A true Palmetto State product: Des Kitchings’ journey from small-town SC to Gamecocks
Des Kitchings said no.
It was during his junior season as a Wagener-Salley High School football player, and in Willie Stroman’s memory, Kitchings had a separated shoulder and needed surgery. But he didn’t want to get it.
The War Eagles had a good team that season, anchored by the likes of Stroman, Kitchings, Eric Hall and Woodrow Evans. Kitchings, who played receiver and defensive back, wasn’t going to let that chance slip.
“As long as he could play through the pain ... he wouldn’t do any more damage to it,” Stroman said. “I remember him toughing it out, gutting it out for the team.
“Every so often, it would pop back out of place and they had to pop it back in, but he never let that stop him from getting on the field.”
A long time separates those early 1990s high school football games from now, but those around Kitchings said he hasn’t changed all that much. He has long been a patient, maybe a little reserved personality through his college days at Furman, time in the NFL, coaching stints with his alma mater, Vanderbilt, Air Force, N.C. State and now a new challenge: coming home as running backs coach at South Carolina.
Even as a coach, he has rarely strayed too far from Wagener. With parents still in town, family around the state, recruiting territories that regularly brought him back, he’s always been a South Carolina guy.
And now when he goes to work, he’ll have South Carolina across his shirt.
“The coaches at South Carolina did a great job getting him,” Bobby Johnson, Kitchings’ former coach and boss, said. “I guarantee that he’s going to be one they can count on with recruiting, with the players, to do the right thing on the field, to get the players to do the right thing off the field. He’s that kind of guy.”
A small town, and tight bonds
Bobby Lamb made the trip down, more than two hours snaking down interstates from Furman University in Greenville to little Wagener-Salley High School.
The then-assistant coach felt the energy of a small town as it rallied around its team, one in the midst of a historic run. There was Kitchings, not the biggest at under 6 feet, maybe 150 pounds if you’re being generous. But one thing just stood out.
“I’ve coached now 33 years,” Lamb said. “He’s the fastest young man I’ve ever coached.”
And that made life much easier on Stroman.
“Whatever I threw toward him, he was going to catch it,” Stroman said. “Whether it was a bad pass, a good pass. If he got his hands on it, he was going to catch it and his speed was unmatched.
“His presence was everything to us.”
The towns of Wagener and Salley sit about 8 miles apart on the far eastern edge of Aiken County. The school hovered at fewer than 400 students through his time there, making it the kind of place where a small cluster of talented athletes can leave a mark and be remembered.
Kitchings, Evans, Stroman and Hall were dubbed “The Fab Four” for their exploits on the gridiron and the hardwood. In Kitchings’ junior year, they took the second conference title in school history. As seniors, their careers ended with a trip to the third round of the playoffs and a loss to Choppee in triple overtime.
These men still consider each other brothers, and part of that was how each one’s family became family to the others.
“We kind of floated around each of the houses,” Evans said. “But mainly Des’ house. That was like the headquarters.”
Evans, Stroman and several of Kitchings’ future coaches remembered his father as a reserved man, someone who didn’t say too much, but when he did, it was powerful.
But his mother was something else.
“His mom is very in tune,” Evans said. “She’s very intellectual. She’s a very powerful person, so she always helped us coming up.
“She’s still like that to this day.”
She hammered home messages of how to act, how the young players were watched by others.
Bobby Johnson, Kitchings’ future coach and boss, said the family emphasized the value of an education, and that helped as he and his Furman staffers brought Kitchings to Greenville.
Des Kitchings is now coming home, getting the chance to be much closer to his parents. But while he has been farther away, they’ve still been seeing to his other “brothers” when needed.
“His mom was and still is everything to us,” Stroman said. “She sacrificed so much because during the time when we were coming up, after school, before practice, after practice, on the weekends, during the week, we stayed at her house. She always had enough food there for us to eat. She always encouraged us to do good in our books, not just on the football field. She instilled in us to be good men.
“His mom is our backbone. My mom died eight years ago, and Mrs. Kitchings, I call her mom, whenever I need her, advice, a hug, just words of encouragement, she has never skipped a beat since any of us came into her home and into her life.”
The undersized star
Speed helped bring Des Kitchings to the Furman Paladins. But in theory, everyone can improve on something.
Johnson’s team was working on running one day early in Kitchings’ time on campus, ironing things out and teaching the players how best to run the 40-yard dash.
