Tag: Gary Lloyd

My top 10 moments from 2017 high school football season

·

Postseason lists seem to be popular, so, on a whim, I decided to make my own. 

These are the top 10 moments I experienced from the 2017 high school football season. Please know that these are only stories I wrote from games I attended. I can’t legitimately comment on a game I didn’t attend. 

So here we go.

10. The question mark about Briarwood Christian coming into 2017 was the quarterback position. Replacing William Gray was going to be tough. Michael “Magic Mike” Hiers stepped up to the challenge. Look for a feature on Hiers on http://www.280Living.com soon.

9. Mountain Brook’s Harold Joiner shows how great of a running back he is in the season opener, rushing for 195 yards and four touchdowns against Gulf Shores. One of his scores, a 19-yard touchdown run, included juking a defender and diving for the pylon from four yards out. 

8. Carson Eddy leaves a strong legacy at Briarwood Christian, including a pretty funny nickname. One of his teammates, Carson Donnelly, will beat you at ping pong.

7. The trilogy matchup between Briarwood Christian and Wenonah was supposed to be epic. Instead, the Lions roared.

6. Chelsea fell to 0-6 after a 41-28 loss at Gardendale, but that record meant absolutely nothing. The Hornets fought hard.

5. Mountain Brook scores 25 unanswered points against Huffman in a game the Spartans could have quit on. 

4. It was the only time I saw Hoover in 2017, but the 59-7 win over Oak Mountain showed you everything you needed to know about the Bucs, who went on to win the Class 7A state title.

3. The Spartans fall at Thompson in Class 7A second round, where Taulia Tagovailoa showed how great of a quarterback he is.

2. David Robertson gets hot in the freezing cold to lead Homewood to a thrilling comeback over Fort Payne in the Class 6A playoffs.

1. Pinson Valley and Clay-Chalkville battle in the Class 6A semifinals, a game that meant so much more than a trip to the state championship. 

That’s my list. What are your favorite moments from the 2017 season?

‘I have fought a long fight’

·

I can count the number of concerts I have attended on one hand.

In high school, I saw P.O.D. in downtown Birmingham with a few friends.

There was the time last year when Colt Ford, Justin Moore and Brantley Gilbert came to Birmingham one warm night. There was the time Morgan Wallen, Nelly, Chris Lane and Florida Georgia Line shared the stage on a cold night at the Oak Mountain Amphitheatre. 

But this week, I tried something different. My wife and I went to Iron City in downtown Birmingham, a venue that fills up an hour before the opening act takes the stage. We went to see Walker McGuire and Kane Brown.

We stood in a line that wrapped around two buildings, among teenage girls with Kane Brown photos used as their iPhone wallpapers, with twenty-somethings who could have used perhaps six more inches of material on their dresses. 

Inside, we smelled enough cheap cologne to singe nose hairs and tried to find a quiet spot on the mezzanine. It was crowded, loud, hot, and I felt as if these types of events had passed me by. I’d be lying if I said I was looking forward to standing for three straight hours amongst the screamers and the beer-drinkers. 

But something great, in addition to the music, happened.

Up on the mezzanine were a dozen or so reserved tables. We stood directly behind one, and I mentioned to my wife, “Must be VIP.”

The table’s occupants showed up close to showtime, both women. One was bald, with gold crosses dangling from her ears. She was there to see Kane Brown, and she was excited. She even brought a small sign that referenced one of the country artist’s songs. It read, “This Is My ‘Last Minute Late Night’ Before My Surgery.” Surgery was underlined. She taped that small sign to the mezzanine railing, hoping the budding country star would see it. 

As the night went on, she asked my wife to take photos of her and her friend. My wife, of course, did.

I found out the woman, named Merin, has Stage 2 Triple Negative Breast Cancer, diagnosed June 5 of this year. She had port surgery just over a week later and has since had four rounds of Red Devil chemotherapy, and twelve treatments of Taxol and Carboplatin. One treatment a week for twelve weeks.

Someone at the concert asked when Merin, from Pell City, was having surgery. The surgery is this Dec. 12, a double mastectomy and reconstruction. She will have to spend four or five days in the hospital, and will also have four drains and expanders for a few months. 

“It was very important to me to be able to have a fun night out,” the woman told me. “I’ve only had a six-week gap in between my chemo treatments and surgery day.”

She told me that she was in Atlanta for the Luke Combs concert the previous night. She was having her own “last minute late nights” before life changes for a long while. 

