May River’s Bonneville Hopes To Build On Success Of Last Years Football Team
Richard Bonneville enters his third season as the head coach at May River High.
By Billy G. Baker
Publisher
Bluffton—Richard Bonneville has had quite a coaching journey since he graduated from The Citadel in 1997, after a four-year playing career with the Bulldogs.
After Rodney Summers retired from being the head coach at May River High, three years ago, Coach Bonneville was elevated to head coach starting with the 2023 season. He had been in the program from day one serving as offensive coordinator, and offensive line coach.
Prior to coming to May River, Coach Bonneville had held assistant coaches’ jobs under head coaches Bob Hannah at Irmo, Joe Long at North Augusta, Jay Fyre at Richland Northeast, and Jimmy Neal at Camden. He joined Summers for the start of the Westwood High football program in 2012.
In 2016, Coach Bonneville, and several other Westwood High football coaches, followed Coach Summers to help open the brand-new school at May River High, located in Bluffton. The majority of those coaches are still with the program today.
“You learn things everywhere you work, and you have to make hard choices a lot based on the talents of your players,” said Coach Bonneville. “I recall being at Camden, winning a state title around 2001, under Coach Neal, and then he made the hard choice of changing from a spread type offense to the triple option. This made some people in the community upset but a head coach has to be willing to make those hard choices, and do what he feels gives his team their best chances for winning.”
After May River went 4-7 in Coach Bonneville’s first season as head coach in 2023, he looked in the mirror and made the decision to change from a spread offense to a Wing-T offense, and this move caused several skill players to transfer out of the Shark’s program.
The bold move resulted in an 9-3 rebound season for the Sharks in 2024, including a thrilling win over Bluffton in the AAAA play-offs.
“Winning 9 games and changing from a spread offense to the Wing-T I would have certainly looked like a fool had we not had a successful season,” said Coach Bonneville. “Our players that stayed bought into the new offense and we will continue to have 6 a.m. practices before school every day this season also.”
Coach Bonneville said offensive coordinator Jeremy Dyer is in weekly communication with coach John Hall of Liberty, Texas who perfected the type Wing-T the Sharks changed to last season. “Coach Dyer has worked hard learning this new offense and he has become like an open book making this offense his very own,” said Coach Bonneville. “He does a great job communicating a lot of complex information to our players and he has not had to dumb it down at all.”
The Shark’s defensive coordinator is Ashley Powell and he has been with the team since the doors opened in 2016 as well. “Coach Powell is also the head wrestling coach and they won a state title this past year,” said Coach Bonneville. “We run a 3-4 defense that we picked up from Wofford College when we were at Westwood when Coach Pelham was the defensive co Ordinator.”
The running backs coach is Jeremy Dyer and his brother Tom Dyer is the team’s quarterbacks coach along with mentoring special teams. Instead of a wide receiver coach the Sharks have a “swing man” coach and he is Hunter Singletary. Coach Bonneville works with the OL.
On the defensive side of the football Xavier Morris is starting year four as the DL coach while Jeremy Dyer and Coach Singletary team up to work with the linebackers. Ashley Powell continues on as the DB coach and Kolby Whitley continues to do a good job as the strength coach.
The junior varsity head football coach is Grant Laseter. Hunter Brown is a new first year jayvee running backs coach and Davon Gilmore works with linebackers on both the jayvee and varsity teams.
Coach Bonneville also said he is grateful for the support the football team, all sports teams receive at May River from Principal Dr. KaRon Webb and athletic director Jermaine Bigham.
