Coaches’ kids: Botkin, Adams to finish high school in Midlands
As sons of college football coaches, A.C. Flora’s Lane Botkin and Blythewood’s Jordyn Adams are used to moving around.
But the two athletes are glad to be able to stay in Columbia and finish out their high school careers. Botkin and Adams’ fathers were members of South Carolina coaching staff under Steve Spurrier, who stepped down in the middle of the season last year. Neither Kirk Botkin nor Deke Adams were retained on new coach Will Muschamp’s staff.
Since then, both Botkin and Adams found worked in other places, but their families have remained in the Midlands. Botkin is a defensive coordinator at South Carolina State, while Adams is a defensive line coach at East Carolina.
“It’s not going to be the same on Saturdays (not going to USC games),” Lane Botkin said. “He is pretty close to home, which is good. Always good to have dad around. He had other places he could have gone, but so I can finish out my senior year, he decided to stay close to home.”
Lane said his dad came to all of his games last year when USC was at home and plans to do the same at South Carolina State. Kirk Botkin commutes to Orangeburg each day so he gets to see his father quite a bit despite both keeping busy schedules.
That’s not the case for Adams, whose father is four hours away in Greenville, N.C. Jordyn said he saw his father more in the spring because he is in charge of recruiting in South Carolina. Deke also will be trying to recruit his son to ECU. The Pirates offered Jordyn for baseball and football.
“We talked about things with his mom and this is the best option with everything that is going on,” Deke Adams said. “He has two good coaches, so we want him to stay here. We are going to make it work and see how it goes.”
Botkin and Adams’ decisions to stay is a plus for their high school programs where they are two-sport standouts. The two spent the summer bouncing between football workouts and travel baseball tournaments on the weekends.
“He is at the same baseball tournaments as I am. We hang out any chance we get,” Adams said of Botkin. “We are one big family and like being around each other.”
Botkin, a defensive back, led the Falcons with 117 tackles last season and also hit. 417 in baseball. He has an offer from South Carolina State for football and has interest from College of Charleston in baseball as well as Citadel, Wofford and Furman for football.
Adams, a junior, is expected to be one of the Midlands’ top playmakers after racking up 700 all-purpose yards last year. He will play receiver and possibly see some time at quarterback for the Bengals.
On the diamond, Adams hit .403 and was an underclassman honorable mention selection by Perfect Game.
Adams’ stock has risen over the last several months, He has dual offers from South Carolina, ECU and Southern Miss. He also has football offers from North Carolina and Maryland.
Adams plans to announce his college choice before his senior season and hasn’t decided if he will play both sports in college.
“I really just take recruiting week by week,” Adams said. “Coaches call and people ask what sport I am going to chose between football and baseball. I just tell them I am going to pick a school over any sport I pick.”
Before arriving in Columbia, Adams and Botkin had done their share of moving. Since 2001, Kirk Botkin coached at six difference places including two seasons as a high school coach in Texas.
Deke Adams has been at seven different schools since 1997, which included USC, Southern Miss and North Carolina A&T. Both Adams and Botkin said it has been hard at times but both they have been able to adjust wherever their father’s jobs have taken them.
Kirk Botkin was hired in 2012 and Dewke Adams a year later.
The two sons remain friends with other coaches’ kids from Spurrier’s staff, including Lorenzo Ward Jr. and Tre Sands. Ward, who played at Dreher, is a sophomore at The Citadel.
Sands, a sophomore at Blythewood, also remained in the Midlands after his father Everett took a coaching position at the University of Texas at San Antionio.
Botkin said there is something about being with other coaches’ sons that make things unique. They can relate to each other with on the field stuff and the stuff away from sports like moving and dealing with scrutiny of their fathers’ jobs.
“Once you are a coach’s kid, we are always around each other. It is like a family thing. It is great to be around each other especially at USC gameday,” Botkin said. “Yeah it’s not easy listening to people criticize your dad about his job, when you know he puts in a lot of work into what he does. I don’t criticize their parents on how they do there jobs.
“But I do know that’s how the coaching business works, especially at the college level. Not everyone is going to be pleased. You kind of just have to block out the negativity and only hear the good stuff.”
This story was originally published August 13, 2016 at 2:59 PM.