Raleigh high school football team embraces challenges amid program’s resurgence

The 2025 high school football season is here. Players, coaches and campuses brim with optimism. Across the Triangle, teams await their first snaps.

“Alumni Night” is Enloe’s first game, a home-opener tradition fifth-year head coach Ryan Clark launched among many building blocks to revive a dormant program. The Eagles face Southeast Raleigh at 7:30 p.m. Friday in Len Bauer Memorial Stadium.

“When I got together this season with our coaches before practices started,” Clark said, “we were telling stories and laughing about the problems we had that first year.”

Clark took over a program that didn’t have a junior varsity team. The coaches discovered a lack of proper equipment. School pride was something found only in the trophy case from years gone by.

Clark’s first two Enloe teams struggled through 1-9 and 0-10 records until shafts of light appeared. The Eagles finished with a 4-6 record in 2023 and earned a playoff berth with a 6-4 mark in 2024. The first-round loss for a 6-5 final record did nothing to dampen spirits.

“Sometimes we’re not sure how we got here,” Clark said. “We have better problems now and that’s OK.”

NCHSAA shuffles the deck

An example of “better problems” is meeting the challenge of moving up to a tougher conference. The N.C. High School Athletic Association’s realignment based on enrollment increased the number of divisions from four to eight, and forced league reshuffling. The previous policy considered strength of program balance.

Enloe formerly competed in the 4A Cap 6 with Cardinal Gibbons, Leesville Road, Broughton, Sanderson and Athens Drive. Although state -power Gibbons shifted to the Triangle 6A/7A Conference, Enloe was moved to the Cap 8A Conference that is topped by two state powers, Rolesville and Millbrook.

Rolesville, the 4A state runner-up a year ago, and Millbrook feature some of the state’s top college prospects. Leesville Road, Broughton and Athens Drive joined Enloe in the Cap 8A, while Wakefield and Corinth Holders round out the league.

Clark, though, is embracing the step up rather than grousing.

“We know it gives us opportunities to play some of the best teams in the state,” he said. “Our goal is to get our program to their level. We want to compete at the highest level.”

The Eagles still have plenty to prove, but such a statement two to four years ago would have sounded delusional.

Prior to Clark taking over in 2021, Enloe was 0-7 in 2020 (played in the spring of 2021 due to the COVID pandemic). It was the school’s fourth winless season and 13th losing record in 14 years.

Why Enloe?

But Clark coveted the Enloe job opening after stints as an assistant at North Pitt in Bethel followed by his return to Wake County at Cardinal Gibbons (2016-20). The Crusaders were the 4A state runner-up in in 2019 and 2020 (played in the spring of 2021) and won the 4A state title in 2021.

Why take on a losing cause at Enloe?

Clark, now 34, did so for an old-school reason — alma mater pride. He graduated from Enloe in 2009.

Queue up the 1963 Beach Boys hit song: “Be True to Your School.” The late Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys co-founder, wrote with school spirit as a quarterback at Hawthorne High in Southern California.

Clark grew up as an Enloe ballboy when his father Ron Clark was the head coach until 2011. He never played — “I weighed 95 pounds,” he said sarcastically — but he eagerly assisted any way needed. He managed the team’s equipment. He eventually was running the scout team.

“Enloe is home,” Clark said. “It’s where I grew up as a kid. I was always around my dad, his players and the program. I had such a great experience as a high school student, it’s in my heart.”

Clark attended East Carolina upon graduation, but he commuted home on weekends for his father’s last three seasons until 2011. He kept team statistics, helped paint the field and assisted with other behind-the-scenes tasks the average fan has no idea high school coaches must handle in addition to X’s and O’s.

“I wanted the opportunity to be a head coach since I was a kid,” Clark said. “It was my dream. I was thankful for the opportunity in 2021. One of my driving factors those first couple years was persistence. I have a love and a passion to give back to the school for the experiences it gave me.”

Rebuilding a program

Clark’s first act as head coach was establishing a bond with the returning players. They were a demoralized group about to play for their third head coach in three years.

One of those athletes was Larry Pickett Jr., who is now a sophomore backup safety at Army West Point. He credits Clark for turning around the team’s attitude, the community’s support and aiding his development to play at West Point.

“He came in and let it be known he was a guy we could trust,” Pickett said in a phone call after Army’s Monday practice. “That’s exactly what he has been doing. Before him, there wasn’t a lot of trust or brotherhood in that program.

“He switched the narrative. Enloe’s reputation is as an academic school that isn’t strong in athletics. He is making the school and community believe we can be an academic school that’s also good in athletics.”

The rebuilding process began with growing participation numbers. Absent a JV team, there were only 30 returning players that Clark inherited. Competitive high school football programs typically have 100-plus players for the varsity and JV rosters.

Finding players was complicated by the makeup of the magnet school, with 65 percent of the student body from outside the community choosing Enloe for academic reasons. But with the JV team reinstated, Clark and his staff coaxed 40 freshmen to join the program, bumping the overall 2021 turnout to 65. The numbers grew to 90, and next to the low 100s. The total is up to 110 for 2025.

More than football

All along Clark’s vision extended beyond the W-L columns. The players visit elementary schools and volunteer at community events.

Clark also invites former Enloe players to talk to the team, which notably has included Charley Young, the former N.C. State and NFL player. Young and the late Willie Burden, who is in the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame and N.C. Sports Hall of Fame, were Enloe teammates as seniors in the 1969 season.

Enloe opened in 1962 as Raleigh’s first integrated high school campus, and Young and Burden continued their ground-breaking careers in college. They were N.C. State’s first two Black scholarship players in 1970 under coach Earle Edwards.

Developing team bonds off the field is something head coaches learn — some never grasp it — at different stages of their careers. East Carolina coach Blake Harrell, speaking of his pre-college days, told a story last week at the Pirates’ media day explaining his revelation.

“I was about 27 or 28 years when I interviewed for a job as a high school head coach,” Harrell said. “The principal asked me how I was going to make football fun for the players. I didn’t have a good answer, and I didn’t get the job.”

Clark had the right answers when he interviewed with Enloe’s principal, Dr. Jacqueline Jordan. He laid out his vision and got the job.

On the right track

Although Enloe won Clark’s debut game, beating Southeast Raleigh 20-14, the Eagles lost the final nine games and all 10 in 2022. But despite the losses, Clark said the coaches and players felt progress, particularly midway through the 0-10 season.

There were single digit losses to Athens Drive (32-28) and Broughton (33-26). In addition, the points scored in losses of 42-20 to Sanderson and 42-21 to Leesville Road indicated progress compared to four shutout losses in 2021.

Many players with Pickett’s college potential would have transferred out, but Pickett felt the team’s progress and remained committed.

“One hundred percent,” Pickett said. “We knew we were moving in the right direction. My last two years of high school were different from my first two. I don’t regret anything.”

In addition to Pickett playing at West Point, two Enloe alums competing as college freshmen this year are Chandler Telfair at Delaware and Simba Debnam-Pwiti at Campbell. Three 2025 Enloe seniors drawing Football Championship Subdivision and Division II interest are defensive back Ryan Person, defensive end Derek Matthis and offensive lineman Robert Harp.

“The difference in our program’s overall vibe is night and day,” Clark said.

That, of course, is befitting Friday Night Lights.