Carson safety Jase Overcash. Brian Wilhite photo.
By Mike London
Salisbury Post
CHINA GROVE — The 2025 season is the 20th for Carson football, and the Cougars intend to celebrate it with frequent positive results.
“Carson has been around long enough that we’ve got guys now who are the sons of Carson athletes,” Carson head coach Jonathan Lowe said. “We’re starting to have second-generation Carson families. We’ve got alumni now.”
Cougar tradition quietly has been built one brick and one day at a time on practice fields and weight rooms and Thursday and Friday nights, but there haven’t been any conference championships in football. There’s been only one win against county bully West Rowan. There have been only two state playoff victories.
Carson football started out 0-22 in 2006 and 2007. That’s been a tough hole to dig out of. The Cougars entered the 2025 season with a 77-133 lifetime record. The only seasons in which Carson has won more than it lost were 2009 and 2010 after coach Mark Woody got things rolling and 2013 and 2015 under coach Joe Pinyan.
But Carson has a shot at a winning season in 2025. The South Piedmont Conference is never easy, but it doesn’t look overwhelming this time. Carson took a gigantic step toward a winning season with a 35-32 non-conference road victory against Mount Pleasant in Week 2. It was an upset based on history and based on Week 1 results. Mount Pleasant beat an SPC team — Concord — in Week 1.
It was Carson’s first victory against the Tigers, who are coached by former Carson coach Daniel Crosby, in 12 years. Pulling out that road game meant the huge difference between starting the season 0-2 and starting it 1-1.
“Our seniors had never beaten Mount Pleasant as jayvees or as varsity players,” Lowe said. “I’d never coached a win against Mount Pleasant. I was 0-6 (counting JV and varsity) until our jayvees won on Thursday. Then our varsity guys went over there and beat them on Friday. It was a well-deserved win for our guys. I honestly thought we were the better team, but we had to overcome three turnovers. Two fumbles and a muffed punt gave them some points. But I thought our guys ran our offense very efficiently and our defense played lights out.”
Defensively, Carson put everything it had into stopping Mount Pleasant’s solid running game. Outside linebacker Jamarion Brown moved inside, with inside linebacker Elijah Morgan playing basically as an extra defensive lineman. Strong safety Jase Overcash played as a linebacker.
If you’re going to take something away, you’re going to have to give up something. Carson made the choice.
“They did hit a few big pass plays on us,” Overcash said. “But Mount Pleasant is a team that really wants to run the ball. We did a good job of executing our game plan.”
Brown, a junior, and Overcash, a senior, turned in extraordinary games. Brown was credited with 18 tackles, Obviously not all solos, but he was part of 18 stops.
“I was in a zone,” Brown said. “I was seeing the ball and reacting fast.”
Lowe said that’s 27 tackles in two games for Brown — he had nine against a rugged Central Davidson team in the opener. That makes him one of the top tacklers in 5A.
“Jamarion is just super-strong,” Lowe said. “It looks like he was chiseled out of a block of granite.”
Overcash was almost as active. He was credited with 14 tackles.
“I like the hitting part of football,” Overcash said. “I think tackling is the strongest part of my game.”
Brown and Overcash are multi-sport athletes. Lowe loves getting those guys. Each sport teaches different things. Brown is a tough wrestler, so he brings a wealth of knowledge about leverage and balance to the football field.
“The biggest way wrestling helps me in football is building stamina,” Brown said. “I don’t get tired. There’s also a lot of hand-fighting in both sports.”
Overcash is a baseball player. There’s no obvious physical benefit for a baseball player who also plays football, but there’s more to football than just being rough and tough.
“Playing baseball helps me in football as far as the mental part,” Overcash said. “One of the important things in baseball is being able to move on from a mistake or a bad at-bat. That’s also true in football. You’ve got to be able to move on to the next play.”
There was a critical play in the third quarter of the Mount Pleasant game on which Brown and Overcash combined their talents for a takeaway. Brown caused a fumble. Overcash recovered.
“I saw the running back getting tripped up, and I was thinking that could be my moment to make a play and I was able to rip the ball loose,” Brown said.
There was a melee with that oblong ball bouncing around, but Overcash ended up with it.
“Jase is an athlete,” Lowe said. “He’s got the speed to make plays. And he’s got the field vision to be in the right place.”
Overcash was involved in another critical play late in the first half after Mount Pleasant had scored through the air to cut Carson’s lead to 21-20. The Tigers went for two points after every TD they scored. A successful 2-pointer at that juncture would have given them the halftime lead.
“They gave the ball to a big back, and we were expecting him to go up the middle, but then he tried to bounce the play outside,” Overcash said. “He was coming to my side, and I went low and was able to make the solo tackle. I think that play really helped us finally come out on top against Mount Pleasant.”
Overcash’s tackle in space provided a momentum swing. It had been a back-and-forth first half, but Carson jogged to the locker room with a one-point lead instead of a one-point deficit. That mattered.
Carson had a 75-yard breakaway (Damo’n Broussard) and a 90-yard drive (Rosean Perkins finished it) in the second half, and hung on for a major victory.
“Mount Pleasant had the lead some, but at the end of every quarter, at the end of the half, and at the end of the game, the Cougars had the lead,” Lowe said.
The celebration by Carson players at the end of the game was a sign of just how big it was.
