Coming home: Darris Jackson named Clover High School’s next boys basketball coach
Darris Jackson claims that “nothing’s changed.”
The Clover native and 2003 Clover High School graduate spent some time at his old stomping grounds on Tuesday, walking the same halls he used to walk. Despite seeing the new ninth-grade campus the school had to build because of school district growth — and despite meeting a handful of new players who he’ll coach next year and even more teachers and staff he’ll work with next year — the prevailing feeling that Jackson had on Tuesday was that he was at home.
And that his home hadn’t lost what made it special.
“I’ve been around the program my whole life,” Darris Jackson told The Herald in a phone interview Tuesday. He then proved it with a chuckle and a story: “When (current Clover athletic director) Bailey Jackson was playing, I was like the ball boy, the waterboy. … Like, this is home, for real.”
Darris Jackson will be the next Clover High School boys basketball coach, the district announced Tuesday. The hire was approved at a board meeting Monday evening.
The full-circle moment isn’t just special to the new coach — it means a lot to his whole family. Darris’ father, Robert, was an assistant boys basketball coach at Clover High School for 43 years and still goes to the program’s games. Robert is in the school’s athletic hall of fame.
Does it make Darris feel old? Being on the same staff his father once was on, still working for Bailey Jackson all these years later?
“I feel old because I am old,” Jackson said, again with a laugh. “It’s surreal, man. Having not been around for so long, and having a chance to come back and coach the team. ... This was somewhere I’ve always wanted to end up. I didn’t know when that opportunity was going to present itself, but I’m glad it did.”
Jackson is arriving from Aiken High School, where he spent the last eight years. He took his team to three region championships and three third-round playoff appearances in that span en route to an overall record of 126-75.
Jackson earned that first head coaching job at Aiken when he was 27, he said, and it shaped him immensely.
“I mean, I couldn’t have asked for more,” Jackson said of his time at Aiken. “It was an extremely tough place to leave. But home is home.”
The Green Hornets went 6-20 in 2021-22.
Darris Jackson will be taking the head coaching mantle from the aforementioned Bailey Jackson, a fellow Clover native who stepped down as head coach last month but remains the school’s athletic director.
In choosing Darris Jackson, both Clover basketball programs remain in the hands of Clover High School alumni: The girls basketball program named Shakkia Walker — who graduated from the school in 2001 — its next head coach in April. Walker is taking over for longtime Clover fixture Sherer Hopkins.
“Darris Jackson rose to the top of an outstanding group of candidates for this position,” Bailey Jackson said in a release from the district. “He has a proven track record of success at Aiken and is familiar with the Clover community. He is dedicated to growing young people both on the court and off. We are excited to have him and look forward to working with him as our head basketball coach.”
After graduating from Clover, Darris Jackson went on to South Carolina State University, where he played football for four years and basketball for two. After that, he served as a graduate assistant at SCSU for two years and then served as the director of player development for North Carolina A&T for another two years.
He then landed at Aiken.
And eight years later, he’s back at Clover. Back home.
Jackson said that he’s passionate about the basketball program and everything else at Clover. He follows every Blue Eagle sports team and roots for them whenever he’s not competing against them, he said.
“That’s true even when I’ve been away,” he added.
And it’s unclear when or if he’ll ever have to say that again.
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