Mountain Brook girls, Hoover boys win titles

SPORTS
DOUG SEGREST
Cribbs: Spring
football will fly
in Birmingham
hen Joe Cribbs
shuffled out of Buffalo and straight into
the USFL, more than a few
people questioned his sanity.
The year was 1984. And
Cribbs had to get out of Buffalo, because he felt he was
under an Orwellian thumb.
‘‘When I came over I really
had no other options,” Cribbs
said. ‘‘There was no free
agency, so I either had to play
with Buffalo under their terms
or go to the USFL.”
So he headed home, joining
the Birmingham Stallions for
a bigger paycheck and a
chance to reconnect with
friends and family, who saw
him play professionally for
the first time.
Bottom line, ‘‘it was a good
move for me. I love this state.
I could live anywhere I
wanted to, but I chose to raise
my family here in Alabama.”
The 1980 AFC Rookie of the
Year, Cribbs returned to Buffalo for the 1985 season, with
a nice salary bump to boot,
and finished his eight-year
NFL career in 1988 with Miami.
Now Cribbs is back in football as president of the upstart
Team Alabama franchise in
the new All America Football
League.
Wednesday, in a press conference announcement at Legion Field, Cribbs will announce the team’s first head
coach.
As previously reported here,
former Pittsburgh, Texas A&M
and Mississippi State coach
Jackie Sherrill is a candidate.
Also in the mix is former Alabama and Auburn defensive
coordinator Bill Oliver.
The surprise candidate may
be NFL Europa veteran Mike
Jones, but Cribbs isn’t ready
to announce a decision.
‘‘It will be someone the fans
will identify immediately,’’
Cribbs said, ‘‘someone who
will unquestionably be recognized as a winner.’’
The AAFL begins play in
April with six franchises —
Birmingham, Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, Tennessee and
Texas — playing a round-robin schedule. All players will
be college graduates.
Early signees for the league
include 2006 University of
Florida quarterback Chris
Leak, 2001 Heisman Trophy
winner Eric Crouch of Nebraska and locals Reggie
Myles, Rudy Griffin and Freddie Milons of Alabama and
Jake Arians of UAB.
Each team can protect as
many players from its state as
it wishes, with the rest of the
team selected in a late-January draft.
Tryouts have been held nationally for the past four
months, but Cribbs is keeping
a close eye on the conclusion
of the 2007 college season.
‘‘I’m very interested in the
guys who will be available after the season is over,” Cribbs
said. ‘‘Let’s say someone has a
shot, but a long shot, at making the NFL. They could pick
up $50,000 to $100,000 for
four or five months with us
and still have the opportunity
to play in the NFL.”
Brandon Cox, are you listening?
While the AAFL concept has
drawn rave reviews from national media outlets, let’s face
it: This is Birmingham. The
grim reaper of off-brand football lives at Legion Field.
Cribbs, however, is undeterred.
‘‘There’s a market for football in the spring. People
came out and supported the
Stallions. We were well supported even though we were
on a suicide mission.
‘‘I love Birmingham. We’re
a city that has been stagnant
for a while, but we’re poised
to explode. I believe this team
has the ability to be a catalyst
for something positive.”
W
E-MAIL: dsegrest@bhamnews.com
Sunday, November 11, 2007
COLLEGE BASKETBALL 20C
BIRMINGHAM
NBA 20C
OUTDOORS 21C
[ 15C ]
GOLF 22C
AT A CROSSROADS
ON THE FIELD,
AN ATHLETIC DIVIDE
Faced with lack of money and low participation, Birmingham high school sports programs struggle to produce
winning teams and college opportunities. It’s a lot easier in the suburbs, where many top athletes prefer to play.
By SOLOMON CRENSHAW JR.
and JON SOLOMON
News staff writers
he scoreboard told
only part of the
story.
Bessemer’s Jess
Lanier High beat
Birmingham’s West End 45-19
in a Thursday night football
game at Lawson Field in September. Lanier fans crammed
their side of the stadium. On
the other side, fewer than 200
people showed up, including
the band.
