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Legendary South Carolina high school football coach John McKissick died Thursday morning. He was 93.He passed away at 10:45 a.m. and was surrounded by family, according to Dorchester County coroner Paul Brouthers.When McKissick first took over as the head football coach at Summerville High School, no one could have predicted that it would be the beginning of one of the most historic coaching runs in the sport’s history.McKissick was born in September 1926 in Greenwood. He would go to Kingstree High School before graduating and heading to Brevard College. After a short stint in the Army, he would return to school at Presbyterian, where he graduated in 1951 with a degree in economics.A year later, he arrived at Summerville to lead the Green Wave, and success was something he and his team found early and often.Three years after his arrival, he’d win his first state championship and followed that up with another the next season. It would be the start of a run that saw McKissick win at least one state title in each of his first five decades.Region titles were almost commonplace at Summerville under McKissick. Thirty-seven times in his 63 years with the Green Wave, the team won at least a share of the region championship.Perhaps even more impressive than the amount of winning McKissick did, was the lack of losing his teams would experience. Only twice in 63 years, 1957 and 2001, did a Summerville team end the season with a record under .500. By comparison, there were five times when his team would finish the season without a loss.More state titles would come; 1969, back to back in 1978 and ’79, then his most successful run with four titles in the ’80’s including a three-peat from 1982 to 1984 and again in 1986.The career milestones started to come in the 1990s. In 1993, he would win his 406th career game, making him the all-time winningest head coach on any level of organized football. That win brought the coach and the school national recognition. But for McKissick, it was just the next win.After what turned out to be his final state title in 1998, McKissick’s next career defining win came in 2003 when he became the first coach to win 500 games. Nine years later, his 600th win came against one of his former assistants, beating Kenny Walker and Ashley Ridge. Three times McKissick has been named the national high school coach of the year. He’s also a member of the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame, the South Carolina football coaches association hall of fame, the South Carolina Hall of Fame and the National High School Hall of Fame.Along the way, McKissick coached thousands of kids in Summerville. Some have gone on to fame in the NFL like Stanford Jennings or AJ Green. But maybe the most important number to the legend would be three, the number of his grandsons he’s gotten to coach with the Green Wave: Richard Call, Joe Call and Donny McElveen.McKissick leaves behind a legacy that will never be matched. Not just of winning games on the field but for helping to build a community off the field and making sure the kids he coached became a successful part of it.Copyright 2019 WCSC. All rights reserved
