Sometimes the high school coaching carousel becomes like a merry-go-round, where one coach gets off and another jumps on, and then we keep hearing that you can’t recycle these coaches, but maybe you can…Former Page Pirates head football coach Kevin Gillespie, who did an outstanding job of guiding the Pirates over his 11 seasons at the Alma Pinnix Drive campus, Coach Gillespie has accepted the head football coaching position at Thomasville High School…
Coach Gillespie will now lead the Bulldogs into Cushwa Stadium , on Friday nights….
Coach Kevin Gillespie replaces current Page Pirates head football coach Doug Robertson, who was the head man in Thomasville for two seasons…..
This could turn out to be near-perfect fit for Coach Gillespie, as he is in some ways going home….Coach Gillespie started his high school football coaching career at Thomasville High School back in 1991, as an assistant with the Bulldogs’ head coach Alan Brown….
from Jason Queen with The Lexington Dispatch:
CLICK HERE to see and read more, from Jason Queen, at The Lexington Dispatch….
THOMASVILLE Thomasville’s football program took a gut punch this winter when head coach Doug Robertson announced he was leaving for Page after two years at the helm.
The Bulldogs threw a strong counter-punch Wednesday morning.
In a specially called meeting, the Thomasville City School Board announced the hiring of Kevin Gillespie to take over the program. Gillespie has been the head coach at Asheboro the past three years and, oddly enough, was the head coach at Page the 11 seasons before that. Gillespie guided the Pirates to 4-A state championship appearances in 2011, 2015 and 2016.
Gillespie started his coaching career in 1991 at Thomasville, with the Bulldogs winning the state championship that year. After a one-year stint at Asheboro, he moved on to Ledford where he coached football and served as head baseball coach. From there, he took over a struggling Trinity program and led those Bulldogs to state playoff appearances in four straight seasons. During this time, he became the only coach in school history to win a state playoff game.
That served as a stepping stone for his glory days, a more than 10-year run at Page that featured three trips to the state finals. His 2011 team won the 4-A state championship, a feat that very few coaches can boast. The Pirates won six conference titles, and Gillespie was named the league’s Coach of the Year six times.
In 2017, he moved on to Asheboro and served as the offensive coordinator in the Shrine Bowl in 2016. That squad scored the most points in the history of the All-Star contest.