Red Devils to honor Coach Rhodes with helmet sticker, dedicate season to him
August 24, 2026
Clinton High School’s varsity football players will carry Coach Bill Rhodes with them onto the field this fall.
The program announced Aug. 21 that a new sticker honoring Rhodes will appear on Red Devil helmets this season, recognizing his 65 years of service to the school and its athletic department. The team is dedicating the season to him.
The sticker will make its debut Friday, Aug. 28, when Clinton opens the season at home against rival Laurens at 7:30 p.m. at Richardson Field at Wilder Stadium. The annual meeting between the Red Devils and the Raiders is one of the largest crowds either program draws all year, which makes it a fitting place to start.
Rhodes, 88, died Aug. 3 at NHC in Clinton. To thousands of students across Laurens County, he was never Mr. Rhodes. He was Coach, and the name followed him from a junior high classroom to the front office at Clinton High and stayed with him long after the last whistle.
A Newberry College graduate, Rhodes began his career with Laurens School District 56 in 1960. He taught at Florida Street Junior High, then Bell Street Middle School, and finally at Clinton High, where he taught, coached, served as an administrator and, well into his 80s, ran the cafeteria register at lunch.
Athletics claimed 61 years of his life. He was a key member of the Clinton High football coaching staff during a run that produced six Class AAA state championships and four Upper State titles. He coached baseball and softball as well. On winter nights he worked the ticket gate at basketball games, and on fall Fridays he ran the concession stand, the jobs that never come with a trophy.
There was more to him than the school. Rhodes joined the South Carolina National Guard in 1955 as an infantry rifleman and retired 42 years later as command sergeant major of the 218th Heavy Separate Brigade, responsible for 4,500 soldiers. He gave 28 years to the Clinton Exchange Club, including seven as president, and the money the club raised went back to Clinton High students. In October 2023 he was presented the Order of the Palmetto, the state’s highest civilian honor, at midfield at Wilder Stadium during halftime of a Red Devil football game.
The helmet sticker is a small thing by design. So were most of the jobs Rhodes took on. The players who wear it this fall will include some who never met him, which is its own kind of tribute. Clinton High School had a heart, and for 65 years it answered to Coach.
