High school football: Klingler gets chance with Mountain Lions

By Mike London

Salisbury Post

GRANITE QUARRY — East Rowan head football coach Brian Flynn attended a baseball game at Staton Field not long after he was hired in the winter months of 2024.

He got to watch the eventual 3A state championship team with stud players like Cobb Hightower, Logan Dyer and Harrison Ailshie, but the guy Flynn really wanted to see was Will Klingler.

Will Klingler?

“That’s the guy everyone told me would be our starting quarterback, so I’m looking for him, but he’s not on the field,” Flynn said with a laugh. “So I go to more baseball games, and he’s really not close to getting on the field for that team except maybe to run the bases (for the pitcher or catcher). But then I start to notice little things about Will Klingler. I can see he’s totally engaged in the game from the dugout, cheering for his buddies. A runner scores and the first guy out of the dugout to congratulate him is Will Klingler. A pitcher comes out of the game and the first guy to high-five him is Will Klingler. One thing I learned from watching those baseball games is that Will is a super teammate.”

At East basketball games, Flynn would’ve seen the same thing. A senior near the end of the bench, but always pumped up, always engaged, always cheering. And if he got called on for two minutes, he played his heart out for two minutes.

“I know I’m not a great basketball player and I’m not the baseball player my older brother (Charlie, who was a starter in Division I at High Point) was,” Klingler said. “But I really enjoy staying busy with sports and being part of the team, no matter what my role is. I’ve known for a while that football is my best sport, but I think what I learned playing my other two sports always helped me a lot more than it hurt me.”

Klingler’s brother has been a big influence on Will’s athletic career.

“Charlie did help me a lot,” Will said. “He’s just a really good guy, and he’s building boat docks on Badin Lake right now. He’s someone I’ve always looked up to, and if I ever do something that reminds people of him, well, that’s a good thing.”

Klingler served as QB1 for the Mustangs during Flynn’s first season last fall. Things did not go smoothly in the South Piedmont Conference. East was often overmatched and went 0-10. Klingler passed for 900 yards and four touchdowns. He was sacked often, but he managed 200 positive rushing yards. He survived the season.

Klingler has signed with the Concord University Mountain Lions, a West Virginia school that competes at the Division II level. That Klingler got an offer from Concord — and from a number of smaller schools — may surprise people, but he has quite a bit going for him as a student (a GPA above 4.0), as an athlete and as a football player.

“I wish I’d had him for four years,” Flynn said. “He has a strong arm. He has enough size (6-foot-2, 200 pounds). He’s got great athleticism. We asked him to run a new offense. Could he have been better? Sure, but all of us could have. He gave us everything he had, every practice, every game, and never pointed a finger when things went wrong. He walked into practice every day with a smile on his face, ready to get better. Now where he’s got to improve is with his decision-making (Klingler threw 15 interceptions), but in fairness to Will, he was usually running for his life.”

Klingler said things started to fall into place for him as far as the recruiting process when a new head coach, Cody Edwards, was hired to lead the Concord program in January.

Edwards was familiar with Klingler. He’d seen him up close and wasn’t too worried about the stat sheets. Edwards had been on the staff at Western Carolina University and Klingler had attended Western Carolina camps.

And there was another connection. Concord offensive coordinator Justin Zimmerman used to be on the staff at Tusculum. He was the coach who recruited East Rowan’s Wyrick twins, Samuel and Seth, during his time at Tusculum.

So the recruiting process worked out for Klingler. He signed recently at the school.

He plans to major in sports management.

Klingler knows he’s got some things to learn and some things to get better at to play quarterback at the Division II level. Until he gets on the field, he’ll be the best teammate in the program.