“After surgery I really won’t be able to attend any more concerts for a while just because of risk of getting sick or bumped into,” she said. “I don’t know how after surgery I will be feeling. The doctors told me around a year or so. My next concert I’m going to shoot for is Florida Georgia Line, Luke Combs or Carrie Underwood.

“I have fought a long fight,” she said. “You always think, ‘Oh my, I feel bad for someone who has cancer.’ But until you live it you really have no idea how bad it is.”

It is tough financially and emotionally. The woman has a seven-year-old son she calls “wonderful,” and he needs his mother. He has had to help her more than any kid should have to. It’s not fair to him, she told me. 

“I will be glad when this is all over with so he can be a kid again, and I can take back my role as mom,” she told me. “I trust in the Lord to guide my family and I in the right direction. With Him, anything is possible.”

The concert was awesome, and I know this woman enjoyed it. I could see it on her face, hear it in her screams as Kane Brown performed “Last Minute Late Night” and “Learning” on stage. 

Kane Brown never saw her sign, as far as I know. The room was too dark at times, and too bright with purple lights at others. I wish he would have seen it, and gotten to meet this special woman.

I checked Kane Brown’s social media channels two days after the concert, just to see if he posted anything from his trip to the Magic City.

His two Tweets since the show: “My job’s to bring light into other people’s lives” and “You’re special.”

If he didn’t see that woman’s sign, you could have fooled me with those Tweets.

Communities win Clay-Chalkville, Pinson Valley semifinal game

·

PINSON — I’ve waited seven years to write this story, and I hope I get it just right.

I have wanted this game for so long, an intra-ZIP-code tilt between the team with the terrorizing defense anchored by the future SEC defensive tackle against the clicking-on-all-cylinders offense led by the future — most likely — SEC quarterback.

I wanted to write about so much more than just the game. I wanted to write about these communities, their people, and what they went through when I covered their tense city council meetings, spoke to their creative writing and journalism classes, and cringed through the words I typed about school lockdowns and teachers arrested for inappropriate relationships with students.

So, here goes.

I became a local news editor here in November 2010, covering Trussville and Clay. Not long after, Pinson was added to that coverage area.

I covered a lot in Pinson, good and bad.

I sat for a couple hours on an uncomfortable couch with an old man in a house on Main Street, talking about the weather records he kept for more than six decades. I wrote about crashes on Highway 75 and Highway 79 that took young lives.

I wrote about an upstart public library that won a grant for a 3-D printer and asked people to come fill out Valentine’s Day cards to be delivered to kids at Children’s Hospital. I covered robberies, burglaries, stolen utility trailers and methamphetamine trafficking.

I watched as a middle school principal was duct-taped, literally, to a hallway column by giddy students who paid one-dollar bills for twelve-inch strips of tape to raise money for office operating expenses. I was yelled at over the phone by the wife of a man I had written about. He had been charged by the sheriff’s office with a horrible, unspeakable crime against children.

I wrote about Pinson Valley High School’s unique art class, which put on a special effects performance one night that both thrilled and horrified me. It was great. I also typed words about a coyote attacking a Dachshund, and a hit-and-run involving a car and a three-hundred-pound pig. Seriously.

I put words in newsprint about a silver pot that cooked a Guinness World Record number of butterbeans. I also had the unfortunate task of reporting on a Pinson church, among others, vandalized with red spray paint scrawled across its front doors.

You’ve had it all, Pinson. Good and bad.

And now your Indians, 14-0 for the first time ever, will play for the Class 6A state championship at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa against Wetumpka. Another first, and potentially the best story to ever come out of your town.

I spoke to a former Pinson City Council member just hours before kickoff. He was ready.

“We are fortunate to have the buzz in our community,” he said. “We’ve never played in December, never won more than nine games in a season. To be able to play your No. 1 rival in this situation is what lifetime memories will be made of for the players, the fans and community. Sometimes just believing in yourself can lift your town, and today Pinson believes.”

Pinson had reason to believe, despite a slow start.

The Clay-Chalkville defense had a lot to do with that. The Indians led 10-7 at halftime, and scored 27 second-half points to win 37-7. Junior quarterback Bo Nix completed 24-of-34 passes for 256 yards. He threw three touchdowns and was intercepted once. Senior Khymel Chaverst rushed 16 times for 123 yards and two touchdowns.

I asked Pinson Valley head coach Patrick Nix if this game was what high school football was all about — two great teams, separated by just a few miles, playing in the December cold.

“Absolutely,” he said. “The kind of atmosphere it was, you can hardly hear what’s going on on the field with everything going on. It is absolutely what it’s all about. Overall a very clean game against two passionate rivals, teams that on paper and proximity don’t like each other a whole lot but respect each other greatly. I think you saw that in the play and how it was handled tonight.”