The meager following for
West End is just one sign of
where high school athletics
stand in Birmingham City
Schools. The system that decades ago set the pace for athletic success in the state is
more likely to lose than win
when its teams face schools
from surrounding suburbs.
Beyond victories and defeats, the current state of Birmingham prep athletics is
costing its residents opportunities and hope.
Some coaches and parents
assert that college athletic
scholarships are less likely to
go to Birmingham students
than their suburban counterparts because of the city’s
reputation of poorer academics, training and resources.
Also missing are the positive feelings and unifying
bond that athletic success can
bring to a school and community. Low morale can prompt
athletes to leave the system,
and as the enrollment drops,
funding for the school system
falls, as well.
Birmingham school board
member W.J. Maye, the chairman of the school system’s
athletics committee, spoke
bluntly about city teams on
the field: “We are terrible.
There was a time we were the
system people didn’t want to
play. Now everybody puts us
on the schedule so they can
have a win.”
The city’s only state titles in
the past 14 years — nine of
them — have come in boys
and girls basketball. During
that period, teams in the
growing Birmingham suburbs
— where the city’s nine high
schools are outnumbered
more than 3-to-1 — have captured 193 state titles in 21
sports.
T
SPECIAL/RICK ZERBY
NEWS STAFF/FRANK COUCH
Birmingham city school teams don’t get the fan and booster support that suburban teams do. In top photo, the West
End stands are sparse before a September football game at Lawson Field. Below, Hoover vs. Vestavia Hills at Regions
Park packed ’em in.
ABOUT THE SERIES
INSIDE
This is the seventh in a series of special reports exploring
challenges that face the Birmingham-Hoover metropolitan area.
Today, The Birmingham News looks at education and athletics.
y A city team struggles / 17C
ONLINE
y A city team succeeds / 17C
y Coaches turn to Birmingham Athletic Partnership / 17C
ELSEWHERE
Join the conversation at al.com, the online home
of The Birmingham News, at blog.al.com/bn/
crossroads, where you can also find previous
installments of this series.
y Inequities show in classrooms too / 1A
y Ideas from other urban school districts / 7A
See ATHLETICS
y Good schools drive real estate market / 7A
CLASS 6A CROSS COUNTRY CHAMPIONSHIP
NEXTEL CUP SERIES
Page 18C
CHECKER AUTO PARTS 500
Mountain Brook girls, Johnson, Gordon
are
fast
friends,
in
Hoover boys win titles more ways than one
McGregor, Dunn
top individuals
That won’t stop teammates
from battling for Cup title
By WESLEY HALLMAN
News staff writer
By JENNA FRYER
For The Birmingham News
OAKVILLE — Patrick McGregor and the Hoover High
School boys cross country
team had revenge on their
minds entering the 2007
Cl a ss 6 A c h a mpi o ns h ip
meet.
The Associated Press
Mountain Brook won the
Class 6A boys title in 2006,
NEWS STAFF/JEFF ROBERTS
and McGregor and his teammates decided they weren’t Hoover’s Patrick McGregor, left, wins the 6A boys’
going to let the Spartans division while Austin’s Jennifer Dunn wins the girls’ 6A
claim back-to-back champi- title at Indian Mounds Park in Oakville on Saturday.
onships. McGregor posted
the top time to win the indiHayes came in 14th and JusINSIDE
vidual championship as the
tin Rogers finished 16th. VesBucs claimed the team title y Results / 14C
tavia Hills came in second,
Saturday at Indian Mounds
Smiths Station finished third,
y More cross country / 14C
Park in Oakville.
Auburn came in fourth and
Mountain Brook missed
out on the boys title, but the
Spartans did earn the 6A girls
title.
Hoover finished first in the
team standings due to three
runners claiming spots in the
top 20. McGregor won, Nick
Mo u n t a i n
fifth.
Brook
See RUNNING
c l a i me d
Page 22C
AVONDALE, Ariz. — Searching for an escape from their race to the Nextel Cup title,
teammates Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon
separately headed to Mexico for a little rest
and relaxation.
Both championship contenders planned to
use their short vacations to recharge before
heading to Phoenix International Raceway to
resume the title chase today. Racing and the
tense battle between two good friends were
the farthest things from their minds.
