Less than one week after losing its head coach, the Pike Liberal Arts football team was a dealt strangely familiar blow Wednesday.

Scott Phillips, who was hired last week as an assistant for the football team as well as a science teacher, resigned his position Wednesday morning.

Pike Liberal interim head coach Gene Allen confirmed Phillips’s resignation, and said that he hates to lose a coach of Phillips’ caliber.

“Scott is a really good coach and a really good guy,” said Allen. “He was only here for a couple of days, which is a good thing I guess. He was a class room guy too. We have to find some more coaches, but we will put our head down and make it work.

The Patriots opened camp last week, just hours after veteran head coach Wayne Grant turned in his resignation, with Allen, two assistants and a few volunteers.

Now with the first game of the season looming just more than three weeks away, the Patriot players and coaches will practice, while administrators work to fill the vacant position.

“He taught physiology and biology and sciences,” said Allen. “He was replacing Coach Grant, who was a pretty good teacher as well. The big priority is to make sure we have good classroom teachers, but at the same time we need some coaches as well.”

Allen said that the players, can’t worry about things outside of their control, which is something he feels his team can do.

“We have to go out there and do what we do, and that’s play football,” Allen said. “

We got things to work on until we got everyone one in place, like kicking game and offense/defense stuff. We talked to the kids about having to handle adverse situations. It doesn’t matter if you get one, then another and another and another, you can’t give up. We have to keep pulling the ole boot straps up, and keep working.

Pike Liberal Arts opens the regular season Aug. 30 at Morgan Academy in Selma.