The Georgia High School Helmet Project Bio Page

Hi. Welcome to my bio page. Here you will find out a little bit about the creator of this web site and the reason for it.
First of all, my name is David Hayes and I live in Dalton. I'm 45 years old and I work for Shaw Industries in Dalton. (If you'd like to see a mug shot of me that was in the Dalton paper, click Here   I am an avid football fan. Particularly high school, the Dalton Catamounts, and college, the Georgia Bulldogs for which I will forever bleed red and black. I also follow the Atlanta Falcons.

I have a small sign business called "Signs of the Times". I do mostly the small jobs that the bigger sign companies don't like to fool with. Yard signs, car tags, youth team football and baseball helmets, magnets & stuff like that. Occasionally I have some bigger jobs, but I don't have the equipment to do the really big jobs. The one accomplishment that I'm proud of is the refurbishing of the signage at the stadium of the Murray County Indians. A former touchdown club president by the name of Jerry Floyd gave me the job several years ago and I maintained it for a number of years. That job alone got my sign business started. So my gratitude goes out to him.

The reason I started this web site is two fold. First and foremost is my love for high school football. There's not a more pure form of the sport anywhere on the planet! It's really something to look forward to on Friday nights after a long work week. The thrill and excitement that comes with it is hard to match. I've been attending games ever since I was in school, and that's been a long time ago! I get just as excited today as I did back then as a kid. I can't imagine anyone not liking high school football! The other reason I started this site is, I have always had a fascination for logos. Any kind of logo. Especially sports team logos. One day, I stumbled across a web site called "The Helmet Project". For someone like me fascinated with logos, this was hog heaven! To see the logos of every team from the smallest college to the defunct USFL, was just amazing to me. That's what really lit the fire so to speak.

On another occasion, I was looking around on the Georgia Varsity Sports Vent one day and there was someone on there using a helmet from The Helmet Project that had a "PC" on the side, representing a "Paulding County" helmet. The "PC" logo was nothing like Paulding's at all. As I got to looking around the various individual team web sites, all the folks had to display for their team was a school logo, and not necessarily the one that was on the football helmet either.

I got to thinking it would be nice if these folks from around the state could see the helmets used by teams that they'll never see in person or on the news or in the papers. And to be able to use them for such things as displaying their team helmet on the Vent when they post a message, or a webmaster of a team site to use to represent his/her team. I knew it would be a huge undertaking considering how many schools there are that play football under the jurisdiction of the Georgia High School Association, (353).

I really didn't know where to begin. First of all, I had to learn how to do 'em. That was no small accomplishment believe me! It took me one full weekend from daylight til dark both Saturday and Sunday to figure it out. I wasn't able to get my hands on the program that Charles Arey used on his Helmet Project. The software is no longer available. When I found that out I almost gave up on it.

The only other program I was familiar with that I thought I might be able to do it with was Paint Shop Pro. Even though it doesn't do quite as good a job as the software Charles uses, it's sufficient. It just took time to get the technique down pat. I went from a weekend to do a helmet to no more than 10 minutes now. If I have a good picture to go by it takes even less time.

Once I figured it out and was satisfied I could display a quality image, I started with my beloved Catamounts and went from there. That's when I set in to emailing all the schools. I began writing letters to the different schools requesting information about their team helmets. In a span of about 2 months I had sent out over 800 emails. A lot of which never got answered. Some of the schools I emailed 2 and 3 times only to go ignored. It got quite frustrating sometimes. I enabled the "return receipt" feature on my email program just to see if they were getting where I was sending them. They were, they just weren't being answered. I did about 45 helmets before I uploaded the project on 2/28/02. I figured I had enough teams represented by that time so the public could see what it was all about. I was hoping it would draw enough interest that the information would start coming to me instead of the other way around. It worked! I got all the local teams first since they were the ones that were most familiar to me. After that, it got a little more complicated.

I had to rely on the fans of the various schools to get me the information. Initially, a couple of guys in particular really helped me a bunch and are still helping to this day, Jimmy Hughes of Loganville and Chris Willis of Northside Warner Robins. Without these two guys, this site would have never gotten off the ground. As the project developed, another fellow by the name of Jesse Lynch from Cook High School joined in to help. There are many others that have helped that I am eternally grateful too. There are just too many to name here. To all of you, thank you!

A special thank you goes out to Johnny Walton, Webmaster for "Football Friday Night" and the "Lincoln County Red Devils" of which there is really no need for introduction. Everyone knows what a successful program Larry Campbell has over in Lincolnton. If you don't, your not much of a high school football fan! Johnny has helped me with this project more than I could ever repay him. In fact, if not for him, I wouldn't be introducing this new web site format. He did all the work, and I personally thank him. He also invited me to be a part of his very popular football website. To you Johnny, I am so grateful for your friendship.

I hope this web site has been useful to all the webmasters that work at the newspapers, schools, and the team web sites. I've had nothing but positive feedback since day one! I really appreciate everyone's kindness and the flattering comments I've received since the project went live. It has been much more than I ever envisioned. Countless newspapers and a few t.v. stations across the state are using the images in their high school coverage. I'm proud of the fact that I've been able to contribute in a small way to promote the greatest sport on the planet, high school football! Once again, thanks to all of you that have visited the site, and to you newcomers that are visiting for the first time, May God bless all of you.

David
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