They never expected to run into each
other, but did when Gordon, traveling with
his wife, spotted Johnson having lunch. Traveling with his wife and infant daughter, Gordon pulled the car over for a brief visit with
Johnson and his wife.
“We’re sitting at a beach bar, relaxing and
having a fun lunch and in the door walk Ingrid and Jeff,” said Johnson, who was coming
off of last Sunday’s win at Texas.
See PHOENIX
Page 19C
Jimmie
Johnson
“With the few
races that we
have left, I think
it’s better to be
on top and
trying to control
it if at all
possible. Right
now I’m glad to
be leading.
There’s not a lot
of time left.”
INSIDE
y Bump and
Run / 19C
SPORTS
Sunday, November 11, 2007
BIRMINGHAM
The Birmingham News
j
17C
AT A CROSSROADS
NEWS STAFF/LINDA STELTER
NEWS STAFF/MICHELLE WILLIAMS
A Ramsay High School cheerleader celebrates after the Ramsay girls score during the
game against Fairfield last Tuesday.
While Carver’s enrollment ranks third-highest among city high schools with just under
1,000, about 30 players dressed out for preseason football practice.
RAMSAY HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS BASKETBALL
CARVER HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL
A city team succeeds A city team struggles
Rams continue to hit
goals on, off court
By RAY MELICK
News staff writer
The gym looks like every other high school
gym around the city of Birmingham, with its
well-worn hardwood floor surrounded by
creaky, fold-up bleachers and its thick, stale
air.
Yet this gym differs from the others because
it is home to the Ramsay Rams, winners of the
past four Class 5A girls basketball championships.
In a city whose sports teams often lag behind in finances, facilities, equipment, support and coaches, basketball is a near-perfect
sport. All a school needs is a gym, a ball, and
one coach, unlike sports such as football that
require special equipment and huge fields
and large coaching staffs. And kids can play
basketball year-round, anywhere they can
find a hoop.
Ramsay’s facilities are not better than at
other schools, and the coaches are not better
paid. The athletics budget comes entirely
from ticket sales and concessions.
So why the success?
Wenonah girls coach Emanuel “Tub” Bell,
whose teams dominated girls basketball in the
city until four years ago, says it’s the coach,
Robert Mosley.
“He turned that program around,” Bell said.
“He knows what he’s doing. He runs a tight,
disciplined ship. . . . Sure, he got a couple of
really good players. But he made them successful with his discipline, his tactics, and
having smart kids.”
Magnet school
The 32-year-old Mosley played high school
basketball at Leflore, under legendary coach
J.D. Shelwood. He studies the game constantly, working camps in the summer and
“borrowing” from other coaches.
“I don’t have a lot of interests,” Mosley
said. “I’m married, I go to church, and basketball — that’s all I do.”
Good players certainly help. Samone Kennedy and Katherine Graham, who arrived at
Ramsay at the same time as Mosley five years
ago, led the Rams to a four-year 128-13 record, and have now taken their games to the
University of South Carolina and LSU, respectively.
Kennedy was zoned for Woodlawn. Graham
lived in the Huffman zone. Both could go to
Ramsay because Ramsay is a “magnet”
school, open to about 160 freshmen a year
from the Birmingham school district who can
pass the entrance requirements.
“If you give me the pick of all the students
in the city of Birmingham, I would win
20-plus games every year,” said Birmingham
City Schools Athletics Director George Moore.
“. . . That’s no slight on the coaches. The
coaches are doing an excellent job. But for the
most part, they get to pick and choose and all
those other schools don’t.”
But, said Mosley, “the school takes the first
160 that qualify, and then those 160 have to
maintain a 2.5 grade point average while they
are here or they have to go back to the school
where they are zoned. The truth is, good athletes don’t always excel in the classroom. And
a lot of very good athletes want to come here
but don’t qualify.
“And even if we do get them, the curriculum is all honors or AP (advanced placement). You can’t hide kids in classes where
you know they can pass.”
Ramsay Principal Jeanette Watters said, “I
don’t recruit athletes. I recruit students. There
are no exceptions.”
