Grandson of coaching legend describes dramatic turnaround at West Laurens
Today’s Four Questions interviewee is West Laurens coach Kip Burdette, whose team is 4-0 entering tonight’s Region 4-3A game with Harlem, the defending region champion. Harlem’s 28-7 victory over West Laurens in 2024 decided the region championship. Burdette is in his fourth season at West Laurens. He is the son of former Jasper County head coach and longtime Mary Persons assistant Pat Burdette and a grandson of Mary Persons’ former 39-year head coach, Dan Pitts, who won 346 games.
1. Big game with Harlem. What happened in last year’s game, and do you feel your current team is better prepared for the challenge?
“Harlem is a really well-coached football team. I have been impressed with Coach (Mark) Boiter and his bunch both years. We felt like last year after Harlem beat Baldwin that that (Harlem-West Laurens) game could be for a region title. As it turns out, it was. The game last year was a physical game. Both teams turned it over in the first half, and both teams had trouble moving the ball on each other’s defense. We made more mistakes down the stretch than they did, and they ended up pulling away from us in the third quarter. We turned it over at the wrong times and couldn’t get much going.
“So far this season, we have done a good job of taking care of the football on offense and forcing turnovers on defense. That will be a huge key to victory. We have to make the plays when they come to us and do our jobs to the best of our ability for 48 game minutes. We have a lot of players back, and this team has had to deal with adversity at times. I have been pleased with how they responded. How we respond to the ups and downs Friday night will be important.”
2. West Laurens has gone from 3-17 your first two seasons to 12-3 since. Were you concerned at how things started, and how do you explain the turnaround?
“The first year was a struggle, mostly because of my inexperience and a tough schedule. It was concerning, but I felt like we were really young. We basically scrapped everything and started over. A lot of the players that are playing now were playing on the 1-9 and 2-8 teams. The second year, we made some progress and beat a couple of good football teams, and I felt like we were turning a corner. But, most of the victories in the second year were moral. Confidence was something that I thought was in short supply, and we had to work to build it. We have had basically the same coaching staff now for the third year in a row, and we have things carry over from one year to the next. That continuity has been big.
“This senior class was incoming ninth graders my first year, and they have bought in to the program. They are a hard-working, confident and talented group. As they’ve grown older, so have their expectation of winning football games.”
Note: Burdette’s four-year record of 15-20 is better than grandad Pitts’ mark of 12-28 over his first four years. Pitts went 334-81-9 from there.
3. Your starting quarterback has completed nine passes this season, and five have gone for touchdowns. Shouldn’t you pass a little more? Just kidding, but what’s the offensive philosophy, and how do you use your star back, Ty Cummings, who is committed to Georgia Southern?
“That sounds like the West Laurens fan base! We are a running football team, but I would like to think we pass when we want to, not when we need to. We are a spread team with wing-T principles. Cason Pollock has done a good job for us at the quarterback position. We ask him to do a lot, and he is a team player.
“We feel good about a lot of the guys that carry the ball for us, Ty Cummings being our leading rusher. Branden Brooks has had a really good senior year, so far. Shannon Adkins will come over from the linebacker position and give us a spark. Braylen Robinson is a sophomore running back that has had a good year. We use Ty in a myriad of ways. He will line up at running back, quarterback and receiver, as he always has. He is a great kid and competitor.”
4. We’ve discovered that you are a serious runner/jogger. High school football head coaches aren’t known to have enough time to exercise that much. Can you tell readers briefly what you’ve done, how you started running and what your goals are? Do you have to shut it down during football season?
“I have been a fairly avid runner for most of my adult life. It is definitely hard to do in-season. I’m lucky to get in a few 30-minute runs a week during the season, as it is hard to get everything done. I had strong influences from my grandfather (Coach Pitts), who was an avid runner, and my mom (Penny Mitchell, an associate director with the Georgia High School Association). My grandfather told me when I was a young coach that my players weren’t going to listen to me about taking care of their bodies if I didn’t take care of mine. Last offseason, I trained for a marathon that was a Boston Marathon qualifier in Columbus, The Heroes of America Marathon. I ran a qualifying time of three hours and two minutes. I’m waiting to hear now from the Boston Athletic Association whether or not I will be running the Boston Marathon in April.”
About the Author
Todd Holcomb has been a contributor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 1985. He is currently co-founder and editor of Georgia High School Football Daily.
