DUNCAN, S.C. -- In this small Southern town, close to a couple of truck stops on I-85 and halfway between Spartanburg and Greenville, S.C., you will find what just might be the best high school football team in America.
Byrnes High School has won six S.C. state championships in the past seven years. With a $328,000 scoreboard that shows video replays, a weight room envied by most small colleges and a roster loaded with major-college recruits, Byrnes is the sort of Friday-night football colossus most would think should be located in Texas or Florida.
But Byrnes is in Duncan, where the population of 3,000 swells to 12,000 for home games under the lights at Nixon Field.
This Friday night Byrnes -- ranked No. 2 in USA Today's Super 25 national high school rankings -- travels to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to face St. Thomas Aquinas. Not only is St. Thomas Aquinas currently ranked No.1 in the country, it is also the defending national champion.
The 8 p.m. game will be televised nationally by ESPNU and is arguably the biggest football game that has ever involved a high school team from the Carolinas.
If Byrnes upsets St. Thomas Aquinas and sweeps to another state championship this season, the Rebels have a good shot at being the first Carolinas high school to finish No.1 nationally in the USA Today ranking. That would earn Byrnes the mythical national championship.
Charlotte's Independence High powerhouse has come the closest to a national title among teams in the Carolinas, finishing with a No. 2 in the USA Today ranking in 2004 and a Top 10 season-ending rank on five other occasions.
So what makes this particular Byrnes team so special? Why has this program bloomed in the red clay of upstate South Carolina instead of in a thousand other places?
The answer is complicated.
Yes, Byrnes boasts one of the most highly-recruited running back in the country in Marcus Lattimore (who has North Carolina and South Carolina on the list of the five colleges he may attend in 2010).
But Byrnes also ingeniously indoctrinates local football players from as young as the first grade onward into its system by having them run the same pass-happy offense that the high school team does. It has a 500-member booster organization called the Rebel Touchdown Club -- they were the ones who raised all the money to pay for that dazzling scoreboard -- and a group of players' moms who wear blue wigs to playoff games and form the "Blue Hair Society."
Byrnes (enrollment 2,200, the eighth-largest high school in S.C) also benefits from its location in a fast-growing area and a football-first region. The people of Duncan "pretty much treat us players like we're heroes or something," the soft-spoken Lattimore said.
"It's not just one thing," said Bobby Bentley, Byrnes' head coach from 1995-2006.
Now, after a two-year stint as head coach at Presbyterian College, Bentley has returned to serve as the offensive coordinator of the team's inventive offense and also to coach his stepson, senior quarterback Chas Dodd (bound for Rutgers).
Eclectic is a good word for Byrnes. Other words fit, too.
"I'd say consistent and relentless," growled Michael Srock. Although Srock is in his 60s, he could beat either you or me up, so it's wise to listen to him. Srock has a buzz cut and a tattoo that commemorates Byrnes' nine state titles.
Most high school teams have a guy like Srock and call him a strength coach. Byrnes bills Srock as their "speed and strength" coach. Byrnes players do many drills that wouldn't be out of place at an aerobics class.
"Speed is the basis of everything we do," Srock said.
No silver bullet
By turns garrulous and glowering, Srock is cited by everyone as one of the keys to the Byrnes program. He has been there 12 years and has gotten a lot of questions as to why, year after year, Byrnes' players seem to fit his motto of "Too Fast" and "Too Strong" against every team they play.
"Everybody looks for the magic," Srock said. "The silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. It's because we work."
For example?
"The kids do get off for Christmas, Easter and one week at the end of July," Srock said. "That's it. We work out on Christmas Eve. We work out on New Year's Day. We work out on New Year's Eve. They don't need to be going to any New Year's parties -- they're 16 years old! We lift weights on the Fourth of July at 8 a.m. ... The kids don't need a break! The coaches might, but these kids are 16 years old!"
Only the best
Srock gets to work in a palace by most high-school standards. The Byrnes weight room and athletic fieldhouse -- which opened two years ago, cost close $3 million and was paid for as part of a large-scale, taxpayer-funded upgrade of the entire school -- includes a 120-seat film room theater. The theater doesn't look much different from the one that the Carolina Panthers have.
The Byrnes system filters down to youth leagues.
Kids playing flag football in the local leagues around Duncan run a simplified Byrnes offense. They usually line up with one running back and three wide receivers. The defenses can't blitz.
"It starts from the ground level up around here," Byrnes head coach Chris Miller said. " ... It's amazing to see 8-year-olds running our schemes and throwing the ball."
Sitting in Section 'GG'
Byrnes' most recent game was last Friday night against Gaffney, one of its rivals. Gaffney has beaten Byrnes three times this decade, and is the reason the Rebels have won six state titles over the past seven years instead of all seven.
Thirty minutes before the game, despite a persistent drizzle, all 9,000 actual seats were full at Nixon Field. (The field is named for a S.C. district superintendent, not the former U.S. president. James F. Byrnes, the school's namesake, was both a former U.S. Supreme Court Justice and a former governor of South Carolina).
But the school just kept selling $6 general-admission tickets for late-arriving fans, who settled in to watch from the grass embankments.
"I tell people that we don't ever really sell out here," Byrnes athletic director Billy Young said. "We always still have seats in section 'GG.' You know what 'GG' stands for? Green grass."
As soon as the game started, it was apparent that Gaffney was hopelessly outmatched. Byrnes' two defensive ends -- Brandon Willis and Corey Miller, both of whom have committed to Tennessee -- spent the night in Gaffney's backfield.
At halftime, Byrnes led, 46-0.
During the break, at Srock's command, the Byrnes players each gets one quarter of an apple, one quarter of a banana, exactly two Fig Newtons and a heavily salted sports drink -- fuel for the second half.
By midway through the third quarter, when Byrnes sent all its substitutes into the game, Byrnes had rolled to a 60-0 lead. Lattimore had 160 yards and three touchdowns. The game would end with Byrnes winning, 60-7 -- the school's 57th straight home victory.
It was a typical result. The Rebels are 5-0 this season and have won those five games by an average score of 61-8. The legend goes that quarterback Dodd and running back Lattimore -- best friends and teammates for most of their lives -- have lost only one game since third grade. That was in 2008, against Spartanburg Dorman, and they quickly avenged that loss in the state playoffs.
'We have a program'
The game against St. Thomas Aquinas, of course, will be much closer than the one against Gaffney. The Fort Lauderdale school has a more illustrious history than Byrnes, having produced players like hall of famer Michael Irvin and Wake Forest's late, great Brian Piccolo (subject of the movie "Brian's Song").
Byrnes, by contrast, has been playing football since 1955 and has never had even one of its players get more than a cup of coffee in the NFL. Few have starred in college, either. Former Byrnes quarterback Willy Korn was considered one of America's top high school quarterbacks in 2006 but has so far languished as a backup at Clemson.
There is a school of thought that Byrnes so expertly squeezes every bit of potential out of its players while they are teenagers that when they go onto college and the pros that they are closer to their athletic ceiling than their peers.
But the Byrnes program just keeps rolling. The Rebels of 2010 should be almost as good as those of 2009. Although Byrnes will graduate 38 seniors after this season and lose many stars, a number of others wait eagerly to take their place.
"We don't have one team around here," Young, the athletic director said. "We have a program. And every year, we just reload."
