CONWAY, S.C. — Lary Korn had just parked his car at the Charles Lea Center in Spartanburg, S.C., for a parent-teacher meeting when his cell phone rang.
It was the summer of 2010, and his eldest son, Willy Korn, was crushed. Lary could hear it in his voice.
‘“Dad, I don’t know what to do,’” Lary remembers Korn telling him.
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Three seasons at Clemson from 2007-09 had been hard on Korn, who has since made a name for himself in the coaching industry as Coastal Carolina’s co-offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach since 2019, but at the time, he was almost ready to walk away from football.
Billed as the Tigers’ next generational quarterback out of nearby Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C., Korn had lost his trademark quick release after injuring his throwing shoulder’s AC joint in 2007 and labrum in 2008. When he lost out to Kyle Parker for Clemson’s starting job in 2009, Korn transferred to Marshall in early 2010, looking for a fresh start. But when Lary’s phone rang, a devastated Korn had called home to tell him that just weeks before the college football season was set to kick off, Marshall no longer believed Korn had much of a future at quarterback. He could play third string or transition to safety.
‘“Throw your stuff in the car,’” Lary said he told Korn. “And get the heck out of there.”’
As Lary consoled his eldest son on the phone and tended to his two younger sons — both of whom started crying in the backseat on their big brother’s behalf — he encouraged Willy to return home to South Carolina.
Korn still had his Jersey Mike’s polo from working at the sandwich shop earlier in college and figured that if he walked away from football, perhaps he could start scaling the ladder there. But Lary still believed his son had the ability to play quarterback. So in the coming days, he emailed FCS, Division II and Division III schools to see if he could find a fit.
At 1:08 p.m. on Aug. 13, 2010, one of those emails went to a young Jamey Chadwell at Division II North Greenville.
“I still feel (Willy) has a future at QB and am hoping he doesn’t let anyone convince him otherwise,” Lary wrote to Chadwell, now the head coach at Coastal Carolina and one of Korn’s strongest advocates. “If you would like to talk more, please call at your earliest convenience.”
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“Truly, that email changed my life,” Korn told The Athletic in the fall.
Korn enrolled at North Greenville about a week before the 2010 season kicked off and had no way of knowing just how much that email would shape the direction of his career.
Under Chadwell’s mentorship, the now-33-year-old Korn rekindled his love for football and has been an offensive assistant under Chadwell at Charleston Southern and Coastal Carolina since 2013. When Coastal Carolina kicks off its spring game Thursday evening, Korn again will help oversee an offense that ranked No. 4 nationally in 2021 and returns star quarterback Grayson McCall for another season. Chadwell believes Korn could be off to a bigger job “sooner rather than later,” based on the interest Korn already has received.
But for now, Korn is happy in Conway, S.C., where he still keeps a hard copy of that email thread on hand.
“Thank God my dad sent that email,” Korn said. “And thank God Coach Chadwell checked his emails that day.”
Willy Korn has been an assistant coach at Coastal Carolina since 2017. (Courtesy of Coastal Carolina Athletics)Of course, Chadwell checked his emails that day. He had been checking them every day — once in the morning before preseason practice, then again after practice — for good measure. The Crusaders had struggled in 2009, going 2-8 in Chadwell’s first year as a head coach, and the outlook for 2010 didn’t look much better after the team’s top two quarterbacks suffered season-ending injuries the previous spring.
With no transfer portal at the time, Chadwell had no choice but to roll into the season with an inexperienced redshirt freshman. Or hope that someone like Lary Korn might reach out.
“I just remember vividly getting that email,” Chadwell said. “And I was like, ‘God, you’re answering my prayers right here in my emails.’”
Chadwell told Lary that yes, North Greenville would be interested in Korn, and Lary drove his son to campus a few days later. He waited in his car while Korn walked down a set of 10 concrete steps to meet with Chadwell near the football field.
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“At that point, I don’t really know what’s going to happen,” Lary said.
But Korn returned with a verdict shortly thereafter, telling his father both parties were ready to move forward.
Korn joined Chadwell’s team about a week before the season opener, going from the bright lights of Death Valley at Clemson to wearing high-top cleats, oversized shoulder pads and an offensive lineman’s face mask on his first day of practice at North Greenville. His teammates made fun of him for showing up so late that he didn’t have to endure their strength and conditioning summer program.
“But the players, most of those players on that team were from up in that area, so they knew who Willy Korn was,” Chadwell said. “And so they got after him pretty good, ripped him and all that, and he took every bit of it. I think that’s what won them over.”
Korn played in the Crusaders’ first game after the starting quarterback went down with an injury and spent the afternoon looking over to Chadwell on the sidelines for direction, given his unfamiliarity with the offense. He then took over the starting job in Week 2 and never slowed down. With his shoulder healthy again, Korn finished his two-year career with an 18-4 record and threw for 4,058 yards and 45 touchdowns. He earned All-America honors in 2011, after leading North Greenville to an 11-3 record and the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division II football championship.