Ramsay, which does not have a football
team, has a parent booster club that works
basketball games and concession stands. The
parents are typically more involved — in athletics and academics — because they consider
education a priority and they value having
their children at Ramsay.
“When you get that kind of talent, plus
smart kids who come from good backgrounds
— that’s a winning combination,” Bell said.
Demanding accountability
Knowing the pressure his players are under
to stay at Ramsay allows Mosley to establish
what he sees as the foundation to his team’s
success: accountability.
“I’m accountable,” Mosley said. “The assistants are accountable. The kids are accountable, not just on the court but in the classroom. We hold them accountable for
everything: the way they carry themselves, the
way they dress, their grade point average.
“And about the only reason we allow a kid
to miss practice is for tutoring.”
The Ramsay team learned Mosley was serious his first year, when he benched his team’s
best player, Rutgers University signee Sammeika Thrash, for the first three games of her
senior season for missing three practices.
“You don’t miss practice,” said Kennedy.
“We knew that. That wasn’t true everywhere. I
had a friend at Woodlawn. I asked her, ‘Why
aren’t you at practice?’ She said she didn’t feel
like going to practice.”
Mosley can demand because his players are
used to meeting demands.
“These kids are accustomed to achieving, or
they wouldn’t be here,” he said. “Our kids are,
by nature, competitive in everything they do
— academically as well as athletically.
“The big thing is, we don’t make excuses.
We can’t give our kids a reason not to succeed. So we take care of what we’ve got, instill
pride in what we have, and try to take advantage of what we have instead of worrying
about what we don’t have.”
E-MAIL: rmelick@bhamnews.com
No wins, but players
never quit trying
By ANDREW GRIBBLE
News staff writer
Carver High School Athletics Director Alvin
Moore watches his 11 a.m. gym class walk
laps around one of the school’s two gymnasiums.
It’s midway through August and the Carver
football team has yet to play a game, but the
33-year veteran of Birmingham City Schools
knows it’s going to be a tough year. The 50 or
so kids walking around him this day are
nearly twice as many as the squad that took
the field for its 42-0 season-opening loss to
Wenonah and wrapped up its season with a
47-0 loss to Parker.
At Carver, playing football ranks behind
other interests. “You see that kid over there,”
Moore said, pointing toward a student large
enough to play nose tackle. “He’s in the
band.”
In between the bookend losses to its innercity rivals, Carver faced some of the best
teams in Alabama week after week in Class
6A, Region 6.
Composed mostly of affluent Birmingham
suburbs, Region 6 has been dubbed by many
fans and writers as the toughest football region in the state. Some teams in the region,
such as Vestavia Hills, are forced to dole out
duplicate numbers because their roster size
cracks the century mark.
“When you pull up in one bus and the
other team pulls up in four,” Moore said,
“that’s a problem.”
Tough to watch
Interim coach BeShaw Smith sums up the
biggest problem with Carver’s football team
matter-of-factly.
“Who wants to be surrounded by losers?”
Smith said. “Not saying that we are losers, but
who is going to say “They lost all their games,
so I want to play for them?’ ”
It’s been decades since Carver ranked
among the elite in high school football, but
the problems began to mount in 2004 when
the school was bumped up from 5A to 6A, the
state’s largest classification, and were compounded two years later when the school
moved to Region 6.
The Rams have gone 2-18 since joining Region 6. Their lone win in the region, and only
one this season, came from a forfeit victory
over Hoover. Excluding the Hoover forfeit, opponents outscored the Rams 487 to 10 this
season.
“We’ll start a game out all right,” junior
safety Jeremy Howard said, “but having everybody playing both ways (offense and defense)
kills us.”
Senior quarterback Ashton Gaither said that
kids in the school “don’t have as much inter-
est in football as they do other sports,” such
as basketball, which will draw more than 50
boys to tryouts. That’s even though Carver’s
enrollment ranks third-highest among city
high schools with just under 1,000.
Joe Nash was a member of the Carver football team that played Dothan’s Northview in
the 1981 Class 4A championship game at Legion Field. Nowadays he sits in the stands as
his son Joseph plays for the current Rams
squad. He admits it can be tough to watch.
