Jennings looks to change the culture for Darlington football in first year
The 2019 Darlington High School varsity football team. Photo by Drake Horton
By Drake Horton
Contributing Writer
The last three years have been a nightmare for the Darlington Falcons football program. In those three years Darlington has won just three football games, going 1-10 in 2016, 2-9 in 2017 and 0-9 in 2018.
Heading into the 2019 season, Darlington has a new coaching staff, with Raymond Jennings taking over for former head coach John Jones. Jennings has plenty of experience coaching, being a head coach at Ridge View, and guiding them to a Class 4A Upper State championship game appearance in 2006.
After moving on from Ridge View in 2014, Jennings became defensive coordinator for Lugoff-Elgin, a former region opponent of Darlington, from 2015 until now, but out of all of his coaching challenges this Darlington job might top the cake.
“Yeah, it’s a little overwhelming if you think about three years of not winning, taking over a job, being new, the kids being beat down, the numbers are so low, not having a JV (team) last year — it can get overwhelming, but as a coaching staff we are trying to focus one day at a time,” Jennings said.
“We are looking ahead, but when we get caught worrying about Hartsville, Lamar, Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach, I think we lose today because we have kids that are in front of us that have needs. We are trying to get kids to football practice, get them picked up, require kids to be on time, teaching the game of football once they get there.
“Once they arrive our job theoretically should start, but our job has been encouraging them to come out for football, talking about trust, talking about committing to the process so it is not overwhelming when you think about those day to day things and at the same time, physically it is draining because it takes a lot of energy to do those things.”
Getting kids to come out and play football for Darlington has been something of a challenge for the last two coaches, Will Lampkin and Jones. During Jones’ final season a year ago the roster was down in the mid-30s and right now it is not any better with Jennings as he is going through his first summer with the team.
“Right now we have 32-33 kids showing up in the summer,” Jennings said.
“We are letting them touch us, feel us as coaches. We are going to pick them up. We are doing everything we can. We are talking to coaches, we are trying to talk to parents, we are trying to encourage them, but football is tough and there is a work component combined with football.
If I kind of rub them and tell them it is easy, I am sure we would have 150 kids out there, but that’s tough.
“What I am understanding now is a lot of that drive and that ambition needs to come right from home, it should come from home. That came from home for me; who I was, how tough I was going to be, my approach to schoolwork, my approach to academics, my approach to sports, all of that drive came from home for me.”
While numerous reasons can be placed on things like a lack of success or the school being known for its basketball success and tradition, the fact remains that while there are plenty of athletes at Darlington High School, a lot of them do not play football.
One problem is athletes deciding to be sport-specific, concentrating on just one sport for the whole year. Jennings himself said that he believes his quarterback, along with two wide receivers, are on the basketball team and they have not come out this summer.
But to win in a region that is probably the toughest in all of 4A, Darlington has to be able to grow its roster, and Jennings, along with his staff, are doing everything they can to try to change the perception of the program and grow a winning culture.
“There are so many other things for kids to do out there,” Jennings said.
“Darlington, traditionally, before I got here, my information shares that they were a basketball school so there are athletes there, we just have to talk to those athletes and convince them that they can do more than one thing, they can be multiple-sport athletes.
“That is the way the Division 1 coaches are leaning, they are wanting to deal with multisport athletes, but for some reason, I don’t know what it is, AAU or combination of ESPN or kids getting sidetracked to thinking they can only do one thing, but the campus like we have, and we have a shortage of athletes, I come with the mind frame of we need to share athletes, we need to tell athletes that they can play more than one sport. I know where I stand at, the football staff stands at, we are just not willing to change our philosophy on that, but at the same time we are trying to do what we can.”
The good news for Jennings is out of the 30 or so players who have shown up for the summer is the fact that these players are truly dedicated to make Darlington better and he loves everything he has seen from them and more players like them is all he needs to build the Falcons into a successful program.
“I love these 30 kids because everything tells them not to play, everything tells them they can’t block, everything tells them not to show up and work hard, everything tells them that they are probably not going to have success,” Jennings said.
“I mean, these kids … are just showing up and trying to trust in the process of believing in what we are doing. So I love these kids, we just want athletes to show up and we just need that. I don’t need anybody else to coach them, I don’t need any money, I don’t need all these things that programs complain about, I just need more athletes to show up.”
A more important thing for Jennings, that can help build for the future, is that the players showing up have proven to be great leaders as well.
“Tremendous leadership, you could imagine, you spell it out the situation that we have three years where we’ve won three games,” Jennings said.
“Zero last year, two the year before that and one before that, so a teenager right now, why in the world would they show up to a program that’s not winning and then when they show up we are busting their tails and then when they show up after that, the numbers are low and they are having to practice three hours straight without a break because they are having to go offense, they have to go defense, and the same kid is going to have to go special teams so they are working hard if you really slow it down and understand the situation. All we are missing is a few more athletes.”
Despite the concern on numbers, Jennings and his staff are not making excuses.
Instead, they are taking it one step at time, looking to build a program the right way, a way that can be sustained over time.
“I make no excuses for it. We are going to do things the right way and maybe things will get worse before they get better, but there is a right way to run a football program and we are trying to run a football program the right way,” Jennings said.
“It is work-ethic based; our intention is not to cut a kid, but we are also going to put a great product out on the field on Friday night. We have been working hard all summer. We’ve had four workouts a week, 24 this summer and out of the 30 kids, over 50 percent have missed zero workouts.
“I’ve got 15 that made 24 out of 24, so the commitment can happen, it is just not happening in large numbers, but we feel like we have (a) nucleus and we want to add to that nucleus, but the kids are just not showing up. Where does that fall at and we are trying to figure that out now. Does that fall on coaches? Well, we are in the process of doing everything we can to make football available to kids.”
So with all that being said, how does Jennings feel about this team and what does he want to accomplish and be known with this group of players even if the wins do not add up to what some might want or expect?
“As a coaching staff we are just optimistic, we are going to hang on in there, we have faith that we are going to be able to keep the JV roster even though we only have nine kids working out, we just have faith that some of them are going to come out because we know that is important,” Jennings said.
“The kids that we got, I want it known that these kids are busting their tail, they are doing what we are asking them and we are pushing them. We are raising the envelope, we are making sure that they are physically challenged and we coach the whole kid at Darlington. We just don’t want to coach them on the field. We are really looking out for them. We want to develop them mentally, socially, spiritually, academically and we are doing our best to try to coach the whole kid. That is what I want to be known.”
Rome was not built in a day and neither can Darlington’s football program, but the ideas that Jennings and his staff are implementing can certainly propel the Falcons in the right direction.
The next part is if the students, parents and everyone else involved outside of football currently will begin to buy in. If they do, the sky is the limit for Darlington.
