SACCO: Remembering That National Title

But football is football and football players on every level at every position just want to learn how to get better at the game, even if the high school players are a bit slower than the collegiate ones Gillenwater coached before joining Donnie Coleman’s staff at East Rockingham in 2017, a school located in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains that rim the football field.

In 2004, at the foot of Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Tenn., Gillenwater was coaching in those college ranks, charged with leading Mickey Matthews’ linebacker corps at James Madison as the Dukes played in the NCAA Division I-AA national championship game against Montana. And Gillenwater, now in charge of teaching high schoolers the right way to play the game, can’t help but get excited when he talks about that December night.

He can’t help but transport back to that moment, when James Madison kicked and clawed its way to the top of the I-AA heap.

“I don’t know how you describe it,” he says. “The whole thing was so gratifying.”

Having to win every playoff game on the road. Having to beat nationally ranked teams along the way. Having to fill in spots with unproven players who went out there and proved themselves.

All of it, he says, made it that much more worthwhile.

And on the sideline, watching the clock melt away with the Dukes holding a 10-point lead at Finely Stadium, Gillenwater enjoyed it all. The cheers. The screams. The fans filing over the wall, a sea of purple and gold, embracing each other — and the team — on turf Matthews described as “deplorable.”

“Just a big happy mob,” Gillenwater says.

But that happy mob didn’t come without some turning points in the season, as Gillenwater calls them. And he likes to name a few.

He talks about a group of “kids” — and not just on the defensive side of the ball — that came together, “loved each other,” he says. And he talks about a Villanova game when the Wildcats were ranked No. 5 in the country and the “unheard of” Dukes, Gillenwater says, joined the remnants of Hurricane Frances moving toward Philadelphia.

“They asked us if we wanted to play in a monsoon,” he says. “Our kids didn’t give a rip.”

It showed, with the JMU defense setting a team record for fewest yards allowed to a I-AA opponent (91), marking the Dukes’ first road shutout of a I-AA team that saw all of Madison’s points come after turnovers or pivotal special teams plays.

“We just went out there and assaulted them,” Gillenwater says, the satisfaction in his voice still evident all these years later.

It was all part of a next-man-up mentality Gillenwater watched with the Dukes that season and enjoyed, truly a team effort, he says. Kind of like the high schoolers he coaches now.

“The whole thing was so gratifying,” he says. “We had to make some adjustments and we did it. We had people step up and make plays when they had to, they had backups come in and block punts.”

At Furman in the playoffs, the Dukes blocked a punt to setup the game-winning score in a 14-13 victory, something Matthews credited his linebackers coach for.

“Gillenwater had studied it,” Matthews says. “[Furman] did the rugby punt and Kyle had studied it early in the week and he came to me and said, ‘We can block a punt.’ And we put that in against Furman, and it was successful. Kyle was good at seeing stuff on film.”

Gillenwater was with Matthews the whole way, not retained by Everett Withers when he took over the program after the 2013 season, before joining Michael Clark’s staff at Bridgewater College for a year in 2014. Then Gillenwater left for the Furman defensive coordinator job, a position he held for two seasons before rejoining his family in Bridgewater and latching onto Coleman’s staff at East Rock.

That’s where, for the first time, he’s coaching high schoolers.

“I was with [Matthews] the whole time,” Gillenwater says. “The whole game. I’ve been very blessed.”

And he has the memories of 2004 to prove it.