Savannah Country Day quarterback Barry Kleinpeter was confident and concise following his team’s historic 49-14 win over rival Calvary Day on 
November 1, 2019. The Hornets had moved their record to 9-0 (5-0 Region 3-A East) on the season and beaten the Cavs for the first time in 10 years.
“We’re showing the city what we’re made of,” Kleinpeter told Dennis Knight of the Savannah Morning News after the game.
But, as his stats plainly suggested, the then-sophomore quarterback had already been showing the city plenty in the two months of SCDS perfection leading up to the Calvary regular season finale.
“(The 2019 success) was just seeing the whole field for me and focusing on the mental aspect of playing quarterback,” Kleinpeter said of his progression from freshman to sophomore years in a June 25 phone conversation with PSR. “It was a huge thing for me, learning and starting to see everything at a slower pace in my sophomore season.
“Because of the mental side of the game getting better my freshman season, I was just so confident going out there my sophomore year.”
A 2019 All-Region 3-A East first-team selection, Kleinpeter threw for 2,203 
yards and 24 touchdowns (six interceptions) while completing 61-percent of his passes.
Heady stuff, even for the mental.
Kleinpeter, who has already started 22 games through his first two prep seasons, also added eight touchdowns and 466 yards rushing last season out of the SCDS shotgun-spread offense.
“I gained some size before last year, and it was just a lot better for me and the team from the beginning.”
The Hornets finished off the 2019 regular season at 10-0 thanks to a Region 3-A championship win a week after the Calvary victory. Under the direction of first-year head coach Jim Collis, SCDS swept rivals Calvary and Savannah Christian in the same season for the first time since 1995.
It was also the program’s first region crown since 1980.
In the 47-42 region championship win over Johnson County, Kleinpeter made one last statement. He totaled five passing touchdowns, completing 15 of 23 attempts for 325 yards while guiding the Hornet offense to a near-flawless performance.
“That was a really cool night,” he recalled. “That’s what I play for. It’s for those moments.”
Behind its emerging sophomore signal-caller, Country Day received a first round bye as the No. 1 seed in the state before eventually falling to SCPS (35-14) in the GHSA Class A Private playoffs second round — a bitter ending for a storybook season of firsts for Kleinpeter and SCDS.
“Obviously we wanted to go all the way and try to win a state championship, but I can’t complain about going 10-0 and winning a region championship,” Kleinpeter says.
“It was everything we could have dreamed of because we were able to prove a lot of people wrong. It wasn’t easy. So this season, I’m trying to improve a little bit at everything in my game and help bring along a lot of our freshman receivers now. Everything … not just one or two things … it needs to be better and then we’ll be where we want to be in 2020.”
Follow Kleinpeter on Twitter @KleinpeterBarry
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