By Thomas Grant, Jr.
WEST COLUMBIA, SC – Airport High School’s football field now carries the name of one of its best-known coaches.
It’s now Les Evans Field, for Airport’s longtime athletic director and football coach. The naming of the field for Evans, who retired in 2000 and passed away in 2021, was approved by the Lexington Two Board of Trustees at a recent monthly meeting.
A formal recognition of Evans and the field’s renaming will be held at halftime of Airport’s football game against Brookland-Cayce High School. The five newest inductees of Airport’s Athletic Hall of Fame will also be recognized at that time.
Evans was a Midlands area high school football coach for 35 years, 25 with the Eagles. Evans’ Eagles teams made the playoffs 18 of his 25 years and were Class 4A Upper State champions in 1981.
As a head football coach, he amassed 175 wins on the field, and teams coached by Evans won six region championships.
As a coach at Evans received a number of individual accolades, among them Region 3-AAAA Coach of the Year seven times, Columbia Touchdown Club Coach of the Year two times, Columbia Record Coach of the Year (1981), WIS Radio Coach of the Year (1983), and received a Distinguished Coach Award from the South Carolina Football Coaches Association (2011).
He was selected as a Shrine Bowl assistant coach (1979) and head coach (1992), a North-South game head coach (1994), and an NFL and Carolina Panthers Coach of the Week (1999). He was inducted in 2004 in both the Airport High School Athletic Hall of Fame and the South Carolina Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
A South Carolina native, Evans attended the University of South Carolina, where he played baseball.
Evans’ contributions impacted the lives of hundreds of student athletes, with many going on to play beyond high school, among them Airport’s Duce Staley, who played and coached in the NFL.
