Ron Duncan, Screven County head coach
Today’s interviewee is Screven County coach Ron Duncan, whose team is 10-0 heading into the Class A Division II playoffs. Screven County, 4-6 last season, won its first region title since 2017. Duncan has been Screven County’s coach since 2012. His record is 104-53 with five region titles. Screven County will play Glascock County in the first round.
1. The computer Maxwell Ratings gave your team a 12.2% chance just to make the playoffs. Did you have reason to believe your chances were a little better than that? What was it? “I felt like we had chance to have good year. We have a great group of senior kids who’ve been playing for an awfully long time, and they had a great offseason. We did everything we could to prepare ourselves for a tough and balanced region. We scrimmaged Statesboro in the spring and did well. We went to Burke County’s padded camp and got a lot out of that. We hosted a padded camp. I felt we had the makings of a really good team, but it starts with those seniors. It’s not a large group. We have 12, but 11 have been in the program four years, and four or five have started most of their careers. It’s a great group of high-character guys.”
2. What does this year’s team do well? “It starts up front with the offensive line. We’ve got guys who have played a lot of football. We have a dual-threat quarterback in DeMarko Ward and then the defending [Class A Division II] 100-meter champion in the backfield with him in AB Hilton. We’re pretty balanced in how we can run it. If you take away the QB runs, AB can have a big night. If you gear toward stopping the outside zone and putting a cap on top of that, we can turn DeMarko loose to be more active on zone reads or our gap schemes. On defense, we’ve focused on tackling, fundamentals and takeaways, and we’ve made a lot of progress in those.”
3. Your teams have been up and down over the years, mostly up, two-thirds of your games, but this is the third time that you’ve had a team win five more games than the year before. Most places, they win all the time, they lose all the time, or they win and crash and fire the coach, or the coach has a good run and leaves. What explains the Screven pattern? “We’re not getting transfers, and we’re not losing kids. That’s what makes being here special, too. We’re going to take what we have and do the best we can with it. We’ve got what we’ve got. Some teams are just better. Some years there’s not as much talent. A lot of time coaches leave when the talent runs dry. We had a great run for nine years, and when the talent left, I kind of relished rebuilding it again. We take pride in getting the most out of every team we coach. I’m not concerned about being in any hall of fame or my record. I just want to make sure the team is coached as best it can be.”
4. So, let’s say you are granted one timeout per game where you could call anybody on your cell phone and chat for five minutes to discuss how to get your team out of a pickle or change the momentum. Who do you call, and why? “I’d probably call Calvin Scott because he’s going to tell me what I should’ve done the next morning at the store when we go get breakfast. He’s our assistant superintendent’s dad. I’d either call him or Eddie Reddick or Rusty Black. They’re just a bunch of old codgers that I drink coffee and have breakfast with sometimes. There’s too many that I could call that would actually give me sound advice, so I’d call them. They’re pretty good at telling me what I should’ve done after the fact. It’s a lot of fun.”
