According to Coach Xavier Dupree, when he left the Hiram Terriers’ football team to take a position at Catawba College two years ago it was a tough decision because of all of the great relationships he had fostered. The former Hiram wide receivers coach/assistant strength and conditioning coordinator has returned to where it all started, having been announced as the program’s new head coach on Dec. 13.
“It is a big deal,” Dupree told The Weekly Villager on Jan. 23. “It is definitely cool to be back to see the guys, the seniors on the football team now, they were freshmen the last time I was here, so it is great to see them and how they have matured and grown up. They are and were excited to hear the news that I was coming back. I had a lot of great relationships with these guys and they have all been supportive and welcoming for me.”
Dupree becomes the 33rd head coach and youngest head football coach in the program’s history. Even he has acknowledged that he did not expect to become a head coach so quickly at the age of 28.
“I will try and use it to my advantage,” the first-year coach noted. “I am a young guy, I want to act like I am older than I am. I think if you stop learning and growing, then you probably stop living. I don’t know everything. I am not going to act like I do but I am a fun and energetic guy.”
He returns to a program that is beginning play in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference, a conference that the Terriers were members of until the 1989 season. Dupree sees Hiram’s move to the PAC as a new beginning for everyone.
Dupree said that he already addressed the move to the PAC with his team when he was first announced as the new head coach in December. He told the team that they should not dwell on the past but also should not ignore it.
“Those who do not know the past are doomed to repeat it, so we know what the past is and what it holds so there is a reason why the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror,” he added. “Every now and again you are going to look back and you see it and hear about it, but we are focused on the here and now and we are focused on the 2025 football team.”
In addition to wanting to hit the ground running, Dupree said that it has already helped to have the trust of the senior players, who he previously knew as freshmen when he departed for Catawba College two years ago. He noted that the senior players have already been fielding questions from some of the younger players as to what kind of coach they can expect him to be.
As much of a new experience this is for the younger players to be dealing with a coaching change, Dupree said that he is in a similar boat, never having experienced a head coaching change during his own playing days when he competed as a wide receiver at South Gwinnett High School and Middle Tennessee State University.
“To have somebody that the older guys know and respect and have worked with before and to have those guys say hey, everything is going to be okay and this guy has our best interests at heart and those type of things, it definitely helped ease the mind of a lot of the younger guys,” Dupree said.
At one point after Dupree’s playing days were over, it appeared that football was no longer going to be a part of his life as he completed a degree in multi-media journalism with a concentration on broadcast journalism, but he realized that he could not step away from the sport completely. He became a student wide receivers coach during spring practices and following graduation, he worked as a strength & conditioning intern at the University of South Carolina for a season before eventually coming to Hiram as a wide receivers coach before the 2020 season. While serving as the Terriers’ wide receivers coach/assistant strength and conditioning coordinator, he helped elevate the wide receiving corps as group averaged over 13.0 yards per reception and totaled over 2,100 receiving yards in the 2022 campaign.
According to Dupree, his experiences as a wide receiver has helped shape his identity as an offensive-minded coach.
“By being a wide receiver, you see the game from a different perspective out there,” he said. “The edge is different than being in the trenches definitely but just being around coaches and good offensive minds as well has definitely helped me a lot to shape what I want to do in terms of offense.”
