Bryan and Meredith Overcash.

The Overcashes. 1992.

 

Bryan Overcash, 1984

 

By Mike London

mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — As chief operating officer of Salisbury-based Global Contact Services, Bryan Overcash carries an important-sounding title for an important-sounding enterprise.

But Overcash, 57, was raised in the South Rowan community and is more down-to-earth than you might think, and the business that he co-founded with Greg Alcorn in 2001 is more people-friendly than you might think.

They do quite well with their far-reaching empire, but they make lives better while they’re doing it.

“It is rewarding work,” Overcash said.

It was sports, specifically sports at South Rowan High school in the mid-1980s, that molded Overcash into the civic mover and shaker that he became. He has served on the board of directors for schools, colleges, golf courses, churches and hospitals. That capacity for leadership started in high school huddles and dugouts.

Overcash was a three-sport athlete in high school who stood out in football and baseball and contributed as a role player in basketball. He and East Rowan’s Chris Cauble were Co-Rowan County Athletes of the Year for the 1984-85 school year.

Athletics began for Overcash at the Gray-Y level, and things started to get serious by the time he got to China Grove Middle School.

“We had a system in place, with good coaches, and we were running the same plays we’d be running at South Rowan High,” Overcash said.

Overcash grew up watching players like his idol Greg Poole, who starred as a running back for South Rowan and as a defensive back for the UNC Tar Heels.

South Rowan High football, after some rough years, started to turn things around in the second half of the 1974 season.

Reid Bradshaw, head coach of South Rowan football from 1971-1982, finished his career on a 72-20-2 roll, never lost more than three games in a season after 1974 and celebrated five conference titles in red and black.

Overcash was a sophomore backup quarterback during the 1982 season, Bradshaw’s last at the helm. He was a junior in the fall of 1983, Larry Deal’s first season as head coach.

South still had veteran quarterback Darren Corriher in 1983, but Overcash had some quickness, so South’s coaches schemed to get both QBs on the field at the same time. Overcash was employed as a running back. He did well and was seventh on the county leaderboard with 470 rushing yards on 118 attempts during the 1983 regular season.

That’s one of the seasons they held “Division Two” playoffs for conference runners-up. South actually had tied for first with Concord, but had lost 18-15 head-to-head to the Spiders, so Concord represented the South Piedmont Conference in the “Division I” playoffs.

South won its three Division Two playoff games against Davie County, Hibriten and Shelby and was declared the regional champion for the playoffs, but there was no championship game against the Eastern champ.

The triumph against perennial power Shelby was a major one, as it gave the Raiders their 11th win. That’s a school record that had stood for more than 40 years.

“I remember Shelby had huge linemen and a quarterback with a cannon,” Overcash said. “It was a cold night, and he actually was throwing the ball too hard. They couldn’t catch it.”

The Raiders never did throw much. That wasn’t in their DNA. They were ground-and-pound. They weren’t worried about stat sheets. They were just there to win.

“It was triple-option football, wishbone, although sometimes we’d run the option out of the ‘I’ formation,” Overcash said. “We got really good at it from a ton of reps, from all of us doing it for a very long time. Practices were very organized. We’d run a play and we’d run it and run it until the coaches were satisfied that we had it down. We were efficient enough and disciplined enough running our offense that we could control the ball and control the clock.  Our coaches expected to win, and they gave us an expectation of winning, as well. We played more talented teams than we were in that era — Concord and Kannapolis always had more talent— but we could line up against teams like that because we were so good at what we did. Our defenses were equally well-prepared. We knew we weren’t going to give up a lot of points and the defense was always going to give us a chance.”

Those coaching staffs — the 1984 staff included Larry Deal, Bob Parker,  Sam Misher, Ernie Faw, Butch Willett, Darrell Spry, Steve Beaver, Keith Anderson and Danny Cartner — meant everything to Overcash.

They still do, even though he’s had to attend too many funerals in recent years.

“Larry Deal was my godfather,” Overcash said. “He and his wife (Diane) were great friends of my family. They were great teachers and great men as well as great football coaches who put us in position to win games. They were guys that you went to church with on Sundays.”

When the 1984 football season arrived, it was finally Overcash’s time to be the quarterback. South kept doing what it did and went 8-3. South won seven in a row between an opening-night loss to North Rowan and an overtime loss to the A.L. Brown team that had Tracy Johnson and James Lott and played for the state championship.

Nine members of the 26-man All-Rowan County team were Raiders.

South played in the Division II playoffs again, but lost to Lexington in Overcash’s final high school game.

Overcash’s 1984 stats weren’t overwhelming. He rushed for 450 yards and threw for 206 yards and three touchdowns, as the Raiders put the ball in the air only 36 times during the regular season.

