The Kimreys: Perfect records for father and son coaches

It’s been a perfect football season so far for Bill and Erik Kimrey and the father-and-son duo hope it has a perfect ending.

Bill Kimrey, the former Lower Richland and Dutch Fork coach, led Calhoun County to a 10-0 regular season. The Saints will be one of the favorites to win the Class A Division I championship when the postseason begins next week.

Kimrey’s son, Erik, has Hammond in position to win another SCISA Class 3A championship. The Skyhawks, winners of 22 straight games, open the playoffs Friday at home against Heathwood Hall.

Hammond made it to the state championship the past nine seasons, winning seven including last season.

“I think it is something when it is all said and done we will look back and appreciate it,” Erik Kimrey said. “I’m sure it is pretty rare that father and son head coaches can go through their seasons undefeated. I know his focus is with his team on trying to win a few more games and mine is too. When it is all over, we will talk and have a smile about it.”

Erik says the two talk at least once a week and calls his father his “No. 1 resource for football knowledge.” When Calhoun played a game on a Monday night a few weeks ago because of the flood, Erik was on top of the press box with a headset helping call plays in the 62-12 victory over Hunter-Kinard-Tyler.

The father and son have been intertwined together with football from the moment Erik was born. Bill got the news his wife was about go into labor with Erik when he was on the practice field as an assistant at A.C. Flora.

“I guess you can say I was born into this,” Erik said.

Erik, 36, remembers diagramming plays for a no-huddle with his brotherin 1994 for their backyard football games. They would tape plastic baseball card covers to their wrist with plays on them. That practice is used regularly these days with offensive players having wristbands with the play sheets on them.

When he wasn’t playing football, Erik was tagging along with his father to practices after his father became head coach at Lower Richland and then played quarterback for his dad when he became the head coach at Dutch Fork.

“We would come up with the game plans together and he would let me call plays at the line of scrimmage,” Erik said.

Bill said his son was like another coach on the field.

“He made up all the signals and would sit in with us in coaching meetings on Sundays,” Bill said. “I guess you can say he was destined to be a coach and I am very proud of what he has accomplished.”

Erik still holds some of the passing records at Dutch Fork before he went on to play at South Carolina. After spending time as a graduate assistant at USC, he took the job at Hammond. Bill continued coaching at Dutch Fork and led the Silver Foxes to a 10-4 mark in 2006.

After back-to-back 2-9 seasons, he stepped down but couldn’t stay away from the game. He joined Erik at Hammond and was the special teams coach and was co-offensive coordinator with his son. The elder Kimrey took several things he learned from his son such as not hitting as much in practice and trying to not play kids both ways until later in the season.

As much as he liked having his dad on the sideline, Erik knew it was a matter of time before his dad became a head coach again. That happened in 2013 when Kimrey was named coach at Calhoun County.

“I always wanted to coach in a one high school town,” Bill said. “When I was at Dutch Fork, I would see these one town schools like Hartsville and thought it would be fun to coach in a place like that.”

The Saints went 1-9 the season before Kimrey got there and went 0-11 in his first year, Calhoun’s final season in 2A before moving down to Class A. Calhoun improved to eight wins last season before going unbeaten this year.

Calhoun is ranked No. 2 in Class A in this week’s South Carolina Prep Writers Media poll and is projected to be the No. 2 seed in the Class A Division I lower state playoffs.

“We started from the bottom,” Kimrey said. “We had to come in and win the kids over and start getting things done like I wanted to. All the kids have bought in.“

“I’m proud to see him reinvent himself, and to see the youthful passion as a 62-year-old come out,” Erik Kimrey said of his father. “It makes me proud, and hope that when I am that age, I love the game half as much as he loves it.”

This story was originally published November 5, 2015 at 9:09 PM with the headline "The Kimreys: Perfect records for father and son coaches."