Faith Academy’s Justin Hudson Ready to Do It All on Both Sides of the Ball

MOBILE, Ala. — When Faith Academy takes the field this season, senior Justin Hudson figures to rarely leave it. He’s not just a two-way player — he’s used in the secondary on defense, at wide receiver on offense, on every special teams unit, and possibly at a couple of other offensive spots as well.

“Switching from receiver to defensive back, to kick return and punt return, it’s good. It’s great,” said Hudson, who’s 5-foot-8 and 145 pounds. “I like getting the ball in my hands and going. Playing both positions helps me with both positions. They translate from each other, because I kind of can get an idea of what’s going on.”

That versatility is exactly what a rebuilding team prizes. At 5-foot-8 and 145 pounds, Hudson is not the biggest player on the field, but players his size who can catch, cover and return kick give a coaching staff flexibility that depth charts rarely allow — one roster spot effectively filling four. It is also the profile of the classic small-school Gulf Coast playmaker: quickness, instincts and a willingness to run down on kick coverage every Friday night.

Hudson is hoping to help the Rams bounce back from consecutive 1-8 seasons — 2024 under Erik Speakman and last year under returning head coach Gaines Sullivan.

Back-to-back one-win seasons test everything in a program: the roster’s confidence, the coaching staff’s plan and the community’s patience. For the players who lived through them, the sell of a new season is always the same — the record does not follow the team onto the field — but turning a program around requires someone to make the first play that changes a game. Versatile seniors who touch the ball on every phase are often the ones positioned to do it.

The two losing seasons also bracket a head-coaching transition that is now settling. Sullivan’s return to a program he knew from the inside, after the 2024 season under Speakman, gives Faith Academy something it has not had in the last two falls: continuity of message going into a second year. Programs that rebuild most often do it in a coach’s second season, when the scheme is installed, the expectations are understood and the seniors have a full offseason of buy-in behind them. Hudson’s class is the first with the chance to prove that pattern true.

“My time at Faith has been really good to me, from freshman year all the way up until now,” Hudson said. “I feel great about this year. I’m just wanting to go 1-0 every week and try to keep that confidence built up.”

The week-by-week framing is the standard vocabulary of a program in rebuild mode. One win at a time, one quarter at a time — the approach keeps a young roster focused on controllable things rather than the weight of the overall record, and it is the message a coaching staff leans on most when the season’s first setbacks arrive. It is also, coming from a senior who plans to spend most of every Friday on the field, a message younger teammates tend to hear.

A program and a region in transition

Faith Academy made the playoffs in six of the previous six seasons under former coach Jack French, reaching the Class 5A semifinals in 2022. This year the Rams move into the newly formed AHSAA Class AA, Region 1 for private schools, alongside UMS-Wright, St. Paul’s, McGill-Toolen, St. Michael, Montgomery Catholic, Houston Academy and Glenwood School.

The contrast between those two facts — a recent playoff streak and semifinal run, then consecutive 1-8 seasons — is the backdrop for everything Faith Academy is trying to do this fall. The six-year run under French made the Rams a fixture in the Class 5A postseason picture and produced a semifinal appearance that stands as the program’s modern high-water mark. The last two years have been the other kind of history, and the coaching transition that accompanied it — Speakman in 2024, then Sullivan taking over — reflects a program searching for its footing again.

The region realignment adds a further layer of change. The Alabama High School Athletic Association’s newly configured private-school classification gathers many of the state’s most established private programs into their own regional structure, and Region 1 in particular reads as a gauntlet: UMS-Wright and St. Paul’s carry deep trophy histories, McGill-Toolen is one of Mobile’s most tradition-rich programs, and St. Michael, Montgomery Catholic, Houston Academy and Glenwood round out a region with little margin for error from week to week.

Travel becomes part of the equation too. Montgomery Catholic sits hours from Mobile, and Houston Academy and Glenwood extend the region’s footprint even further, meaning region road trips that once meant a short drive now turn into full-day journeys. For players, the realignment changes what a “region game” feels like; for coaching staffs, it changes how Friday nights are planned, from rest and preparation to the logistics of getting a team to and from distant kickoffs in good shape to compete.

For a rebuilding roster, a region this demanding cuts both ways. The schedule offers few breathers and makes a playoff return a steep climb, but it also guarantees that every district game is played against quality opposition — the kind of competition that accelerates a young team’s development and gives a coach an honest measuring stick every single week. Hudson’s all-phase role fits that reality: when every region game is tight, the team that wins special teams and gets plays from its most versatile athletes has a edge that shows up on the scoreboard.

Sullivan, who spent a year coaching the middle school program before returning to the varsity staff, praised Hudson’s work ethic on and off the field: “It’s hard for me to believe there was ever a point when he didn’t love it. It seems like a lifelong thing.”

The head coach’s path through the middle school program before joining the varsity staff gave him a long look at the players now anchoring the roster. Coaches who come up through a school’s own feeder system tend to know their seniors’ games and temperaments years before they take over the varsity — and that familiarity matters in a season built on restoring belief. When the head coach can point to a player he has watched since middle school and describe his work ethic from personal history, it carries weight with the rest of the locker room in a way a new staff’s pep talks cannot.

Hudson’s own view of his multi-role future is unambiguous, and his description of the positions translating into each other reflects how modern defensive backs and receivers are developed. The footwork a receiver uses to release off the line and the flip-the-hips movement a defensive back needs in coverage are the same skills taught from opposite directions; players who train both sides often read routes and quarterbacks faster than specialists do. Add return duty — where the ball is in his hands in open space, the situation he says he enjoys most — and every phase of the game runs through the same 145 pounds.

Playing every special teams unit is a job in itself, and it is the role most often undervalued from the stands. Kick coverage demands sprinting downfield into traffic on every kickoff; punt protection and return demand discipline and nerves in close quarters. Coaches across Alabama routinely point to special teams as the difference in close region games, and a senior willing to take on every one of those assignments — while also starting on both sides of the ball — is the kind of player a thin roster cannot replace.

Faith Academy opens its season Friday, Aug. 28, at Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

The opener sends the Rams on the road across the state line to face a Mississippi Coast opponent, a familiar arrangement for Mobile-area programs that routinely schedule across the border. Opening away from home strips away the comforts of a home crowd and puts the burden of setting a new tone squarely on the veterans — and for a senior who plays receiver, corner and every special teams unit, few veterans will touch the game more often than Hudson does. The season’s first kick, first route and first coverage rep of the year will all belong, at least in part, to him.

What happens after that remains to be seen. The Rams’ schedule, the depth of their new region and the development of a young roster around Hudson will decide whether this fall trends back toward the playoff standards of the Jack French years or continues the struggle of the last two. Either way, the team’s most used player intends to meet it the same way every week: with the ball in his hands and a chance to go 1-0.