Veteran Calcutt to direct Carolina Academy football, athletics
Lake City – After a 28-year career as a coach in the public school realm, veteran Al Calcutt is taking his talents to the private school level.
Calcutt has been hired as the next athletic director and head football coach at Carolina Academy, a Class AA SCISA program. This, he says, is likely his last stop on the coaching circuit.
“Been a lot of places but I think this is where I will finish my career,” Calcutt said. “I’m pretty excited about this opportunity. It’s new and different but it’s high school football and high school athletics, just on a smaller scale.”
Calcutt was working as a coach at Johnsonville High, his alma mater, for the last three years. He says one day he got a call from a long-time friend, Carolina Academy headmaster Stevie Phillips, who coached a powerhouse track program at Johnsonville before his current job.
“I’ve known Stevie for a long time and I was actually honored that he reached out to me about coming here,” Calcutt said. “It was humbling that he would think of me and make that call. The timing was just right.”
Calcutt has coached at several schools, both has a head coach and assistant. His first head coaching gig was a three-year stint at Georgetown, starting in 2001. From 2004 to 2011 he was the head coach at Creek Bridge High, After a year as the offensive coordinator and athletic director at Carver’s Bay, Calcutt spent one season as the head coach at Hannah-Pamplico and later, in 2018, was the head coach at Hemingway.
“I love coaching, love the work involved and I love being around the kids,” he said. “Coaching is my calling. It’s been a big part of my life and I am glad that I am able to keep doing it a while longer.”
The coach inherits a program that has been highly competitive for a number of years but suffered through two tough seasons of late. Calcutt reports that he feels he will have a roster of 29 players, grades nine through 12. He hopes to restart the junior varsity program as well. Carolina Academy has not fielded a junior varsity team in three years.
“We have good, hard-working kids here, not a lot of them, but the ones we have are working hard,” Calcutt says. “I’ve been very pleased this summer. It has been better than I expected. I’m really excited to get a jayvee program going again. That’s going to build the numbers and give those younger kids a chance to gain some experience.
“I’ve coached with low numbers before. The big thing I feel is to keep things simple. We want to be good at a few things and build as we go. We’re probably going to run the football, some double wing and wing-T stuff. We will try to be good defensively and play with great effort. We will have a lot going both ways so we have to be smart with how we use everyone.”
Calcutt will have two full-time assistant coaches on the varsity. Lindsay Robinson will coach quarterbacks and running backs while Tyler McClam will work with the offensive and defensive linemen, Calcutt says Bobby Castles will serve as the junior varsity head coach.
“We will all work together and try to be as competitive as we can be,” the coach said. “I’m looking forward to getting started.”
Volleyball coach Candace Bradley will serve as the assistant athletic director this fall. She and basketball coach TJ Stack shared athletic director duties during the 2022-23 school year.
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