But he did such a masterful job of running South’s offense he was voted Rowan County Offensive Player of the Year by county coaches and the Post sportswriters. Backs such as Joseph Hedrick, Eddie Cherry and Michael Holland averaged 6 yards per carry because Overcash was reading the defense and making the right decisions on when to keep it, when it hand it off, and when to pitch it.

“We could maintain our pitch relationship 20 yards down the field,” Overcash said.

Willett, the quarterbacks coach, liked to call South’s offense “3 yards and cloud of dust,” but it was more like 6 yards and a cloud of dust.

“The games would start at 8 o’clock then, and a football game was the center of community activity,” Overcash said. “When we played Kannapolis or Concord, they’d have bring in extra bleachers and put them behind the end zones to hold all the fans. Cable TV would be there and there was huge coverage in the papers. Those games mattered so much to everyone, and believe me, the athletes felt it.”

Overcash recalls taking a hard lick in a game with West Rowan. In those pre-concussion protocol days, it was simply regarded as “getting your bell rung” and you moved on to the next play.

“That was a violent collision and I staggered around, ended up near the West sideline and I heard someone yelling, ‘Hey, Bryan, are you OK?’ It turned out it was Raymond Daugherty. He was a family friend who was coaching for West. The funny thing is Coach Willett sent in a pass play on the next play — a pass play on first down! Probably the only time in his life he ever did that. The most inopportune pass call ever.”

Overcash also thrived on the baseball field, playing for very good teams. He was primarily a second baseman for the Raiders.

He batted .333 as a junior in the spring of 1984 and .412 with 25 runs scored as a senior in the spring of 1985.

“Coach Faw was good on the football field, but he was great on the baseball field, and he was extraordinary in the classroom,” Overcash said.

Overcash never played Legion ball because weekends and summers were spent working at Food Town, which transitioned to Food Lion during his high school days.

“I remember a summer working third shift at the produce warehouse,” Overcash said. “Get off work and then go to football workouts.”

While he was a player of the year and athlete of the year, Overcash was 5-foot-9, 160 pounds, so ACC recruiters weren’t beating down his door with offers.

But he also was in the top 10 in his class at South academically. That opened doors for him.

“Dale Keiger, of Dale’s Sporting Goods, was my uncle and in the spring of my junior year he took me over to Davidson College, wanted me to see the school and watch the football team in spring practice,” Overcash said. “If not for him, I never would have thought about Davidson, even though it was only 25 miles away. I got to meet the coaches and Davidson recruited me.”

In the fall of his freshman year, Davidson coaches knew he’d been a high school quarterback, but he had to explain that 95 percent of the “throwing” he’d done in high school had been pitches to the running backs.

But he had good speed and he was tough and they found places to use him. It wasn’t long before he was a starter. He played wide receiver and he played cornerback, and there were times when he handled both jobs.

“The toughest challenge was practicing at corner and still trying to to fit in some practice reps as a receiver,” Overcash said.

Those were Southern Conference years, tough times for overmatched Davidson teams against the App States and Furmans of the world.

“I remember playing against (former South star) Chris Drye at Furman, and he was a really good player,” Overcash said. “We played up at Appalachian State on Black Saturday and they were winning big and John Settle (a future NFL back) had taken his pads off. Then they found out there was another record John could break, so he put the pads back on. There were some tough days.”

Still, Davidson worked out well for Overcash. He earned a degree in economics. He received the George King award as the  senior player with the highest GPA. He lettered four years and he’s still in the Davidson record book for what he did as a punt returner.

“I’d fair catch a punt if I had to,” Overcash said. “But I’d never let one hit the ground.”

After the cheering stopped at Davidson, Overcash graduated from UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School with a masters in accounting.

He was a working CPA before his vision led him to take on new challenges with Global Contact Services.

Besides the coaches who molded him at South Rowan, he’s thankful to the school for his wife (Meredith). She had just arrived at South as a 15-year-old sophomore when he was a senior. He asked for a date before the first football game.

“I never gave anyone else a chance with her,” he said with a laugh. “And I’m glad I didn’t.”

Their three children were exceptional scholars and good athletes. Brock, Ivy and Marshall came through Salisbury High and Gray Stone. Brock was an all-conference tennis player for the Hornets about a decade ago and was runner-up for Central Carolina Conference Player of the Year.

Bryan tried hard to instill in a new generation the same work ethic that was drilled into him long ago by coaches who loved him, but coached him hard and pushed him harder.

“My freshman year at Davidson I lost more games than I lost in my entire career at South Rowan,” Overcash said. “But there were a lot of lessons to be learned. There were good lessons from being on both sides of it.”