“Kids love to be with a winner,” the elder
Nash said. “If they ain’t with a winner, they’ll
move on. They’ll move on to Hoover, to Erwin, to Huffman. It’s happening right now.”
Tedarius Brown, for instance, led the Rams
in 2006 as a promising freshman quarterback,
but transferred to Erwin before the start of the
season.
Coaching carousel
Carver was handicapped this season in
ways other than numbers.
While players at Spain Park and Hoover
participated in 7-on-7 passing camps this
summer, the players at Carver still didn’t
know who would coach them.
Coach Jackie Hurst had been fired after
spring practice earlier in the year; Moore cited
a 49-point loss to Bessemer’s Jess Lanier in
the spring game and a lack of “preparedness.”
In August, when schools all across the state
were in the thick of two-a-days, interim coach
Phillip King took a leave of absence after the
death of his brother. Smith took over as interim coach and King never returned. By season’s end, Carver still didn’t have an official
permanent coach.
Principal Darrell Hudson said his search
has been delayed and limited because he has
been allowed to search only within the system
due to a systemwide reduction-in-force plan.
When he can, Hudson said, he will launch a
“nationwide search.
“We’re looking for a coach to completely rebuild the program,” Hudson said.
Including King, the Rams have had four
head coaches since 2004.
Mike Vest of the Birmingham Athletic Partnership said that despite many obstacles, he
sees a lot of pride within the football team.
“I see these kids coming back every Friday
night trying to play, trying to win, trying to
run the plays and trying to score,” Vest said.
“These kids are going to look back and be
proud that they didn’t quit.”
Even in their final game of the season, midway through the fourth quarter and down by
47, the Rams mounted a drive deep into Parker territory before stalling.
“The group I got here considers themselves
winners,” Smith said, “because they’re still
here.”
E-MAIL: sports@bhamnews.com
BIRMINGHAM ATHLETIC PARTNERSHIP
City coaches often turn to main corporate donor
System AD wants
more self-reliance
By JON SOLOMON
and SOLOMON CRENSHAW JR.
News staff writers
The Birmingham City
Schools athletics department
wants its major donor to take
a lesser role in funding daily
operations and focus on paying for larger projects.
Birmingham Athletics Director George Moore wants
the Birmingham Athletic Partnership (BAP), a nonprofit
corporation that has helped
fund city athletics since 2002,
to change its focus to allow
the city to become more financially self-reliant. BAP is
willing to do that, but for now
it often is the first option for
coaches seeking equipment or
supplies due to the school
system’s bureaucracy and reduced funding.
BAP is also the first option
for many corporations that
want to donate to city athletics. Edgar Welden, the
founder and president of BAP,
acknowledged that corporations which donate money to
BAP do so partly because of
media reports that many state
audits have found problems in
the school system’s bookkeeping. A 2005 audit, for instance,
showed unaccounted gate
receipts.
“This isn’t about lack of
trust,” Welden said. “This is
about the difference between
business and government.
They would like to give money
to a business person as opposed to a faceless government agency.”
Moore said that while he
appreciates donations to and
from BAP, “before BAP was
ever in existence, we had athletics in the city of Birmingham.”
BAP officials and Moore say
their comments should not be
interpreted as criticism of the
other. Both sides say they
need to maintain their relationship to help students.
BAP has purchased more
than $350,000 worth of equipment and other items for city
schools since its inception.
NEWS STAFF/BEVERLY TAYLOR
Edgar Welden, founder and president of the Birmingham
Athletic Partnership, and Mike Vest, BAP executive
director, pose at Ramsay High School with a new soccer
goal purchased by BAP. The old one is behind them at left.
BAP also pays for camps, clinics and media events.
Without BAP, Birmingham
athletics “probably would
have folded a long time ago,”
said Shades Valley football
coach Curtis Coleman, Huffman’s former coach. “They’re
providing not only the financial support, but the moral
support.”
Huffman baseball coach
Demetrius Mitchell said he
wishes BAP Executive Director
Mike Vest or Welden was the
city’s athletics director.
“What’s the point of even having an athletic director if BAP
is doing what it’s doing?”
