In my regular, pay-the-bills job, there are certain times of the year you just figure are going to be slow and uneventful. In the last week of the year, school is out, local government is basically shut down, no boards or councils are meeting and there are very few games being played. Imagine, though, if on Christmas Day, I got the following phone call…
“Hey Travis, a spaceship just landed out near Blackstock.” “Um, are you sure?” “I mean, it’s a big, glowing, wiener-shaped deal with rocket boosters and ray guns and what not. There’s aliens coming out of a big door that just opened. They seem to be communicating with beavers and squirrels and I think they are plotting our overthrow and demise.” “I’d love to get somebody out there to interview the space dudes or the beavers or whatever, but everybody’s off and I’m at a family thing right now. Can you see if they know what a phone is, have one and don’t mind me calling them later?” Trust me people, when the squirrel-whispering space aliens land in Blackstock, it will be on a day that is supposed to be quiet and relaxed. That’s kind of what it was like to get, giant, mega-bombshell Class A football news on January 31 (could that have been a weaker pivot and more ridiculous analogy? I don’t think it could have been). On Thursday, Corey Fountain resigned as head football coach at Lamar High School, leaving his alma mater to become the new head man of the Clinton Red Devils. His accomplishments at Lamar during his five-year tenure have ranked somewhere between “gaudy” and “holy crap” on the impressive meter. He not only kept the program at the high level he had reached before he arrived, he left it better than he found it. Stories I’ve read about his departure have listed his record at 58-10. I went through Lamar’s past five seasons on MaxPreps and came up with 56-10 (shocking note…sometimes stuff on MaxPreps is incorrect), but here’s what I found. In his five years with the Silver Foxes, he was 42-4 against Class A competition. Two of those losses came in state title games, one came in an upperstate championship contest and one came in the regular season. One. He lost one regular season game to a fellow Class A team in five years and that came in his first year to a great McBee squad. After falling in the upperstate finals his first year, his teams advanced to state four straight times and won it all twice. He was 16-3 in the playoffs and everything I just told you may not even be the most impressive Corey Fountain feat. Against teams of higher classification, Lamar was 14-6 under Fountain. Two of those losses came to powerhouse Hartsville and two to Darlington, both in his first two years on the job. Since then, Lamar routed Darlington twice, shut out Pageland Central three straight years, beat a good Crestwood program twice and carved up other AA, AAA and AAAA competitors. When smaller Class A schools regularly whoop up on the big boys, that speaks volumes. The dominance his teams showed over like-sized schools also can’t be stressed enough. Per my crude, often-inaccurate math skills, Lamar’s average score against fellow Class A competitors the past five season was 42.5 to 13.7…numbers that get even more lopsided if you only look at regular season contests. On 22 occasions, his teams held fellow Class A teams to eight or fewer points. So, what exactly is Clinton getting? Per my double-secret Lamar informant and other folks I’ve talked to down there, Fountain is the kind of guy you want coaching your kid. Good person who really cares about his players. He’s super competitive and wants to be the best at anything he undertakes and by extension works very hard to help his players reach their full potential. He’s also still young in coach years (39)…which I guess makes him the Fountain of youth. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! See what I did there?! In terms of Xs and Os on offense, it’s hard to say exactly, since he has never seemed married to any particular philosophy. I think, generally, his preference is to be physical and keep it on the ground. They ran double wing shotgun looks, three back alignments and other power formations. However, I think he wisely realizes that if you’re completely one-dimensional it becomes a lot easier to stop you, so his teams were always pretty efficient throwing the ball. Defensively, his teams usually operate from a 4-3 and rarely get out of it or do much wacky blitzing and stunting. I like that, since when you aren’t giving 14-18 year-olds a ton of stuff to learn and process, when you keep it relatively simple, it allows them to be more aggressive and lets their natural athletic talent take over more often. His teams are next to impossible to run against and their tackling looks like something from an instructional video. They weren’t dirty, but his Lamar teams had an intimidating presence about them and hit you VERY HARD. It often looked like they brought 2x4s to a church squirt pistol contest. I don’t know Fountain well enough to know what it was about Clinton that lured him away from the place he played. I’d heard he interviewed there a week or so back and was kind of surprised because I guess I just assume that when you get to be head coach at your alma mater, you’ve reached you ultimate destination, but that isn’t always the case. Maybe he felt he’d accomplished everything there that there was to accomplish. Maybe it was a new challenge or more money. I’m not really sure. I will say, he has left whoever is his successor will be with a lot to work with. The Silver Foxes only lose a handful of starters from a state runner-up team, get QB Cam Galloway back from injury and are the clear favorite to win the upperstate title again and advance to state. I don’t know enough about the current staff to know if the next coach is already on-board or not. If not, do they get someone with local ties who wants to come home, a young coach who wants to get his first head job at a place where he can succeed…maybe a veteran coach from North Carolina who wants to retire there and work here? Maybe it’s considered a good enough gig that there will be high-profile suitors for the job. I’m not sure, but I know that Lamar is going to be just fine…and so is Clinton.
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TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
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