'Things are changing around here' -- the power of positivity in one of NC's toughest counties to win
Posted August 26, 2022 11:43 a.m. EDT
Overhills football coach Kerry B. Bacon grew up in the Sandhills, but on a much different side of it than where the Jaguars play, having graduating from Pinecrest High.
After coaching for years in Durham and Guilford counties, he recognized that he'd need to adapt to the Harnett County area when he became the head football coach at Overhills.
"I knew I could challenge kids (at his former schools) a certain kind of way, but when I challenged these kids in the same way they would shut down," Bacon said. "As I prayed, the Lord revealed to me that I needed to pray over these kids and give them some positivity and help them believe in each other."
Overhills is named after the former Rockefeller estate (the mansion is steadily crumbling to pieces on what is now Fort Bragg territory less than 10 miles from the school) that was used as a hunting retreat in the rugged Sandhills woodlands.
Today's Overhills area is far from being filled with high rollers.
It's a transient community, filled with military families who have bounced around the United States. People move in, people move out and it's still, to some degree, a land that's tough to live in. Responding to tough times with mental toughness is something that high schoolers aren't always equipped to do.
Sometimes you just need encouragement.
That's where Bacon, now in his second season, saw a chance to change the culture.
"Things are changing around here," Bacon said.
Bacon's methods were validated on the field in a season-opening 36-22 win over South View, a team that the Jaguars had been outscored 83-0 over the past two meetings.
But there was better validation on the sidelines.
See, I was at the spring 2021 game between South View and Overhills. On that night, a 43-0 loss for Overhills, I heard a familiar refrain — "STOP PLAYING SCARED!" which took me right back to my own high school days just up the road — from one player to another. Of course, the player wasn't "playing scared" and that message didn't help him play any better. All it did was reinforce a culture of pointing fingers.
But a lot has changed on the old Rockefeller stomping grounds.
In Week 1, even when the Jaguars were down on the scoreboard, they didn't get down on themselves.
The only time I heard someone calling out someone else for being "scared" was from a fan who was heckling the other team. Overhills, sure enough, threw at the defensive back for a touchdown. I looked behind me, and the fan was grinning ear to ear.
"We're more of a united team so we're always going to have each other's back and we're not going to put each other down," sophomore quarterback Jordan Bryant said. "We'll always be positive about anything and we're never going to give up."
Sure, it's hard to win in Harnett County.
But meeting those challenges, and meeting the kids where they are, is a major step in something even greater.
