Trent Butler: Time once again for our one on one coach Kevin Jones. Blackville-Hilda, the coach, great to see you. Glad to have your time here. What a turnaround. Two and eight this year, nine into a win in the playoffs short version of how did you make the big turnaround happen?

Coach Jones: Well you know it starts with the kids buying in and we have some talent. You know, black girls always going to be a community that produces a lot of talented kids. And I think the difference between last year and this year is these kids are driven and they wanted to do the right thing. So, what ended up happening was during the summer we got great turnouts for our workouts and we're a school of under 160 total kids and wow, we don't even have 75 male students and we would have almost 50 kids every morning, you know, when they could be sleeping in by Monday through Thursday. So, it started then. And I think it just kind of carried all through the season. And it's helped us to kind of meet some of the goals that we had set out for ourselves early on.

An impressive turnout without that many kids. Very proud of that.

Trent: Now you're playing Wagner-Salley. Coming up this round in the playoffs, you played them once before. You beat them handily. But I know I'm sure you're talking to the players. It's a brand-new season. Just because what happened before doesn't necessarily mean that's going to happen again. You're trying to preach that new season, new mentality, but it's nice to know you beat them once before.

Coach: Yeah, I mean, the great thing about this is these kids hated playing against that offense. You know, coach Fox does an outstanding job at Wagner. They run that offense that I kind of describe as a rugby scrum, right? You can't really tell who's got the ball. And even though we won the game, I think the final was 30-48. It was much closer to that. It was it was a 2-touchdown game at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Right. So, these kids know this is a Wagner team, this coming down that's talented enough to beat them and they've got a system that they've been running for several years and that they're very good at. And so, we have to be disciplined. We have to do our job and we have to do the kind of things that have made us successful at this point in the season. So, you know, they're excited, but I've not had to preach too much about not looking ahead because they've played this. I mean, after the game last time, they were like, coach, we didn't know who had the ball. And I'm like clearly yelled at, know who got the ball out, watch what was going on. So, we're excited about the opportunity, but we know it's going to be a different challenge.

It always is in the playoffs. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out who one of your star players is. Holman, the running back nearly 600 yards. I mean, these stats are eye popping, 26 touchdowns. He averages 145 yards per game. And you told me he's a great kid. He loves to talk. Maybe we could use him after he gets through with football.

Could he? Is, you know, his family from this area? Yeah. His grandfather was the mayor here and he had played over in the in the Aiken-area and came back. His family moved back. Here. We were you know, it's one of those things where I'm sitting out there cutting the grass during the summer days, say, hey, we got a transfer. And I'm like, oh, great. You know, because we think, okay, here comes a little slow, small kid. He walks up. I thought, oh, this is different. You know, he's a big kid. He's about 6’3”, 205lbs. Oh, wow. He's very, very talented. He's a kid that can put his foot in the ground. He's got great vision. He can run over people. He can run around them. He's not been called from behind this year yet. Gets in the secondary, see this big guy running and he's pulling away from the secondary. So, he he's extremely talented in it though, like you said, and we talked about he's a great kid. I mean, he's always smiling. He's one of those guys that that, you know, I have him in class. You see him in the hallway. The principal actually said this morning she's like, I don't think I've ever seen him not smile. And that's the kind of kid that you want. So, you know, it's a matter of doing what we can do to get in the ball, get him in space, let him do his thing, and hopefully from there we can be successful.

Coach, thanks for your time and best of luck against Wagener-Salley.

Appreciate it, guys. You bet.

 

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