Clay Clevenger won a state title in 2017 but says his best memories at Danville are his relationship with his players, not wins.
He won a state championship in 2017 when his team won 15 straight games, got another team to the state title game and coached a Mr. Football during his seven seasons coaching Danville High School. Yet none of those were Clay Clevenger’s proudest moments.
So what was his proudest moment?
“The relationship with the kids. That’s not even close,” Clevenger said Saturday less than 24 hours after he was fired despite a 62-37 record. “You might think winning the state championship would be the ultimate moment, but it was not. Seeing the kids succeed is.
“My main goal coming on (to coach Danville) was I wanted to break cycles. I wanted to try and help open doors for kids that come from families who do not always get a lot of chances.”
Clevenger played on two state championship teams at Danville before earning All-American honors at Carson-Newman. He was a successful coach at Henderson County before returning home in 2013. Since then he’s had 35 players play college football and has 14 playing collegiately now.
“There had not been anybody from Danville for the prior six to eight years who went to college to play football and graduated,” Clevenger said. “We have had at least one kid do that every year I have been here. Some of these kids just need to be part of a team to help keep them on track in life.”
He cared about more than high school players. He helped start an “All-Pro Dads” breakfast program at Jennie Rogers Elementary School when his oldest son got to kindergarten. The program spread to Danville’s other two elementary schools.
“You had a dad, uncle or granddad stand up and introduce a kid before school and brag on them and that look on that kid’s face said it all,” Clevenger said. “It was such a good thing for everyone.”
He also had to restart the youth football program after the school system ended the program
“We started from scratch. I am president of the youth football organization, so I don’t know how that will all work,” Clevenger said. “But I am very proud of how that all came together and how many kids got to keep playing football.”
He was president of the Kentucky Football Coaches Association for two years and helped start the KFCA Mr. Football award.
“I think that was a great addition for high school football,” Clevenger said.
He helped revitalize the Champions Club to raise funds for football and take over management and fundraising for the annual Bob Allen Classic.
“The bowl game had dwindled down and we had to get that back up to where it should have been,” Clevenger said. “I always tried to be proactive and strategically motivated to move forward with things to help the football program and young men in the program.”
Clevenger was very visible in the African-American community. One of his best moves came when he had his team were jerseys honoring the legacy of Bate School. The Admirals did that for the first time in the 2017 season and have done it annually since then.
“I was the only white guy in the defensive huddle in 1994. I have been the minority in huddles since sixth grade. On the football field, they are your brothers. They are not black and white,” Clevenger said. “Some of my brothers I played high school football with were as talented as me or maybe more talented but did not get the same opportunities as me. I wanted to give these kids opportunities some of my teammates in high school did not get.”
When Danville officials decided to change the nickname for all schools in the system to Admirals and do away with the Bate Bulldogs, Clevenger saw the pride Bate alumni had in the Bulldogs and knew “we had to do this” and wear the Bate jerseys even if some school officials were not for it.
All those things are reasons there has been such an outpouring of community support for Clevenger since his dismissal. The support has ranged from an online petition asking the Board of Education to take him back — it was the superintendent, not the Board, that fired Clevenger — to social media posts to calls and messages to Clevenger and his family.
“Really the last 2 1/2 years with some hits the program has taken I had started feeling like maybe this was not the place for me and I was not wanted because I kept getting beat down,” Clevenger said. “But just the tributes alone that some former players have written have made it all worth it. That’s why you take young men and use football to make them better men, husbands and fathers.
“People know right and wrong. When they see a wrong and even if they don’t know you personally they will hop on board with their support. We are in the business of education and teaching kids the right things. Sometimes we screw that up but all I have ever wanted to do is help kids.”
Too bad he won’t get the chance to do that at Danville any more — and that’s a huge loss for many at Danville — but he’ll get his chance to help others because he’s too good at what he does for others not to understand that.
