New Addition to Carolina Sports

When it comes to Carolina High, no one has to explain anything to Derrick Sullivan. He can do all the talking.

He's always been a Trojan, and now he's leading the school's football team. Sullivan has been named Carolina's coach, replacing Reuben Wright, who resigned after four seasons.

Sullivan spent the past four seasons building the program at Shannon Forest Christian School. He came on board with former Clemson and NFL star Levon Kirkland and took over when Kirkland left after the first year.

Now Sullivan is returning to his roots.

"It's home for me," said Sullivan, a 1995 Carolina graduate who competed in football, basketball and track for the Trojans. "It's personal, meaning the love, the passion, what being a Carolina Trojan means and what it stands for, bringing that back.

"There are a lot of great kids who go here. Sometimes I think they get the short end of the stick from an outside view of what Carolina really is, but after being over here day in and day out and you're meeting the young men and the young women and you're finding out more about them, a lot of them have a lot of great stories and challenges. But I was once one of those kids."

Sullivan said he looks forward to relating to kids from that standpoint and serving as a mentor.

There is more familiarity. Thomas Fair, now the athletic director, coached Sullivan in football, basketball and track at Carolina.

Sullivan recruited two of his former teammates, Germany Thompson (who played at New Mexico and won a Super Bowl ring with the Baltimore Ravens) and Blair Erwin, to serve on his coaching staff and Mike Johnson, owner of Velocity Sports, to assist as strength and conditioning coach.

"I want to make Carolina a small-college-type program," Sullivan said. "There's going to be an adjustment period, but these kids are capable of rising up and doing everything we ask, and not just on the field but, more important, in the building. There's a reason in the phrase 'student-athlete,' student comes first."

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