From chaos to structure: Garinger football starts to rise under coach Jupiter Wilson
Garinger’s spring football practice Monday afternoon looks unusual, honestly, because it looks like an actual spring practice.
Players are split apart in groups, going through drills, improving footwork and speed. The whistle blows and everybody moves to a different station. Next, the Wildcats run through a few plays, and they do it crisply, a little wide receiver screen where everybody is in the right spots.
What this doesn’t look like is a few years ago, when the Wildcats didn’t have spring ball, and their’ coach quit on the team a few hours before an August season-opener. Garinger actually had two separate huddles before some plays in that game as players clearly didn’t know how to line up.
“I’ve always heard that they were trash,” said Garinger junior Jarron Lorick, a wide receiver and defensive back. “Coaches fighting, always arguing, and they couldn’t seem to hold a team together.”
Lorick played at Garinger for the first time last season when rookie coach Jupiter Wilson — a part-time pastor and former offensive lineman at North Carolina — promised he would, in his words, “Bring change to the G.”
True to his word, Wilson poured hours into getting kids who had given up on sports, and sometimes given up on school, to come back.
He gave rides, food and loads of love and discipline. He made his players look at their school and their football program in a whole new light.
“When I got here,” Lorick said, “I realized that it wasn’t so bad. We got a new coach and he changed everything. He built discipline in us. He didn’t give us things easy.”
Through sheer force of will, Wilson helped Garinger end a 48-game losing streak that stretched back to October 2019.
Garinger didn’t win again after beating Winston-Salem Prep, 36-6, in the season-opener, but the Wildcats scored the most points in a season in seven years and was competitive in several of its games.
That was major progress.
“It was just his energy,” junior tight end and defensive end Jacob Andrews said of his head coach. “Like, he didn’t let us by lazy. He did grade checks every week, and it really started in the weight room. I remember my first time meeting him, he was like, ‘We’re on it,’ and he was taking our phones and we were getting straight to work.”
So now Wilson is back for Year 2 at a school that, before he got there, had run through eight different coaches in 12 seasons, and a team that had gone through 15 winless seasons in 21 years.
So with 14 starters back, and a lot of lettermen, Wilson and his Wildcats are hoping to spend more time in the win column this season.
“I think last year, when we played East Meck and a couple other schools, it was like, ‘You’ll be in a game, and you better come prepared,’” Wilson said. “This year, I think, you know, we could shock somebody and win a game, maybe win two games, that people don’t think we can win.”
Wilson credits his staff for helping him achieve that progress, which includes having nearly 50 kids out for spring practice, about double what he had last season.
“They understand what this school is and what it represents,” Wilson said of his staff, “and they’re all in, giving rides, encouragement, and that’s probably been the biggest thing. When those kids came back out here (for spring ball), it’s the exact same group of coaches that they had last year.”
Lorick said he expects to win games, plural, this season and that the Wildcats’ students are also excited for football, which has been rare at Garinger. The Wildcats last winning season was 16 years ago. The one before that was in 1995.
“They actually have faith in us,” Lorick said. “They’ve got confidence we’re going to win some games. It ain’t how it was. Like, everything is better around here. We’ve got a new coach, a new principal. Garinger is on the up. And I don’t just think that.”
Andrews said the players and the students are feeling something, even now, months before the season starts, that they haven’t felt before.
“I’ve always had a pride about this school,” he said, “even though I had a lot of people tell me I should transfer and not be here. But I’ve always felt like this is where I’m supposed to be. And we want to show people in this city and outside of the city that Garinger isn’t a pushover anymore, that we can really make things happen.”
