Why Community School of Davidson picked Ken McClamrock as its 2nd football coach
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- CSD impressed and pursued McClamrock after a highly personalized interview.
- He left coaching in 2019 for family and returned to coaching in 2024.
- At CSD he'll align middle-school practices and emphasize relationships.
The day he was heading to Community School of Davidson for a job interview, Kenneth McClamrock was pretty sure he wasn’t going to become the second football coach at the K-12 charter on the far north end of Mecklenburg County.
“I was headed to another school. I had another opportunity,” McClamrock said. “The principal (at the other school) texted that morning and said, ‘Where are you’ (with the job search)?”
McClamrock, 44, quickly texted back: “I’m 90 percent coming to you. CSD? Yes, I’m going there. But they’re going to have to blow me away to change my mind.”
Then a funny thing happened.
Community School of Davidson absolutely blew McClamrock’s mind.
He had filled out a Google form with four questions, asking about his culture, his goals and football-related stuff. He’d seen that before. But when he sat in the room with six school officials, the attention to detail they showed, the care, was something he said he hadn’t seen before, and McClamrock has coached at five schools over a 20-year career.
“They immediately started asking questions about the answers I’d given,” McClamrock said, “and I’d written five pages for four answers. They probably didn’t do this for all 75 applicants, but they did it for 15. I mean, 15 times four, for answers that were pretty repetitive, right? But they knew about me. They knew my story.”
School officials asked McClamrock if he could bring his family to tour the school. The dates didn’t work out, but they eventually landed on a basketball game.
“We go and every single staff person at CSD came up to me,” he said. “They knew who we were. They spoke to me. They spoke to my wife. They really rolled out the red carpet. I mean, man, that Community School of Davidson, it’s not just a cute name. Like it’s the real deal there. Like, that’s who they are. That is a community and I was blown away then and have been blown away since.”
My kids really need me
McClamrock grew up playing football for legendary coach EZ Smith at Concord High School. In English class in 11th grade, he wrote a paper entitled, “I’m going to be a head high school football coach.”
After graduating from UNC Charlotte, he went to work at North Meck with Glen Padgett, who was his position coach in high school. McClamrock coached with Padgett for 12 years, at North Meck and later at Concord High, before he got his first head job at East Rowan High, in Salisbury, in 2014.
After three years there, he went to Central Cabarrus. After going 4-7 his first year, McClamrock had the first winning season of his career, when the Vikings were 8-4 in 2018. Central Cabarrus was 7-5 in 2019, but long before the season ended with an overtime playoff loss to Mount Tabor, McClamrock knew he had to step away from the one thing, outside of his family, that he loved most.
“My priorities were out of whack,” he said. “I had twin six-year-old boys and they needed their Dad. As a coach, we preach family, I live family, but the only family I’ve been charged by God to take care of I’m neglecting because my priorities are out of whack.”
McClamrock said he’d never been on a vacation with his family since the boys were born, and it hit him, one Tuesday in 2019, that he needed to change that.
Central Cabarrus was getting ready to play rival Hickory Ridge, then a burgeoning state power under former UNC offensive lineman Jupiter Wilson. It was a huge game in Cabarrus County and McClamrock was feeling the pressure.
“Tuesday was the big practice for the week,” McClamrock said. “We had a bad practice and I’m trying to figure out how in the world we’re going to have a shot against those guys.”
Tired, he comes home and his boys are waiting for him, one of them holding a football. They had an almost daily ritual: When Dad pulled up in the driveway, they’d go outside and throw the ball. But on this Tuesday, McClamrock chose the couch, and the TV remote, instead.
Shortly after he started to relax, one of his kids came into the room and broke his heart.
“Dad,” he said, “why do you coach your players but you don’t coach us?”
McClamrock knew, right then, that he was getting out of coaching — at least for a little while — as soon as the 2019 season ended.
Time away and a return
McClamrock was out of football for four years before he took the Rocky River job in 2024. He missed the game. He felt he was missing his purpose.
“I felt like I’ve been put on this earth to impact young people’s lives,” he said, “and there’s no greater way to impact lives that I know of than high school football.”
He rejected some inquiries during his sabbatical from coaching and when he decided to come back, he chose Rocky River — one of the toughest jobs in the region — over another offer he had to coach a perennial double-figure winner.
“With Rocky River,” McClamrock said, “and it sounds funny to say, but I thought I could make up for lost time at a school like that.”
.JPG "CLT_Southwestern4A_07 (1).JPG")
McClamrock was 3-7 in both seasons at Mint Hill. Rocky River hasn’t had a winning season since 2014. But McClamrock did make some progress, even though it might not have shown up in the wins and losses. He brought some organization, a serious weight room operation and structure.
But working at a school like Rocky River could easily bring him back to a situation like he had at Central Cabarrus, where he just couldn’t put work down.
He started looking for another job.
“I want to win,” he said. “I hate losing. I’m mad all weekend when we lose.”
A new beginning near the lake
Community School of Davidson executive director Craig Smith said the school was equally “blown away” by McClamrock as he was by it. After he came in for that fateful interview, Smith said that school officials were determined to not let him go anywhere else.
“We put so much emphasis on community involvement and character development,” Smith said, “and Coach McClamrock embodies everything we try to instill within our athletic department, and our staff as a whole. The more time he spent here, the more comfortable he started to get. He said it felt like home for him, and we couldn’t ask for a better candidate for our second varsity football coach.”
In eight years as a head coach, McClamrock has had two winning seasons and is 39-53 overall, but he’s never had a program with a winning culture like at Community School.
TJ Albert started the program in 2011 and had four straight losing seasons. Since 2015, however, Community School has had three years with double-digit wins and six straight winning seasons, starting with a 5-3 season in 2020.
At CSD, McClamrock feels he’ll have several advantages over most public schools, mainly with knowing where his kids are coming from.
“Take Rocky River,” he said. “There are four middle schools that feed into it. Each of them feed into at least five high schools. You’re trying to get them to play home football games at your place, but you don’t even know which kids live in your district, or which kids live in North Meck’s district because they’re at Northridge Middle School with the magnet program.”
Now, the middle school will practice on the same field his team does. He can develop relationships with families, with teachers. He can build the program from the ground up.
“It’s a tough thing to follow the only coach they’ve ever had,” McClamrock said, “but my job is to put my spin on CSD, like anybody else. You honor and respect the foundation that TJ laid. As good of a coach as TJ is, there’s things that are going to be different with me.”
McClamrock will start his new job with the same goals he always had. He wants his kids to be tough, play fast and be disciplined.
He also wants to be put himself in a position to play a big role in their lives — now and long after they get their diplomas.
“The true judgment of how good a season we’ve had,” he said, “is that next year, the following year, how many relationships do you still have with the players? If kids are still calling you 10 years from now, then you’ve made an impact. That’s why I do this. I want to be that person in a young person’s life that he knows 10 years from now, 15 years from now, 20 years from now; that he can still call up to get advice from, call when he needs a reference for a job, call when he gets engaged, or his wife gives birth.
“That’s the kind of coach that I’ve been and that I will always try to be for these young people.”