“You could tell he was pretty good, but his running style wasn’t quite what you’d want,” Johnson said. “Wasn’t exactly what we’d like to have, so we were trying to teach everybody. And all of a sudden we stick Des down there, he runs and he runs and he runs and he runs. I look over there and I say, I told our coaches, ‘If I ever see you trying to teach him how to run, I’ll fire you.’”
Johnson was joking, but the damage his star eventually did on the playing field was nothing to laugh at.
The smaller receiver played sparingly as a freshman but carved out his role starting as a sophomore. He led the team in catches that first year, then catches and yards his final two.
The Paladins deployed a run-heavy offense with plenty of option plays, and Kitchings even got in on the running game, averaging at least 10.3 yards per carry his final two years.
The program had been solid early in Johnson’s tenure, but started taking off in 1999, Kitchings’ final season. Furman lost its opener, and then ripped off seven wins in a row, the final one a 28-3 drubbing of North Carolina.
“He was a huge part of that,” Johnson said. “North Carolina has some great people, like Julius Peppers, those kind of players.
“He made two touchdown catches and some great returns on kickoffs and things like that. He helped us big time.”
Kitchings went 60 yards for Furman’s first score and took another pass 49 yards to put his team up 21-0 with 5:14 left in the first half. He rounded out the game with 169 yards as UNC took its first FCS loss since 1978.
The Paladins dropped the next week’s game in a shootout to powerhouse Georgia Southern. That set up a do-or-die game for Furman’s conference title hopes, a game that descended into a slugfest with a .500 Chattanooga team.
“They kicked off after a touchdown and we were kind of sad about that touchdown,” Johnson said. “But he gets it and he starts on one side of the field, all the way, almost out of bounds. He caught the ball and he started and he had that speed, and he went across the field and turned back all the way on the other side and went back for a touchdown.
“We were jacked up then.”
The 40-35 win gave Furman its first conference crown since 1990.
Despite only being listed at 5-foot-9, Kitchings was picked in the seventh round of the 2000 NFL Draft, and managed to hang on with different rosters for four seasons.
Furman had made an early mark on Kitchings, according to Stroman. They went to a camp there in eighth grade, and Stroman had the sense the Paladins had him in mind after that.
And they might have dodged a bullet with the way recruiting worked back then.
“In this day and time where we have all these summer camps, one-day camps, I promise you he would’ve got an offer from a lot bigger schools.”
A man on the job
The relationship between Lamb and Kitchings stayed strong, and it proved important to a post-NFL life for the young player.
Johnson had moved on to Vanderbilt following a run to the 2001 title game. Lamb was promoted to Furman’s head coach. He’d kept in touch with Kitchings through various moves to different teams, and when that avenue was closed, the coach jumped in.
“Once I had an opportunity, I had an entry-level job to coach our tight ends and I knew what kind of person Des was, it was a no-brainer,” Lamb said. “I called him up, offered him the job and he was ready to roll.”
Lamb recalled Kitchings walked in and quickly commanded respect because of his playing background. Even in those early years, the head coach saw the makings of a “special coach” in his young assistant.
It didn’t take long for a chance at a bigger school to arrive. He was around for three I-AA playoff trips and a pair of top-5 finishes. And his own boss was helping move his career forward.
“When Coach Johnson had the opportunity, had a spot open on his staff, I called for Des,” Lamb said. “I recommended him. You put my recommendation with Coach Johnson’s familiarity with him, it was a no-brainer hire at Vanderbilt. He was a perfect fit.”
Johnson had Kitchings work with the running backs, a spot he went on to work with at Air Force for one season, then N.C. State for eight and now at South Carolina. Kitchings coached on Vanderbilt’s lone bowl team under Johnson and coached eventual All-SEC back Zac Stacy.
When Kitchings arrived in Nashville, there wasn’t much of an adjustment period.
“He came in and he was prepared right off the bat,” Johnson said. “We didn’t treat him like a youngster. He jumped in there and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to coach them.’ He had his ways of teaching things that sometimes he learned something else before he got to us and helped us out and actually made some good changes for us. You never know what you’ll get. But we could tell from the get-go that he was going to be a really great coach.”
Kitchings’ career has not been without some stops and starts. He rose to offensive coordinator at Vanderbilt, taking the job halfway through the 2010 season, before nearly the entire staff was swept out with a coaching change. He also received a coordinator title last year in Raleigh, but a 4-8 season ended with him not retained.
