With spring football practices going on around the Lowcountry this month, college coaches can be seen at area high schools as they dive into the recruitment of local athletes.
One of those college coaches with the tri-county area as his responsibility is South Carolina State running backs coach Rashard Alston.
Alston recruiting the Lowcountry makes sense. The 2013 Goose Creek High graduate was a running back on the school’s most successful teams of 2011 and 2012 under then-coach Chuck Reedy, who goes into the South Carolina Football Coaches Association’s Hall of Fame in December.
“It is really cool to be able to come back to the area and see so many high school coaches who were coaching back when I played,” Alston said recently. “A lot of my former coaches at Goose Creek are still in the area coaching and some are head coaches now. It’s fun to go in and sit with them, talking ball and reminiscing about the days I was playing.”
Alston’s junior season at Goose Creek (2011) ended with the Gators winning the Class AAAA Division II state championship inside Clemson’s Death Valley versus Greenwood High, the first and only state title in school history. The Gators went 14-1 that fall, this after a 13-1 record the year prior.
But perhaps the best team ever at Goose Creek, and one of the best in Lowcountry history, came in 2012. The Gators were 13-0 and headed for a second straight title when the world came crashing down.
Goose Creek was disqualified from the state playoffs after it was discovered they unknowingly allowed an ineligible player to participate in blowout wins. The player, a special needs student, was found to be in his fifth year of high school.
In the blink of an eye, Goose Creek’s remarkable season was cut short, leaving Alston and his fellow seniors wondering what might have been.
“Heart-breaking,” Alston recalls. “As players we couldn’t understand why we were being punished. I eventually got over it but it still hurts when I think about it. That team was loaded with talent. We were not going to lose a game.”
Alston rushed for nearly 800 yards in that senior year, playing on an offensive unit that produced several college signees. Alston ended up at Newberry College where he thought he would take advantage of his acumen in mathematics to become an engineer. Those career goals changed as he fell more in love with football.
“In my sophomore year I started to see more of what coaches do and fell in love with the process of doing things to win,” he said. “The coaches put in so much time and effort to help us players but they also showed how they cared for us as people. They wanted to see us succeed at whatever we did. I decided I wanted to be one of those guys.”
After graduation, Alston dipped his toes into college coaching, working his way up to an offensive coordinator role at Bluefield College. As the recruiting coordinator, Alston made sure to pay special attention to athletes in his home area.
Alston was hired as the running backs coach at S.C. State for the 2024 season and is prepared for his second year as a Bulldog. He turns 30 years old in July and appears to have a bright future in coaching. He maintains aspirations of climbing the coaching ladder but is willing to be patient and continue to learn to be a better coach.
“Grow where I’m planted,” he said. “My goal right now is to be the best running backs coach in the country at South Carolina State University. I want to continue to be a positive role model for the players in our program, just like the coaches that I played for were for me.”
