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Published: Wednesday, Dec. 09, 2009 / Updated: Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009 12:55 PM

Clemson coach Swinney speaks at Clover

Swinney tells freshmen not to settle for ‘excuses to fail' in surprise visit

CLOVER -- 

Halftime speeches don't usually last an hour. Then again, coaches usually just send their teams out to perform in the second half, not the rest of their lives.

Clemson University head football coach and surprise guest Dabo Swinney spoke to almost 600 Clover High School freshmen Tuesday morning on setting goals, pursuing them passionately and refusing to settle for “excuses to fail.” The appearance was part of the school's emphasis on each class of 2013 student receiving a high school diploma and being prepared for college within four years.

‘Football is life' in Clover

“Today is about taking that next step on our part,” said Mary Paige Wylie, director of the school's ninth-grade academy. “Today is really a beautiful example of someone's dream coming true.”

Perhaps surprisingly, it was a moment far from personal success that led to Swinney's appearance. With Clemson down 24-0 in a Sept. 10 game at Georgia Tech — a game Clemson came back in to take a second half lead before falling 30-27 — Swinney continued to encourage his players coming off the field. Television cameras and Clover ninth-grade academic assistance coach Nicole Thompson caught Swinney's action, prompting her to write a letter to the head Tiger.

“This is my first time ever being at Clover High School, though I spent some time at Camp Thunderbird last year,” Swinney said. “I'm here because you have a very special teacher.”

Like Swinney, Thompson spent a number of years — in her case, 10 — with her current employer before taking on a new coaching role this year. Without her own classroom, Thompson wanted to find a way to inspire 579 freshmen in a “small town that has three stop lights” and where, often, college is “more of a fairy tale to many of our students.”

“Football is life in this small town,” Thompson wrote to Swinney. “Nothing else matters on a Friday night.”

Thompson asked Swinney to come to the school and be a cheerleader for her freshmen, to be someone from outside the Clover High School walls who believes in them.

All she promised was to cover his travel expense, a “down- home country lunch” and the chance to see an old-fashioned, full-service gas station.

A different letter

Despite countless letters that cross his desk, Swinney said he saw more than food and gas when he read Thompson's words. He saw “the passion bleeding through the paper,” and agreed to come.

“I've been 14, 15 and 16,” Swinney told a packed house at the Clover School District Auditorium. “None of y'all have ever been 40. You don't have to wait to 40 to figure it out. Your education is everything, and it's worth the sacrifice.”

Swinney described a childhood in Pelham, Ala., that was marred by a troubled family life.

He talked of overcoming divorce and poverty, graduating with a senior class less than half the size of his audience Tuesday and becoming the first in his family to graduate from college.

Along the way he walked onto the football team at the University of Alabama, lettering three times and earning a scholarship along with a perfect season and national championship in 1993.

“All I had was hope and a will to make life better for me,” Swinney said.

Swinney told students that he proved anyone in this country can go to college, because “you can't have less than nothing.” Anyone with faith and willingness to work hard can succeed beyond school, he said.

He offered state statistics that only 50 percent of enrolled first graders graduate from high school, and of those who don't, 65 percent go to prison, while 85 percent end up on public aid.

Swinney told students that 71 percent of inmates hold no high school degree.

Messenger didn't matter

Logan McAlister and Cameron Sellers, both Clover students and card-carrying Tiger fans, said Swinney's message is one they plan to keep with them.

“Anybody can have hope and have faith in the Lord,” said McAlister, who teachers and students describe as wearing different Clemson-themed attire each day.

“That's all he owns,” Sellers said.

Sellers admits that Swinney coaching the Tigers did color his interpretation of the message orange but believes that it would make no difference even if the messenger were, say, University of South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier.

“I would say no,” Sellers said. “It would definitely be a lot different, but I think the message would be the same no matter who gave it. I was glad it was him.”

McAlister, with some hesitation, agreed.

“I don't think I would have been quite as excited,” he said.

Swinney ended by imploring students not to “give up what you want most in life because of what you want at a moment,” and that the next four years of their lives will impact the next 40 years. And to live with the passion and enthusiasm he first read in a letter from a small town academic coach, attitudes that can accomplish anything up to and including the head football coach at Clemson stopping by for a visit.

Unless, perhaps, the next enthusiastic letter comes from a Gamecocks fan.

“If you send me anything negative, I don't get it,” he said.