On and off the field, three simple rules define success for Dillon High coach Jackie Hayes.
Photo by Milton Morris
It's a warm fall night in Dillon—perfect football weather—and what seems like the entire town is packed into the home-team bleachers, cheering as the Dillon High School Wildcats charge onto the field through a tunnel of cheerleaders.
Fireworks explode in the night sky, and fans in Wildcats T-shirts and hats lean over the fence to get closer to the team. Outside the stadium, storefront signs up and down Main Street wish the players well, and traffic is backed up for a mile. Anyone still hoping for a good seat to watch Dillon play its Class 2-A rival, Marlboro High School, is an hour too late.
An observer watching the spectacle from the sidelines might easily forget that Dillon is a town plagued by persistent poverty, an alarming drop-out rate and a reputation for political corruption. “There are some real challenges here, no question,” says Shawn Johnson, principal of Dillon High School. “But this town has serious pride. Just look around.”
The man most responsible for stoking that community spirit—head football coach Jackie E. “Coach” Hayes—skips the grand entrance, happy to let his players take all the limelight. While his team stampedes onto the field, he slowly walks the sideline, head mostly down, his impenetrable “game face” firmly affixed.
“Rich, poor, black or white,” says Johnson, “if it’s Friday-night football in Dillon, we’re all together as one.”
Dillon has always been home
Dillon High School has been a part of Jackie Hayes’ life since he arrived there as a freshman in 1977, playing quarterback for the junior varsity.
“I was coaching varsity when he started coming up,” says Gerald Reaves, a retired educator who now works as an assistant to Hayes. “All I kept hearing was, ‘That Jackie Hayes is special.’ Turns out, everyone was right.”
Hayes flatly refuses to talk about his playing days (“All I know is that was a long time ago”), but his talent impressed coaches statewide and earned him a spot in the 1980 Shrine Bowl. “You could just tell he was a natural-born leader,” says Reaves. “When he was quarterbacking out there, he was coaching. He just didn’t know it at the time.”
After earning his degree at Catawba College in North Carolina, Hayes jumped at the chance to return to Dillon as coach of the junior-varsity team. “There was never a question about coming back,” he says. “It was home, and it was exactly where I wanted to be.”
But the town Hayes returned to in 1984 was fundamentally different from the one he left. Dillon County’s psyche was in tatters as a result of a highly publicized vote-buying scandal that tagged the region with a reputation for corrupt politics. The tobacco industry, the region’s economic mainstay, was in sharp decline, and jobs were vanishing at an alarming rate.
On the football field, things weren’t much brighter. The varsity Wildcats posted just two wins in as many seasons before Hayes—at the age of 29— took over as head coach in 1992. Today, Dillon High School is a football powerhouse with four state titles to its credit, and Hayes is in the record books as the youngest coach in state history to win 200 games.
The program
The head coach of a high-school football team is part taskmaster, motivator, punisher and consoler.
“Unless you’re a coach, you can never understand the responsibility you feel for the kids,” says Keith Richardson, former head coach at Clinton High School and a member of the South Carolina Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame. “You have this sense of obligation that’s hard to explain.”
In Dillon County, where one out of every three kids under the age of 18 is raised in poverty, that obligation can be staggering.
“There are some tough family stories out there,” Hayes says of his athletes. “And if you care at all, you’re going to do what you can to at least give them an opportunity to succeed.”
For Hayes, that translates into an unusual coaching strategy: Never cut a player who follows the three simple guidelines known as “the program.”
- Work hard.
- Be respectful and responsible.
- Follow the rules.
“If you work hard, you have a chance to be part of something bigger,” says Hayes. “And that’s important around here. There are some tough situations to deal with. But if you give a young man a chance, allow him to work hard, follow the rules and do all we ask, why shouldn’t he have a chance to be part of something special?”
The art of politics
Jackie Hayes is hard to read. His neutral expression almost never changes. When the Wildcats score, he claps a couple of times, adjusts his headset and starts talking to his assistants about the next play.
Polite yet intense, Hayes works 80-hour weeks during the football season. When football ends, he pours his energy into his second job: representing House District 55 in the S.C. General Assembly. His decision to enter politics in 1998 sprang from a desire to enact change beyond Dillon High School.
“I thought, instead of sitting around complaining about things, I’d actually get up and try to change them,” he says.
Through the years, he’s steadily gained influence at the Statehouse, where he’s affectionately known as “Coach” and serves on several influential committees.
“He’s an ideal colleague,” says Rep. Kenny Bingham, former Republican majority leader of the house. “Coach shows up prepared every day. He works as hard as anyone. He’s not looking for headlines and doesn’t showboat. And most of all, everything Coach says you can take to the bank. He’s a man of his word—which isn’t always common in politics today.”
As a member of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Education, Hayes serves with three others to allocate public-school funding, and he is steadfast in his mission to improve education in South Carolina’s poorest counties.
“That’s a child’s ticket to life,” Hayes says. “We have to offer opportunities to all kids if we want to be the state we know we can be.”
The fire that still burns
With the Wildcats racking up wins on the field and his influence growing in the General Assembly, Hayes has no intention of leaving either job anytime soon.
Serving as a state representative “means you’re going to get your share of criticism,” he says. But Hayes believes he’s reached a point where his work as an elected official is paying dividends for his constituents. “It’s rewarding because you feel like at the end of the day you’re doing your part to hopefully make things better.”
When it comes to coaching, “it’s still fun watching these young men develop, watching teams grow together,” says Hayes. “If you win championships, that’s great. But that’s not the bottom line here. We want to make sure we’re doing right by these kids, because we owe them that.
“I tell you what makes me feel good,” he continues. “It’s looking at old team photos and being able to say, ‘This guy is an attorney now. This guy is a teacher. This one is a banker.’ My ultimate satisfaction is being able to give someone a chance to succeed.”
Jackie Hayes will coach the South Squad in the 2014 Touchstone Energy Cooperatives Bowl. Darryl Page, head coach at Lower Richland High School, will lead the North Squad.
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Touchstone Energy Cooperatives Bowl
WHEN: Dec. 13. Pregame festivities start at noon.
WHERE: Doug Shaw Memorial Stadium, 705 33rd Ave. North, Myrtle Beach.
TICKETS: Advance-purchase tickets available online for $15 until Nov. 10 and $20 after that. Click here to get your tickets.
SPECIAL DISCOUNT: Enter the promotional code “Touchstone” and save 10 percent when ordering tickets online.
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S.C. high school all-star game kicks off Dec. 13
Before the dust settles on South Carolina’s 2014 high-school football season, the state’s top players will gather in Myrtle Beach on Dec. 13 to play in the Touchstone Energy Cooperatives Bowl.
The all-star game for graduating seniors is organized by the South Carolina Athletic Coaches Association, a project they’ve maintained every season since 1947. Proceeds are directed to a scholarship fund that assists the children of coaches.
During halftime, the association will also announce the winner of South Carolina’s 2014 Mr. Football award. Recent winners include standouts Jadeveon Clowney, Marcus Lattimore and Stephon Gilmore—all of whom are now playing in the National Football League.
Last year’s Mr. Football recipient, Jacob Park of Goose Creek High School, is now a freshman quarterback at the University of Georgia.
“The day after I won, there was a story in the Athens paper about me being named Mr. Football,” Park says. “So, yeah, I’d say it’s a pretty big deal—especially when you see some of the guys who won the award before me.”
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