Randolph high school football teams kick off this week

Burton Cates has been through a lot of preseasons, so he’s definitely used to getting his team ready for the upcoming high school football campaign.

Starting his 41st season as a high school head coach, the winningest active coach in the state of North Carolina is now getting his Wildcats set for another run at a state championship.

It’s a different classification, a different conference, but ER will certainly be in the mix at the end.

All seven head football coaches in Randolph County are eager to start the new season, hoping their team will be in the mix at the end as a new era in high school football in North Carolina begins Friday night. 

The NCHSAA expanded from four classifications to eight, with Randolph County teams Eastern Randolph (3-A) and Southwestern Randolph (4-A) in the Four Rivers Conference; Providence Grove, Trinity and Wheatmore in the six team 3-A Central Carolina Conference; Randleman (4-A) in the PAC Seven Conference; and Asheboro (6-A) in the Triad Area Athletic Conference.

Eastern Randolph

All the teams had to deal with wet weather last week.

“Considering the weather, things have been pretty good,” Cates said. “We’ve been able to get outside and practice, we’ve had good practices despite the rain and the kids haven’t mentioned it.”

As expected, by last week, most teams were tired of hitting one another and were looking forward to scrimmages against other opponents. Those have taken place over the past two weeks.

“I liked our physicality,” Cates said of his team’s first scrimmage. “From an offensive standpoint, we have a quarterback (Cade McCallum) who has 13 starts under his belt. We have four offensive linemen back, so that part has been where we thought we would be.”

Eastern Randolph, which finished 12-1 and advanced to the third round of the state 1-A playoffs last year, will be at Southern Alamance Friday night.

“We’re taking it one game at a time,” Cates said. “They worked extremely hard over the summer. We have 70 kids out and we have some seniors who have really stepped up. Their leadership has shown.”

Randleman

While Cates has had a wealth of experience getting ER ready, Randleman’s David Diamont, although experienced as a high school football coach, is leading a preseason for a first time as head coach.

There were certainly a number of things to discover as he stepped up the ladder to become a head coach after three seasons as a very productive offensive coordinator at Burns High School. Burns averaged 42.3 points per game in 2022, 44.9 in 2023 and 36.8 in 2024.   

“I came in and kind of gauged the routine, the rhythm, the current and known expectations and standard,” Diamont said of his time getting to know the program. “I don’t want anyone to tell me, I want to see it. See how they act in their normal routine, how they prepare their work. How do they communicate? If they are on time or not on time. The way they do things, the expectations and the standards.”

So, what are Diamont’s thoughts after experiencing the culture at RHS?

“It’s great,” Diamont said. “There’s a lot of tradition. They do have high standards of competing and winning. It is everything I was hoping for when I arrived at Randleman. I was very nervous because not only was it my first year as head coach, but I knew absolutely nobody. The community is great, the kids are great. They have been working extremely hard and I couldn’t ask anymore in that regard. The community and the administration, I couldn’t ask for anything more. It has been great.”

The Tigers return just six starters, but one is quarterback John Kirkpatrick.   

Randleman, which finished 9-3 and advanced to the second round of the state 2-A playoffs, last year, will host Providence Grove Friday night.

Providence Grove

The Patriots also have a new head coach in Cody Moran. Moran has been at the school and is acting as athletic director as well.

“It’s going really good, players are showing a lot of excitement and we have a young coaching staff that is excited,” Moran said, adding the offense is switching from a wishbone to a somewhat spread attack. “We’re pushing toughness, competitive toughness. We want to be mentally tough, a tougher football team.”

Moran said he’s impressed with the number of playmakers on the field.

“We’re going to spread it out, we won’t air raid,” he said. “We have a ton of playmakers and we’re going to try and maximize the number of times we get the ball to these players.”

Senior Jackson Lawver will be at QB for the Patriots, who finished 3-7 a season ago.   

“We feel really good about our senior leadership,” Moran said. “These kids have had four head coaches in four years and they could have just given up. A lot of those players are at the running back and linebacker positions.”

Asheboro

The Blue Comets were 4-7 last year and will hope to continue their rise.

“It’s been good,” AHS coach Calvin Brown said. “Our guys believe in our system and we’ve been getting great leadership. That is going to be key in taking the next step. The biggest thing for our guys is the leadership we have.”

Brown liked what he saw in his team’s first scrimmage last week.

“I’m very pleased with how fast we played and how physical we were,” Brown said, adding those were two areas that sometimes lacked last year. “They got a taste of winning (last year) and we were close in a number of other games. That certainly helps, but we’ve been getting great leadership.”

The Blue Comets have switched wideout Dallas Britton to quarterback and he and brother Connor Britton, along with some others, will be counted on to spark the offense.

“We tweaked our offense to mold around a running quarterback,” Brown said.

AHS will host High Point Central Friday. 

Wheatmore

Wheatmore, which was 1-9 a year ago, is under the direction of Jacob Sheffield with the first game of the year for the Warriors coming Friday night at East Rowan.

“It’s going good, Year 2 is off to a good start,” Sheffield said. “We have 50 kids out this year and our kids have bought into the weight room. We are blessed to have as many weight lifting classes as we do.”

Sheffield said he’s been impressed with the players’ attitudes.

“Just their attentiveness and how they want to learn the game,” he said. “We have been more physical this year and anytime you can hear pads that brings some excitement.”

SW Randolph

Southwestern Randolph is coming off another playoff appearance and winning season as they finished 6-5 a season ago. 

“Things have gone well, we have between 75 and 80 kids out,” SWR veteran coach Seth Baxter said. “About 50 of those are freshmen and sophomores, so we’re going to be young.”

The rainy weather experienced last week didn’t help, Baxter said.

“I’ve been doing this a long time and you always hear you want to practice in the morning, stay away from the rain and the storms,” Baxter said. “It seemed like it didn’t matter. You could practice in the morning, in the afternoon or the eventing and there was going to be rain. And when you get to August, you always feel like you’re behind.”

And the expectations are high.

“The kids are working hard and there is a foundation where they expect to win,” said Baxter, who will be celebrating victory number 100 as a head coach the next time the Cougars win. “I know we will be young, but the expectations are still high.”

Baxter said between 10 and 14 underclassmen will play solid minutes.

“They are young, but they worked hard in the offseason,” Baxter said.

SWR travels to East Davidson Friday night.

Trinity

Trinity, which is under the direction of Mark Raynor, is coming off a 3-7 season. The Bulldogs open play at South Davidson.