Griffin out as Carrboro’s football coach

Melvin Griffin will not return as head coach of Carrboro’s football team next fall, he confirmed Friday.

Griffin finished with a two-year won-lost record of 3-19, including a 0-11 season in 2015 in which Carrboro was out-scored 431-110. That made for the first winless season for Carrboro since 2008, the second year the Jaguars fielded a team.

“The administration decided in late January after winter break that the football team needed new leadership,” Griffin said in a text message. He added that the decision came after a “meeting with some parents.”

Short-handed from the start of last season, the Jaguars were compelled to forfeit two of their last four games in 2015 due to a lack of healthy players. They forfeited Oct. 16 to Bartlett Yancey and their season-finale Nov. 6 to Reidsville.

Last year’s team included some veterans of the 2012 squad that went 15-1 and reached the 2AA state championship game. But the program’s numbers dwindled in 2013 as Carrboro went 4-7. Then-head coach Jason Tudryn resigned in April 2014 to take a position with the University of North Carolina’s program.

Griffin had served as an assistant on Tudryn’s staff since the team’s founding. As head coach, Griffin coached his first team to a 3-8 record in 2014. By the second half of the 2015 season, Carrboro sometimes had less than 20 healthy players and opted to forfeit twice because of concerns for the remaining athletes.

“Last season was a very tough season,” Griffin said in an interview. “The athletic director and myself were working on a plan of action, but in the long run the administration thought the things would be better coming from a new over voice.

“Whatever happens I’m here to support them and the kids. I wish them the best.”

Griffin will continue to teach math at Carrboro and serve as head coach of Carrboro’s spring track and field team, which he helped start in 2007. In 2013, he was named North Carolina’s track and field coach of the year by the National Federation of High School Coaches.

Griffin had no word on who might be his replacement for the football team.

Efforts to reach Carrboro Athletics Director April Ross late Friday for comment were unsuccessful.

This story was originally published April 15, 2016 at 6:44 PM with the headline "Griffin out as Carrboro’s football coach."