Mitchell said.
Vest and Welden said they
have no interest, nor the capability, to run the athletics
department. But Mitchell’s
question raises an issue
Moore has been fighting:
Some coaches simply bypass
the athletics director’s office
and go directly to BAP.
“Sometimes we get so many
coaches’ requests, it’s overwhelming,” Vest said.
Ten corporations are donating $25,000 a year for four
years to BAP, which then purchases items for schools based
on requests. The requests
from coaches are supposed to
be approved by their principal
and Moore, but that doesn’t
always happen, Moore said.
“We need to look at our resources first at the school
level, then look at the district,
and then after that, we can
look at BAP,” he said.
Vest said BAP used to be the
last resort for coaches seeking
help, but now seems to be the
first. He instructs coaches to
have their requests properly
approved. The system is improving, he added.
In essence, Vest said,
coaches rely on BAP because
it has become the booster
club for all city schools.
“You go to Hayes High
School and you try to go fundraise across the street at the
hair shop, or go down to the
little gas station down the
street — nobody gives them
anything,” Vest said.
BAP had a surplus of
$173,741 in 2006, with
$340,590 in revenue and
$166,849 in expenses, according to its most recent 990
form.
In the future, Moore said,
he would like BAP to renovate
the track at Lawson Field and
help to one day create an athletic complex.
Welden is concerned about
future giving to Birmingham
athletics, especially as current
donors get older.
“We tell these kids, ‘The
main reason we’re doing what
we’re doing is somebody cares
about you and wants to give
you all these opportunities.
We want you to remember
when you go to college, don’t
forget about the kids you left
behind.’ ”
E-MAIL: jsolomon@bhamnews.com
18C
j
SPORTS
The Birmingham News
BIRMINGHAM
Sunday, November 11, 2007
AT A CROSSROADS
A glaring divide on the field
ATHLETICS:
From Page 15C
Coaches, parents and administrators point to several
obstacles facing Birmingham’s
high school athletics program,
especially in comparison to
suburban systems:
y Lack of resources, such
as money, facilities and large
booster clubs.
y Low morale, lack of fan
support in some cases, and a
perceived lack of cooperation
from administrators.
y Lack of a good feeder
program from middle schools.
y Lower quality of coaching
in several sports.
y The flight of quality athletes to suburban systems.
y Low student participation
on teams.
“It’s on the bottom,” retired
Ramsay boys basketball coach
Willie Scoggins said of the
state of Birmingham athletics.
“It was better in the ‘60s than
it is now and you didn’t have
as much to work with (then).”
“We ain’t got nothing but
football and basketball,” Parker fan Carlton Woods said.
“Baseball, we get slaughtered
in that. We ain’t got the batting machines and all that
kind of stuff the county
schools have.”
Th e city ’ s i s su es have
reached the point where “it’s
not a question of why kids run
away,” said Gene Edelman, a
retired Birmingham teacher
and member of the system’s
athletics committee, “it’s why
don’t more run away?”
Athlete exodus
Dennis King began his high
school football career at Birmingham’s Huffman High. He
ended it at Hoover High, a nationally-recognized program
that has won five of the past
seven 6A state championships
and has sent many students to
c o l l e ge o n a t h l e t i c s c h o l arships.
Dennis Davis, King’s father,
said his son transferred in part
because the family saw differences between the schools in
academics and athletics.
“He liked the way the (athletics) program was run at
Hoover over Huffman High
School,” Davis said. “Huffman
didn’t have the facilities that
Hoover has. Really, none of
the city schools have the facilities that Hoover and Spain
Park have.”
George Moore, the Birmingham school system’s athletics
director, said part of the city’s
challenge stems from its loss
of athletes to the suburbs. The
exodus is prompted by better
environments for athletics,
academics and safety, he said.
“If we had all these key athletes who are going to some of
the outlying school districts,
you would see that our program would look a lot better,”
Moore said.
He and others raised questions about whether departing
athletes are legally transferring. Some city coaches, parents and administrators say
they believe their athletes are
being illegally recruited away
by people in other communities.
