Blue Ridge High Head Coach Wants Fighting Tigers to Build on Prior Success

Head Football Coach Shane Clark and his coaching staff at Blue Ridge High School welcomed the warm, dry weather this week.

“We're very grateful for the weather we're having this week,” Clark told members of the Greer Touchdown Club Thursday afternoon. “We've had situations at our field. Last week we had to move our Jamboree to Woodruff. We've only been able to practice on our practice field six times this year. “We've had a lot of issues with water. We've had three full practices in a parking lot, we've had several in the gym, so it's been a little unusual,” he continued. “Our guys, they're kind of getting re-acclimated this week to being outside.”

He said the team is “working hard every day.”

“Focusing on trying to get better, fundamentals, preaching through to them,” Clark said. “We're trying to get our guys to focus on their job, what they're supposed to be doing.”

He said he was looking forward to playing Wade Hampton tonight.
“Wade Hampton is a very good football team,” Clark said. “Don't be fooled by last week's game. They played Dorman – Dorman's a great team as well.

Clark said the team's philosophy “would be pretty much the same” offensively and defensively, with a few tweaks here and there.

“We're looking to take bigger and better strides, build off the season we had last year,” Clark said. “That's one of the hard things – you get a little bit of success, coming off the best season in school history, kind of bringing them back down to earth. They've got to realize that they just don't show up and things happen. They've got to work for it every day. That's where we are right now with our program.”

Clark was named head coach in May of this year.

A coach for 17 years, Clark has spent the last three years as an assistant coach for the Fighting Tigers.

Clark has more than 10 years as an assistant coach and seven years as a head coach. For two years, Clark worked on the defensive side of the ball and served as the offensive coordinator for the Fighting Tigers' 2012 season.

Clark had been serving as interim head coach after Wade Cooper departed last month to take the defensive coordinator's job at Dorman.

Clark is a former head coach at Travelers Rest.