Published Tuesday, August 26, 2008 9:25 AM
Updated Tuesday, August 26, 2008 9:26 AM
As the coach for Spartanburg High School, Davis learned a thing or two about rebuilding a football team.
He led five different teams to a state championship and helped the program maintain a very respectable reputation during his 18 years there. However, his new position requires him not to rebuild, but to construct a program from the ground up.
“I’ve never coached kids before who have never played,” he said. “I’m used to coaching kids who have been in three organized programs by the time I get them. Some members of this team have never even played little league football so they showed up not even knowing how to put their pads on. We have to teach them everything.”
His team is comprised exclusively of freshmen and sophomores. However, it will play a full varsity schedule against teams loaded with juniors and seniors. That means that while the competition spent summer practice running drills, the Swamp Foxes had to split their time between drills and basic fundamentals.
“We even had to teach them discipline, the importance of hustling and not letting up just because you’re tired,” Davis said. “I don’t think any of our coaches have been in a situation like this before, but they are all handling it well.”
The Swamp Foxes weren’t able to have winter workouts or spring practice. Because the coaches only have freshmen and sophomore athletes to choose from, the team doesn’t have much depth and many players have to play both ways. Therefore, the team can’t work with its starting offense and defense at the same time. Making their situation even worse is that they had to open their season Friday, a full week before many South Carolina schools.
“So much was thrown at these players so fast,” Davis said. “You can’t go into a game running one defense and a couple of running plays. The general progression of things is you don’t go to a new play until you can do the first one right, but we can’t afford to do that. We have to go on to something new even if we don’t have the first thing down pat. It’s not only physically demanding on these kids, it’s mentally demanding.”
Davis isn’t expecting a great season in terms of number of wins. He does expect the team to improve so he encourages his players and Swamp Fox fans to just be patient.
“We just have to look to the future,” he said. “When these guys are seniors and have been in this offense and defense for several years, we should be good but it’s not going to happen over night. We are going to try to do things right and build this program. There are a lot of intangibles, but we will try to teach the kids about responsibility, commitment and all those type things. If they will buy into that, we will be ok.”
Swamp Fox Foodball : 8/30/2008
These boys have heart and know that great things are expected of them. They believe it will happen for them and last nights game again Bamberg proved that they will work hard to achieve that greatness. Go Foxes!!