His process with South Carolina even had fits and starts. In February, it appeared the Gamecocks were close to having an opening on the offensive side, only it didn’t come to pass. A vacant running back coach spot was filled by a defensive coach — to alleviate an offensive logjam — and a wide receiver coach’s departure didn’t materialize until April. Kitchings had interviewed, and after South Carolina didn’t have a job to offer, he even came down to watch practice.
Lamb has talked to Kitchings at least once every two weeks since he left his staff and saw a man eager to get back into it. Lamb even put in a call to Gamecock offensive coordinator Mike Bobo.
Lamb didn’t see a man stressed by the uncertainty. He had a contract buyout from N.C. State and was looking at some quality control jobs before the Gamecocks opportunity came around.
Evans saw a patient Kitchings, one who knew everything would work out, though there might have been some anxious moments. And at times, it was hard on folks back in Wagener, who wanted the best for their friend.
“That was hurtful because I’d never heard him say that ‘this is where I wanted to be at.’ But when that opportunity came for him to be a coach at South Carolina, he actually said, ‘This is where I wanted to be at,’” Stroman said. “And for whatever reason, he didn’t get the job, and to know that this is something that he really wanted and this is where he really wanted to be at, it was hurtful because he had put in so much.
“But when he called and said that he was coming here, coming home, we were just ecstatic and knew that God had his hand on it the whole time.”
A man in the room
If it hasn’t happened already, Kitchings will be making a business call to Stroman before too long. These calls have happened at just about every stop Kitchings has made because he’s almost always recruited the state of South Carolina for whatever staff he’s been on.
Stroman coaches at their alma mater, so in between conversations about family, friends and home, they talk talent, the best ball players from around that area.
And Stroman has a sense for the way Kitchings recruits as effectively as he has.
“Just honest,” Stroman said. “Honest with the kids. Honest with their parents. Not trying to sell them a pipe dream, but to let them know. He uses his story.”
That’s the story of an undersized eighth-grader impressing at a Furman camp and turning it into a first-rate education and time in the NFL.
“So he just takes his story and he’s just honest with the kids and the parents,” Storman said. “To know him is to love him. He forms a relationship with them. He opens up, him and his wife, Heather, they open up their house to the running backs. He invites them over for BBQs. He’s talking to them on and off the field. He’s a father figure away from home. But at the same time, he’s letting them be young men.”
Two of the men he’s coached for saw much of the same.
Lamb said Kitchings had the total package: great college player, NFL pedigree and also a personality that’s simply inviting. He also pointed out Kitchings spent his final five seasons running the Wolfpack recruiting operation.
Kitchings will add another in-state recruiter to the Gamecocks staff, and buttress their efforts in North Carolina, where he secured nine four-star commitments across a run of seven classes.
South Carolina will likely need more help in that state as Mack Brown’s North Carolina staff has been a force recruiting there the last year and a half.
In truth, when he finds himself in living rooms, the pitch he’ll make is not so different from the one Lamb and Johnson gave his own parents, years ago, a pitch that goes back to his Furman and Vanderbilt days.
“He explained to those (parents) that their kids were like he was,” Johnson said. “That you can get a great education and play great football at the same time.”
Almost fully back
The welcome back has to wait.
Kitchings has the job with the Gamecocks. He’s already calling recruits (and he had to wait through USC’s final exams to hold an actual team meeting). But he’s not yet able to come back to town.
The coronavirus pandemic in March, April and May had him stuck in Raleigh, figuring out how to keep his kids active around the neighborhood instead of looking for a new home in the Midlands.
But soon enough, a stretch of 12 years not living in his state will come to an end.
He was in the running for the head coach job a Furman in 2016, and was close enough that Sports Illustrated reported he’d taken the job. But ultimately the Tar Heel State held onto him for another few years.
Johnson expects him to be the sort of coach players like to play for. Lamb called it a home run for him personally and a big step professionally, going to the SEC.
And back in Wagener, there’s the start of a plan for his return. Asked about a cookout or something of that sort for Kitchings, Evans said, “We’ll pull something together.”
They’ve been with him since he was the undersized speedster whose house they all spent time at, through the busted shoulder he wouldn’t let slow him, the productive college career and the NFL.
“When he started off coaching at Furman, we went and supported him there,” Stroman said. “When he went there and left to Vanderbilt, we went to Tennessee and supported him there. Same thing when he went to Air Force and the last eight years at North Carolina State.”
And now they’ll support him again, this time closer to home.
This story was originally published May 11, 2020 at 5:25 AM.
