South Pointe football hires its next head coach. He’s got SC and Charlotte ties

The search for the next face of the South Pointe High School football program is over.

The school has hired Bobby Collins to be the program’s next head football coach. The Rock Hill Schools board of trustees approved his contract at the board meeting Monday, and Collins and South Pointe finalized the agreement Tuesday morning.

Collins is coming to the Rock Hill school from Marlboro County High, where he was the Class 3A school’s head football coach and athletic director since April 2019. He shared the news of his departure with MC players on Tuesday morning.

Collins will be the school’s fourth football coach since South Pointe opened in 2005. He’s replacing DeVonte Holloman, who coached South Pointe to the school’s seventh state championship in 2021 before taking a support staff position with the USC Gamecocks earlier this month.

“Our football program is a real point of pride for our community,” SPHS athletic director Carlos Richardson said in a statement. “We were honored to have so many qualified candidates express interest in the job. Coach Collins has a solid track record and great energy. I’m confident he will continue the momentum this program is enjoying.”

Collins has substantial ties to South Carolina as well as the Charlotte area.

The Sumter native was an offensive lineman at South Carolina State. He graduated from there in 2003 and got into coaching in 2008, when he was hired as the defensive coordinator at Providence Day School in Charlotte.

Collins earned his first head coaching job in 2010, at Hough High School in Cornelius, North Carolina. Four years later, he took a job as head coach at Lancaster High School in 2014 — where in five seasons he went 30-25 and earned four playoff berths.

He arrived at Marlboro County in 2019. In his three seasons in Bennettsville, Collins went 7-24, per MaxPreps, and made the playoffs twice.

“We are excited to welcome Coach Collins to the Rock Hill Schools community,” said Rock Hill Schools superintendent Tommy Schmolze. “We believe his extensive experience, both coaching and playing football, will help him connect with the Stallion team and continue the legacy of excellence for our student athletes at South Pointe.”

This story was originally published March 29, 2022 at 10:31 AM.

Alex Zietlow

The Herald

Alex Zietlow writes about sports and the ways in which they intersect with life in York, Chester and Lancaster counties for The Herald, where he has been an editor and reporter since August 2019. Zietlow has won nine S.C. Press Association awards in his career, including First Place finishes in Feature Writing, Sports Enterprise Writing and Education Beat Reporting. He also received two Top-10 awards in the 2021 APSE writing contest and was nominated for the 2022 U.S. Basketball Writers Association’s Rising Star award for his coverage of the Winthrop men’s basketball team.