“That’s what they do,” said
Maye, the athletics committee
chairman. “They recruit them
in the seventh and eighth
grade so they have them in
high school.”
Some athletes leave because
they think the suburbs will
provide them with a better
stage for getting an athletic
scholarship to college. Birmingham has recently produced some elite college football players, such as
Alabama’s Andre Smith and
Vanderbilt’s Earl Bennett, but
there aren’t large numbers.
Dabo Swinney, an assistant
football coach at Clemson
who recruits the state of Alabama, said he has seen fewer
city players that he wants to
sign in the past few years.
Swinney, who comes from
the Birmingham area and
played and coached at the
University of Alabama, said
the city’s facilities and the
academic resumes for individual players fall behind other
urban cities.
“I think they’ve made some
imp rovements , bu t th ere
should be more,” Swinney
said. “I look at some of the
schools there and what they
have, and it’s just a shame.
Those kids deserve better.
There are some very prideful
schools within the city that
have done a tremendous job
without as much.”
It’s not just football where
city athletes are losing opportunities. Edgar Welden, the
founder and president of the
Birmingham Athletic Partnership, said city athletes in
many sports are missing out
on college scholarships because they don’t have the
same resources and opportunities to learn fundamentals
and get seen by recruiters.
BAP, a nonprofit corporate
foundation created in 2002 to
aid city athletics, is trying to
create better exposure for athletes by staging clinics and
purchasing video equipment
to send footage of athletes to
college recruiters.
“Basketball has the AAU
system, but the system is not
there in other sports where we
should be excelling, track, volleyball, softball and baseball,”
Welden said. “We’ve got the
athletes who could excel, but
they have not had enough extra opportunities.”
Inability to even offer some
sports adds to the missed opportunities. In the Birmingham system, Huffman and
Ramsay provide the most
sports, with 10 each. Twelve of
the 13 high schools in the Jefferson County system offer
more than 10 sports, including Clay-Chalkville and Gardendale with 19 each.
In sports that do exist, a lot
of college coaches “won’t recruit certain kids because they
weren’t taught it a certain
way,” Moore said.
Some Birmingham coaches
say they don’t have the tools
— in particular, weight equipment — to train their athletes.
They also complain that they
aren’t afforded the time in
their schedules to sufficiently
prepare for practices and
games as coaches at suburban
schools do.
Many of Birmingham’s high
schools are housed in buildings that are several decades
old and lack amenities that
newer suburban schools have.
“It’s not a matter that we
don’t have as much as other
people. It’s that our money
doesn’t go anywhere,” said
Edelman , wh o frequ entl y
points out athletic shortcomings at board of education
meetings. “Have you seen the
weight room out there at Jackson-Olin? That’s why (football
coach Michael) Clisby takes
his team to Ensley to do his
workouts. It’s minuscule.”
Ensley High stopped operating two years ago. Wenonah
High, which opened this year,
has no weight room.
B i r mi n gh a m S u p er i n t e n dent Stan Mims says the difference begins with dollars.
“They have more money,”
said Mims, who recently completed his first year. “We just
don’t have the funds. The
suburban districts usually find
people who come and sponsor them.”
Boosters less help
The base supplemental pay
that coaches receive is comparable between the Birmingham and Jefferson County
systems. A Jefferson County
high school head football
coach with 12 or more years
of experience, for instance,
gets $7,171. A Birmingham
high school head football
coach gets $6,500 for 15 or
more years.
One major difference: Jefferson County schools typicall y can better rew ard
coaches through supplements
from their booster clubs.
Moore said each Birmingham high school has an athletics booster club, but not all
function as well as he would
like. The most participation
comes from Jackson-Olin and
Huffman, he said.
Basketball is the biggest
draw and most successful
sport in the city, and it shows
in the coaches’ pay. Birmingham head basketball coaches’
supplements range from
$5,000 to $6,500, more than
Jef f er so n Co u nty ’ s, w hi c h
range from $4,000 to $5,800.
Birmingham awards an additional $4,000 to coaches in
any sport who win a state
championship, and $2,000 for
state runner-up finishes.
Lately, however, city
coaches have felt anything but
rewarded. All high school and
middle school coaching positions were vacated during the
summer and coaches had to
reapply.
