DOVER, Del. – The Rams’ 27-26 victory over Delaware State University was more than just another win for WSSU as 16th-year head football coach Kermit Blount rewrote the record books at his alma mater as he moved into first place all-time with 90 career vic
DOVER, Del. – The Rams’ 27-26 victory over Delaware State University was more than just another win for WSSU as 16th-year head football coach Kermit Blount rewrote the record books at his alma mater as he moved into first place all-time with 90 career victories.
The victory marked WSSU’s head coach Kermit Blount’s 90th career victory, one more than legendary WSSU head coach and current Florida A&M University Director of Athletics, William “Bill” Hayes and his 89-career WSSU coaching victories.
“This is very emotional for me,” Blount said in postgame interviews. “I never thought I’d be this emotional, but my players really showed they loved me in this game,” he added. “They really stuck to it in the second half, never let up, and we came away with the win. It is an honor to even be mentioned in the same sentence as a man like Bill Hayes, and to do it at the institution that I love so much and played my college football at, it is truly a special moment.”
Blount is in his 16th season as the head coach at WSSU, and his Rams have earned a 3-6 record with two games remaining in 2008 as the team continues to transition from NCAA Division II to Division I classification, a process that Blount has been a part of since the beginning.
A man who is no stranger to success, Blount wasted little time in making sure that the Rams were competitive against Division I competition as it took only two years for him to earn his first winning season at the Division I level.
Following a convincing 35-10 victory over North Carolina Central on Nov. 10, 2007, Blount led the Rams to their first winning season at the Division I level.
Blount has been responsible for 90 of WSSU’s 342 wins all-time as he has accounted for 26.3 percent of the wins in WSSU program history. He has also led the Rams to 25 percent of their conference championships as he led the Rams to two of their eight conference titles as a head coach, and led the Rams to two more conference titles as a quarterback on the Rams’ 1977 and 1978 title-winning squads.
Blount has long been associated with football programs that have experienced phenomenal success, and he has been a key ingredient in building the success of those programs over the 25 seasons on the bench during his coaching tenure. In all he has been in a leadership role with teams that have won a total of six conference titles at both the NCAA Division I and Division II levels.
Blount began his coaching career in his home state of Virginia at Armstrong Kennedy High School in Richmond as a quarterback coach and assistant offensive coordinator. Following two seasons at the high school level, Blount moved on to the collegiate ranks in 1983.
In 1983, he became a graduate assistant and assistant quarterbacks coach at East Carolina University where he would begin his collegiate coaching career. Following his stint with the Pirates, Blount moved on to Washington, D.C. and Howard University where he assumed the responsibilities of offensive coordinator from 1984-89 under Bison head coach Willie Jeffries.
Soon after his arrival in the nation’s capital, Coach Blount’s presence was felt as he directed a potent Bison offense to the 1987 Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) Championship. Following his time in the District of Columbia, he spent four more years as part of Jeffries’ staff at South Carolina State University (MEAC) in Orangeburg, South Carolina before returning to his alma mater, Winston-Salem State University, as the head football coach in 1993.
Aman accustomed to success, one who has experienced only four losing seasons in his 16 years as a head football coach at the collegiate level, has been the driving force in preparing the Rams for play at the Division I level. Blount’s eye for talent has shone brightly over his career as he and his coaching staff have been responsible for recruiting and coaching student-athletes that have earned a total of 106 All-Conference selections. As well, Blount has coached a pair of conference player of the year recipients, one All-America selection and a two-time Academic All-America honoree.
Since his return to Winston-Salem, Blount has amassed a fifteen-season mark of 90-75-3 (.536), including three CIAA Championship appearances, a pair of CIAA titles and two Pioneer Bowl appearances. In addition, he was honored as the 1999 and 2000 CIAA Coach of the Year, the 1999 and 2000 D.C. Pigskin Coach of the Year and was honored as the 2000 100% Wrong Club Coach of the Year during a two-year span in which he led Winston-Salem State University to back-to-back conference titles. Off the field, Blount has helped to establish a strong academic foundation, and has been instrumental in instituting a policy of personal responsibility and accountability within his program.
His priority on academics has resulted in more than 20 percent of Winston-Salem State University football scholarship student-athletes earning above a 3.0 GPA during the 2007-08 academic year, and 22 football players have been named to the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Commissioner’s All- Academic team over the span of the last two seasons. AP
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