Mullins' Lowery excited as second season as football head coach draws near
Auctioneers have strong numbers for spring practice, spring game
Mullins – Slowly, but surely, Marc Lowery sees a football program coming together.
Lowery is just getting to the point where he can celebrate his first year as the head coach at Mullins High School. Although the Auctioneers went 0-10 in Lowery’s first season, he feels good about the program’s direction after just completing his first spring practice.
“We did two weeks and we were able to have a spring game,” said Lowery, the former longtime high school assistant coach and middle school head coach for Horry County Schools. “That was the first time Mullins has been able to do that. The players enjoyed that.
“Last year things didn’t go the way we wanted them to. We told them that the new season started when last season ended. We’ve tried to do a few things to motivate the guys, and they’ve seemed to have bought in. For those who have been around the program, they said the spring numbers and the amount of enthusiasm around the program, they haven’t seen that in a while.”
Lowery said they had as many as 38 student-athletes out for practice with a consistent number of 34. Most of those numbers came mainly from the rising junior and senior classes.
Lowry was pleased with the spring game and the interest it generated in the community.
“We put it up on the social media web page.” he said. “We’re trying to get the interest up. We’re not pounding the pavement to get the kids in there. We’re wanting them to look at what we’re doing and say, ‘I want to be part of that.’ “
Mullins only had four seniors on last year’s team, all of them 1-way starters. That means the Auctioneers will have the overwhelming majority of their starters returning.
Leading the returners will be rising junior quarterback Kanazzion Bethea. He completed 120 of 218 passes for 1,476 yards and 15 touchdowns against just seven interceptions. Bethea also rushed for 297 yards on 71 carries.
“He’s coming along really good,” Lowery said of Bethea. “A lot of the offense is RPO (read-pass option) and it’s like he didn’t skip a beat in the spring. Everything clicked. It looks like he’s seeing the big picture, starting to get it. He’s starting to see how versatile he can be. The offense can grow by leaps and bounds from where it was.”
Mullins also has a slew of receivers returning who were a significant part of the passing game last season. Justin Reaves Jr. had 23 catches for 162 yards, junior tight end Braden Hughes had eight catches for 129 yards, Lebron Avant had 16 catches for 311 yards, Ayntwain Crawford had eight catches for 115 yards, Andre Littlejohn had 12 catches for 68 yards, and junior Tyron Allen had 10 catches for 144 yards and also carried the football 36 times 186 yards. Senior had seven catches for 209 yards.
Lowery believes the weight room is about to become a major factor in the development of athletes, not just for football, but for all sports at Mullins. Lowery said the school’s administration is getting behind a weightlifting program in several ways.
“We told the kids at the end of last season they’d get a few weeks off, but once it’s December we start with the weight room,” Lowery said. “If you want to win games, it starts in the weight room. The administration been very supportive, first by getting kids in the (weightlifting) classroom. Any good program, that’s what they’re doing.”
Lowery said there is talk about Marion County School District upgrading weight room facilities at both Mullins and its other district high school, Marion.
Lowery is excited about the future.
“This group is starting a culture change,” he said. “You’ve got to put the work in now. You can’t win in September unless you win now. That’s the mantra we’ve given them and they’ve bought in.”