With the basketball season
starting last week, Birmingham does not have its fulltime coaches under contract
yet. A number of basketball
coaches declined to coach
their teams without a contract.
“It’s a shame for the second
time this year (including the
fall season) the actions of the
athletic director and others
have put the sports program
in turmoil,” Edelman said.
In an interview this fall,
Mo o r e a c k n o wl ed ged th e
mass coaching removals and
rehires can “destroy a coach’s
morale” but believes coaches
should not feel threatened.
“Our coaches would be the
first to say certain schools are
not doing what they need to
do in order to be winning,”
Moore said. “I think non-renewals can be a positive. We
need to have something out
there where we keep our
coaches accountable.”
Moore said the timing of
the non-renewals last summer
was not good and won’t happen again. Most coaches, with
the exception of some spring
sports, will know their status
by April of each year, he said.
Principals hire their own
coaches, and sometimes they
make those hires based on
classroom abilities without
c o ns id era ti o n o f c o a c h in g
knowledge, Moore said.
The motivation to coach
merely for extra money is a
“big problem” in some sports,
Moore added. As an example,
he recalled a woman hired by
a principal as a middle school
baseball coach who explained
she would learn about the
sport on the Internet.
Since Birmingham’s most
recent state title in baseball,
by Huffman in 1982, six suburban schools have combined
to win 17 state baseball titles.
Hu f f ma n b a seb a l l c o a c h
Demetrius Mitchell expressed
exasperation at the lack of
fundamental skills taught in
the city. One team, he said,
once recorded 39 stolen bases
in one game.
“Some teams don’t record
39 stolen bases in one year,”
Mitchell said. “They’re stealing with no thought of strategy.”
Mitchell’s complaints go
beyond the lack of fundamentals. Mitchell, who has been
suspended by Moore in the
past, said he would grade the
city athletics department’s
support as a D or D-minus
due to a lack of stability and
cooperation.
“Because some people have
been in the system 15, 20
years, they’re not doing anything,” Mitchell said. “They
want other people that are
young, energetic, enthusiastic
about their craft to do nothing, as well.”
Former Wenonah Athletics
Director Henry Pope said
Moore is doing the best he
can, considering he must yield
most of his authority to the
school board.
Middle school
Birmingham’s issues start
well before the athletes reach
high school. Mims, the superintendent, said the key to improving the city’s athletic fortunes is to improve middleschool sports.
So m e c o a c h e s s ay t h e
teaching process is hurt by the
feeder system that brings athletes from middle schools.
The enrollment zones of middle schools are fragmented,
sending teammates from one
middle school team to as
many as three high schools.
“If you’ve got a middle
school that’s going to Spain
Park, everything that they’ve
got on that football team goes
to Spain Park,” West End football coach Jim Holifield said.
“Over here, I might get two
players, Parker gets three or
four and Wenonah gets three
or four. You’re diluting everything.”
Moore said he has at-
tempted to hold clinics at
middle schools to improve the
fundamentals, but high school
coaches want no part of it.
The coaches don’t want to
teach an athlete who one day
beats their team on a Friday
night, he said.
Carolyn Cobb, the president
of the Birmingham school
board, said coaches shouldn’t
blame the feeder system.
“Whatever school they’re
coming from, they (coaches)
still have a responsibility of
teaching and training,” Cobb
said.
Mims said the issue of
feeder patterns is a problem
and the system’s athletics
committee will study it.
Several coaches say they are
further handicapped by low
athletic participation, particularly compared to the
schools they compete against.
A survey by The Birmingham News found that on average Birmingham high schools
have 192 athletes and a student body of 902, while Jefferson County averages 278 athletes and a student body of
998. Students who play multiple sports were counted
more than once.
About three years ago, Holifield wrote a message to himself on the blackboard in the
coaches’ office: “Against All
Odds.”
“Even though we don’t have
all the things that all the other
schools have, we’re still gonna
fight, we’re still gonna struggle, we’re never gonna give
up,” he said. “We’re gonna
fight against all odds.”
E-MAIL: screnshaw@bhamnews.com