Perhaps most encouraging, Korn — who met his wife, Charlotte, at North Greenville and has since become a father to daughter, Maggie — started to enjoy football again.
“At North Greenville, you’re lucky if you get a thousand people there, you’re lucky if you get 500 people there. But it didn’t matter at that point. I just wanted to play,” Korn said. “So I got a chance to do that and reestablish the love and the joy for the game.”
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That became apparent to Chadwell when he watched Korn impersonate him at a team talent show in 2011, during which Korn nailed Chadwell’s signature Tennessee accent and stuffed his shoulders with pillows to mirror what Chadwell says are his “abnormally big” shoulders for his body.
“There was a brokenness when he got there,” Chadwell said of Korn’s initial demeanor. “But I think that (fresh start) gave him that hope back.”
So much so, Korn soon became a coach.
After Korn’s playing days came to an end at North Greenville, he tried his hand at arena football in Phoenix. But when he wasn’t sure if he’d make the team, he started to consider other options.
Chadwell had offered Korn a graduate assistant job in 2012 at Delta State, but Korn turned him down at the time, wanting to continue his playing career. He circled back, however, when Chadwell landed the head coaching job at Charleston Southern in 2013.
“He called about coaching or something (and said), ‘Do you potentially have a GA (spot)?’” Chadwell said. “And I said, ‘Well, no. I have a receivers job. Do you want it?”’
Chadwell had someone else in mind for the wide receivers job if Korn turned him down again and needed Korn to make a quick decision. This time, Korn jumped at the opportunity. He talked to Chadwell on a Wednesday and didn’t stick around in Arizona long enough for final cuts on Saturday. Instead, he hopped in the car.
“I made that drive back in like, three days and went straight to Charleston,” Korn said. “It was a lot of hours driving across the country to get back, but you’re just excited the whole way. Like, ‘All right, the next chapter of my life.’”
Korn arrived in Charleston, conducted his formal interview with the school and went straight to work. His co-coordinator at Coastal Carolina, Newland Isaac, now likes to call him “Silver Spoon” because of the way Korn went straight into an on-field assistant role in his first coaching job, but Chadwell is quick to remind Isaac that Korn was a better player than him in college. Plus, Korn seemed to have early natural instincts for coaching.
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On the first day of practice at Charleston Southern, Korn’s younger brother, Colton, showed up about 30 minutes late. Colton played wide receiver at Charleston Southern and is now Coastal Carolina’s coordinator of player personnel. Chadwell was interested to see how Korn might handle his brother’s tardiness.
“He just starts ripping into him. Laying into him. … You’re sort of chuckling, going, ‘Oh this is funny, this is great,’ because he’s so worried about everything,” Chadwell said. “And so I think at that point, I was like, ‘All right. He’s gonna figure it out. He’ll be all right.”’
Korn coached wide receivers at Charleston Southern from 2013-16 before he followed Chadwell to Coastal Carolina in 2017. He initially coached wide receivers again from 2017-18 with the Chanticleers, while Chadwell served as Coastal Carolina’s interim head coach in 2017 and the team’s offensive coordinator under Joe Moglia in 2018.
But when Chadwell took over the program as its head coach in 2019, he moved Korn into his current role as quarterbacks coach and co-offensive coordinator — a position that suits Korn well, having played quarterback in Chadwell’s system.
“He knows exactly what I should be looking for,” McCall said. “He really knows the offense in and out. Some coaches say they do, but they don’t because they haven’t actually done it. But he does.”
Coastal Carolina’s offense is unique in that it’s an option offense but isn’t a traditional triple-option attack. The Chanticleers are run-pass option-heavy and frequently use two running backs. They’re able to get clean looks for McCall off play action when defenses focus on stopping the running game.
Korn said he has been asked by other coaches in the profession if he would run Coastal Carolina’s offense if he ever got the opportunity to be a head coach or Power 5 coordinator, to which he regularly responds, “Heck yeah.”
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“I love what we do now,” he said.
Chadwell believes Korn could have those bigger opportunities soon if he wants them.
“If he wants to be a head coach, he can be a head coach,” Chadwell said. “I think he’ll be really good at it.”
Korn still keeps up with Clemson by checking box scores and texting former teammates on head coach Dabo Swinney’s staff and keeps a signed photo from Swinney in his office.
Willy Korn keeps this signed photo from Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney in his office. (Courtesy of Willy Korn)Maybe it didn’t work out the way he envisioned when he first enrolled with the Tigers, but Lary and Chadwell believe that Korn is a better coach because of his experiences at Clemson and Marshall.
If and when he lands a bigger job, he’ll take those lessons with him.
And of course, he’ll take a hard copy of Lary and Chadwell’s emails, too.
“The debt that we feel and love we feel for Jamey and his family for what they provided for him and how they changed his life — it’s not repayable. We’ll never forget it,” Lary said.
“I left Clemson and basically the only person in America who was willing to let me play quarterback, literally, was Jamey Chadwell,” Korn said. “That email exchange changed my life.”
(Top photo courtesy of Coastal Carolina Athletics)
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