years later, after three years of no contact, when Jon reached out to Ginny through an acquaintance. He was a young assistant coach at the University of San Diego. She was an occupational therapist driving from Alabama to California with her younger brother. They had lost contact after a random meeting at a local restaurant years earlier.
Jon Sumrall and his wife, Ginny Sumrall, on their arrival in Gainesville. (Photo: Maddie Washburn/UAA Communications)
They reconnected, talked for days as Ginny drove west, and went on their first date to a Dodgers game in Los Angeles. The rest is history.
"We have literally been together ever since that night,'' Ginny said.
Their parents still live in Huntsville, and they get back on occasion, but life has taken them to places they never could have imagined that night at Sumrall's senior prom.
Once they are old and gray, the Huntsville chapter will always be where their story began. Ginny knows him best.
Jon Sumrall left the Rocket City long ago, but in so many ways, he's the same person they all remember.
"Jon was like the guy in high school. He was a star football player, great personality, involved in his church. Everybody knew him. He checked all the boxes,'' Ginny said. "His personality has grown over the years, but he's always made people feel like they're important."
