Clinton turns to Peyton Spangler as next baseball coach

Clinton has turned to a former standout on the diamond as its next head baseball coach.

Peyton Spangler, the 2018 Laurens County Player of the Year for the Red Devils, was promoted to head baseball coach after Clinton parted ways with Sean McCarthy.

With Spangler as an assistant, McCarthy, who returned for his second stint at Clinton in 2019, led the Red Devils to the 2023 Class 3A state championship. Clinton has accumulated a 78-27 varsity record over the past four seasons – discounting the Covid interrupted 2020 season – and has won the past three Region 4-3A championships.

“I’m excited, and I feel very humble and blessed,” Spangler said. “I always kind of dreamed what I would be in this role one day, and now that it’s happening, it hasn’t fully set in yet.”

Spangler, who has been head coach of the Clinton JV team and the Clinton Junior American Legion squad, is just five years removed from his Newberry College graduation. He played four seasons for the Wolves and joined the coaching staff at his high school alma mater immediately after college.

He also gave credit to McCarthy and assistant Darrell Pitts for helping him develop as a coach.

“Coach Pitts and Coach McCarthy have allowed me to have a lot of responsibility – to take on a lot of responsibilities and do a lot of things that typically the head coach does,” Spangler said. “I have a lot of respect for Coach McCarthy and Coach Pitts. They knew this was what I wanted to do eventually, and they helped me get to this point.”

Of course, the Spangler name is a familiar one in Clinton. Spangler’s father, Tommy, spent two stints as the head football coach at Presbyterian and is currently an assistant at Furman.

The younger Spangler’s philosophy for his baseball team sounds familiar to PC fans as well.

“We’ve been very successful, and it’s been fun to play my part in that success,” Peyton Spangler said. “I want to instill in my guys that anything we earn at Clinton is due to a lot of hard work – there will be a lot of hard days, blood sweat and tears. Our program has shown a lot of toughness, and for us to be successful, we have to be a hard-nosed, tough team.

“If we can bring anything to our program, we want to bring toughness in the day-to-day grind and putting in the work no matter how hard it is. We all love to win, but I want the kids to love the process as well.”

Spangler also said the program’s recent success under McCarthy brings some degree of pressure with it, but he said that is welcome.

“It’s exciting. There’s a lot of expectations because of the success we’ve had, and that’s what you want as a coach,” he said. “You don’t want to be somewhere where they don’t want you to coach and win at a high level.”

Delio takes over CHS volleyball

Danielle Delio has been promoted to head coach of the Clinton volleyball team after one season as a varsity assistant and JV head coach with the Red Devils.

Prior to joining the faculty at Clinton this past academic year, Delio coached volleyball at Laurens Middle School and Gray Court-Owings from 2018-22.

She also co-founded a competitive club volleyball team while attending Lander in 2017.