Cleveland High School football excellence continues across generations of talent

CLAYTON — Scott Riley freely admits it. The future worried Cleveland High’s football head coach.

That statement, taken alone, sounds as if he fretted throughout the past winter, spring and summer leading up the 2022 fall season. This, after all, is the Rams’ first year without running back Omarion Hampton, a generational talent who is now a North Carolina freshman leading the Tar Heels in rushing.

But Riley meant the 2014 season, his first as Cleveland’s head coach.

“My biggest fear was, ‘Don’t screw it up,’” Riley said.

He had been promoted to head coach after Marc Morris left for a better paying teaching-and-coaching position at Carolina Forest High in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Morris had nurtured Cleveland from the school’s 2010 opening with only a JV team. New schools usually struggle at the varsity level, but the Rams went 31-10 with three playoff trips his first three seasons.

Well, Riley didn’t screw it up — then or now.

Cleveland (7-0) sits atop the News & Observer’s Sweet 16 rankings as the Rams play Southeast Raleigh (3-4) at 7:30 p.m. Friday at home.

In the previous three seasons, the Hampton-led Rams went 33-4 with a state runner-up finish for the 2020 season (played in the spring of 2021 due to the pandemic). The winning percentage was .891, but Cleveland’s all-time percentage isn’t far off — .797 (121-32).

This season the unbeaten Rams are on their way to their 12th straight postseason, having never missed the playoffs. Riley and the Rams certainly miss Hampton’s man-among-boys talent, but their continued success speaks volumes. They’ve built a program rather than relying on the special individual who may or may not come along.

Cleveland also is personified by a collection of grinders like Taylor Young, a senior offensive lineman. Young has played different positions in his four seasons until finally breaking into the varsity starting lineup this year.

“It means the world to me to be a part of this program,” Young said. “I’ve worked hard to be a starter or just a player on the team. This season I’ve tried to be a leader among the offensive linemen.”

Riley, who has been at the school since it opened, includes the coaching staff’s continuity as another building block. The influence now extends to two former players who are assistant coaches, Austin Jacobs and Brandon Hughes.

When Hughes finished his playing career at Chowan State in Murfreesboro, N.C., Cleveland principal Jenna Sauls Hairr interviewed him for an open position teaching history. The same woman who was an assistant principal when Hughes was a student.

“It’s been great to come back and teach in the same halls where you were a student with some of the teachers and familiar faces,” Hughes said. “It’s special to see how this community has grown. It opened as a small community between Clayton (High) and (West) Johnston (High). Those first couple of years it was pretty much just our parents at games. Now, we have a community that supports us. It’s beautiful.”

Although it’s true the idealized strong community is a necessary plot theme to run through successful movies on high school sports — “Friday Night Lights,” “All the Right Moves,” “Hoosiers” — the reality is academic studies churned out about 21st-century America’s reveal fractured and polarized communities. Neighbors keep their doors locked.

And it doesn’t help that high school football’s Friday nights are no longer off limits for college football TV. The networks have cashed in on advertising dollars at the expense of high school crowds.

The lack of old-school support also can lead to lack of career coaches at schools. The 20- or 30-year coach as an institution on campus is increasingly rare. Coaches get out after a few years, citing burnout from the responsibilities not equaled by support or a lack of pay.

Cleveland has belied those societal changes.

“I think you do it for the kids,” said Riley, who is in his ninth year as head coach and 12th overall at the school. “The kids work so hard you don’t want to screw it up for them. That makes the long nights and early mornings worthwhile. You don’t want to miss anything on film or a call in a game. You’ve got to do your end of it.

“It’s a fun profession, especially at the high school level. You see how much kids grow physically and how much they mature. You see what they’ve become when they come back.”

Riley added with pride so many former players return home for games, “it feels like homecoming every weekend.”

Someday, expect to see Omarion Hampton — when he’s not with the Tar Heels preparing for a game on Saturday — standing among a crowd of former proud Rams.