Salisbury names new football coach

South Carolinian Mike Peavy will be Salisbury High School’s next head football coach.

Peavy, a 42-year-old native of Charleston, will take over at Salisbury in June, after he finishes the school year at Wade Hampton High in Hampton, S.C.

“He is our recommendation to the school board as the new football coach here at Salisbury,” said athletics director Raymond Daugherty. “We’re very happy to get someone of Coach Peavy’s caliber. He’s been a head coach in South Carolina, and South Carolina has very good football.”

Peavy’s hiring will be made official when the Rowan-Salisbury school board meets in March.

Daugherty, who resigned as head coach earlier this month after two seasons, said Salisbury had tried to hire Peavy previously.

“I’m very impressed with him,” said Daugherty. “He’s friends with Chris Boylan, our assistant principal. If we could have worked it out, we would have hired him last summer as an assistant coach.”

Peavy has been head coach the past three years at Wade Hampton, which played in the 2A classification, the Palmetto State’s second-smallest.

There are two schools in South Carolina named Wade Hampton, the other being a large school in Greenville.

Peavy took over at Wade Hampton after a 1-9 season, then improved to 6-4 in his first year and 8-3 the next, getting the school in the playoffs for the first time in 17 years. He lost a lot of seniors off that team and had a 1-9 mark in 2000.

At Salisbury, Peavy will be continuing a rebuilding job that Daugherty started two years ago.

The Hornets haven’t had a winning season since 1995, when Salisbury went 10-0 in the regular season and 12-1 overall under Conrad Green.

The Hornets were 2-8 and 1-10 the next two years under Green, 1-10 under Glen Padgett in his only season (1998), then 0-11 and 3-8 under Daugherty.

“I’ve heard that they haven’t had much success. From all the coaches I’ve talked to and from the kids I’ve talked to, everyone’s real eager,” said Peavy. “Everyone’s real excited about getting the program turned around. Coach Daugherty did a good job of getting kids back out for football. The better your numbers, the better the gene pool.”

The Salisbury program was down to 45 players, varsity and jayvee combined, but the number was up to 80 last season.

“I think that they are on the right track,” said Peavy.
“It’s just a matter of coming in and getting my system in place, and the kids and coaches buying into the system. I’ve met with the coaches now three or four times. They seem to be buying into the system and seem to be real excited. If the kids will buy into the system, I think we’re going to have a chance to be successful.”

Peavy’s system includes an option offense similar to that used by NCAA Division II power Georgia Southern. It will be a balanced alignment with a halfback and split end on each side and a fullback. Defensively, he plans a 5-3 alignment with variations.

Peavy was a linebacker at Garrett High in Charleston and earned a scholarship to Morehead State in Kentucky. However, an injury in preseason practice his freshman year ended his college career quickly.

Peavy transferred to College of Charleston, where he graduated, then he was a graduate assistant at the University of Tennessee one year and an assistant at The Citadel one year.

He decided that coaching and teaching in high school was the best move for him financially, and has been a teacher and coach 11 years, working as an assistant at Charleston schools Hanahan and Middleton prior to taking his first head job.

“I had been in the city my whole life. I went to Wade Hampton, a rural area. It was a change. This is going to be a lot better for me,” said Peavy.

Peavy, who is not married, said if there are any openings on the staff, he would like to bring two of his Wade Hampton assistants with him, but that he plans to keep every assistant on the current Hornets’ staff.

Peavy considers football coaching a year-round job with a lot of time spent with players in the weight room in the off season, but says he will have other coaching duties if Dr. Windsor Eagle, the school’s principal, and Daugherty need him in other sports. He will teach physical education.