HobbsDailyReport.com
MARC KIRKPATRICK
THE SPARTANS’ LEDGER
After a win at McDowell on Friday night, every coach to guide the South Caldwell High Spartans in their football history has won at least one game. The other Spartans leaders and their first seasons:
Coach 1st year Wins at SC
“Red” Kirkpatrick 1977 27
Tommy Pursley 1984 8
John Mackey 1987 6
Dan Hardee 1990 34
Butch Carter 2001 104
Sean McMenomy 2016 2
Marc Kirkpatrick 2017 1
Note: Hardee coached the Spartans for the last eight games of the 1990 season, winning once, after Mackey resigned.
SOURCE: HobbsDailyReport.com research/files.
MARION – The first victory as a head football coach for South Caldwell High’s Marc Kirkpatrick may well carry his Spartans into the state playoffs.
Using their ground game to generate 450 yards of total offense, the visiting Spartans beat McDowell 46-27 on Friday night in a key Northwestern 3A-4A game – key because the league gets one 4A bid into the postseason, and South Caldwell and McDowell are the conference’s only 4A schools.
S. CALDWELL 46
McDOWELL 27
South Caldwell (1-6, 1-2) ran for nearly 290 yards, led by Dustin Herman and Harley Sullivan, and threw for 131 yards to provide Kirkpatrick a sweet moment.
Kirkpatrick — who played quarterback at South Caldwell as a junior and senior (1982 and 1983) — did not beat the Titans those two seasons.
On Friday night, his team scored twice in 14 seconds and forced four turnovers to make him the second family member to register a win as head football coach at South Caldwell. His father, Don (Red) Kirkpatrick, was South Caldwell’s first head football coach when the school opened in the late 1970s.
Kirkpatrick’s brother Donnie, now an assistant coach at James Madison University and formerly head coach at Chattanooga, was the Spartans’ first starting quarterback on a team that played for a state title the year the school opened.
In Marion on Friday night, Herman ran 19 times for 130 yards and two scores, Sullivan had 11 carries and scored on three of them and Spartans quarterback Jason Martin had a TD throw among his five completions.
McDowell (1-6, 0-3) got nearly 220 passing yards and two TD throws from quarterback Ben Ballew in the loss, but the Titans had fewer than 57 rushing yards after Ballew was sacked six times.
South Caldwell gained an early lead after an interception when Austin Raynor rushed for a score. A long drive after a McDowell punt netted the Spartans another score, a 6-yard run by Herman, for a 12-0 lead.
Sullivan later scored after the Spartans gained possession with an interception and South Caldwell was up 26-6 by halftime.
The Spartans extended their lead to 32-6 on a TD pass by Martin and added another score after recovering a fumble after the kickoff. That led to a 33-yard TD run by Herman and a lead of 39-12.
South Caldwell, which would get to the postseason for the 11th time in 13 seasons if it gets in, plays its next game on Friday night at home (7:30 p.m.) against Freedom.
McDowell goes on the road next Friday, battling unbeaten and league-leading Alexander Central in Taylorsville at 7:30 p.m. in a conference game.