I asked Clay-Chalkville head coach Drew Gilmer, a Pinson Valley High School graduate, the same question. It was as if the two head coaches consulted each other on the answer.

“This is what it’s all about,” Gilmer said. “This is what makes it fun. You need two teams like us, so close together, to get to play in an environment like this. It’s good competition. We get after each other a little bit but we have a lot of respect for one another. They do a great job, and we wish them all the luck.”

But before Pinson Valley plays Wetumpka for the blue map Dec. 8 at 7 p.m., we must cover the dynamic between Pinson and neighboring Clay, at least in terms of what I covered for a few years.

I was mostly drawn to both schools’ athletic teams, particularly football. There has been a lot of crossover. Gilmer spent one year as a volunteer coach at Pinson Valley, his alma mater. Cougars offensive coordinator Jon Clements had the same position at Pinson Valley for three seasons. Gene Richardson, on the Clay-Chalkville staff, was the wrestling head coach and an assistant football coach at Pinson Valley for years. Chris Mills, a Clay-Chalkville High School assistant principal, previously served as the offensive coordinator and soccer coach at Pinson Valley.

Pinson has its own ZIP code — 35126. It shares that with Clay, which, due to not having completely set city boundaries, does not have its own. The Clay Post Office came close to shutting down in 2013. When purchases are made from online retailers that require a ZIP code to be entered, some of that revenue goes to the cities with the ZIP code listed — Pinson, and in some cases, Trussville. Clay misses out.

In 2014, Clay-Chalkville High School debuted a swanky new artificial turf football field, which came to be from a partnership between the city and Jefferson County Schools. The city ponied up a couple hundred thousand dollars for the project. Meanwhile, the field at Pinson Valley High School’s campus was overgrown with weeds in some places, just spots of dirt in others. Pinson missed out.

That same year, 2014, Clay-Chalkville went on to complete an undefeated season and won the Class 6A state championship. It didn’t come without struggle. Prior to the season, a promising linebacker died suddenly. A running back’s mother died in the middle of the season. The Winn-Dixie on Old Springville Road closed, an enormous tax revenue hit for the city. The Cougars’ team captain and stellar running back tore his ACL in the playoffs.

That was a lot to overcome. As a city, as a school, as a team. But Clay-Chalkville did it.

Now it’s Pinson Valley’s turn. The Indians have defeated their rivals from Clay three times in a row now, after the Cougars reeled off wins in the first ten matchups. A state championship, especially in football, brings so much positivity to a school, a community.

Just ask Clay-Chalkville High School Principal Michael Lee.

“The significance of a successful athletic program in a school and community is a vital factor in a healthy school environment,” Lee said. “Athletics, along with strong academics and the arts continue to be the backbone of a school and the thing that brings us together in our communities.

“Friday night football is powerful and means so much to so many people. Often times it brings people with nothing in common together. An AHSAA state championship brings pride and a sense of belonging to your school and citizens in the community. It also brings state and national notoriety to your school and the other great programs such as band, cheerleading, and school news groups that other students participate in. The relationships, opportunities and benefits are profound.”

These communities and schools are the real winners from Friday’s Class 6A semifinal game at Willie Adams Stadium, as Lee stated. A packed facility, a tremendous sense of pride, neighboring cities pitted against each other — this is what high school football is all about. And you carried yourselves well, Pinson and Clay.

“The memories run deep with Pinson,” said a former Clay-Chalkville player who was at Friday’s game. “Also, it was fun because everyone always knew everyone. It’s basically the same town. Same ZIP. Same type families. Now that Trussville doesn’t play Clay this has become the team kids look forward to.”

Bring it home, Indians. Regardless of this heated rivalry, I’m willing to bet those you share a ZIP code with will be pulling for you.

I will be, too.

Book of inspiring stories releases Sept. 15

·

MOODY, Ala. — Gary Lloyd has released his fourth book, Valley Road: Uplifting Stories from Down South.

The book is broken down into three parts: People, Places and Play. 

In the People section, Lloyd tells stories of inspirational people, from a BMX stunt team motivating a school of elementary students to a man with severe Alzheimer’s miraculously remembering how to play a specific song on the piano. 

In the Places section, Lloyd takes readers on a heartening and descriptive ride through the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, to the concrete jungle of New York City, to the Green Monster at Fenway Park, to the azaleas at Augusta National Golf Club, and many places in between. 

In the Play section, high school coaches from around the Southeast tell their favorite stories, words that have never made the Sports section of their local newspapers. In exclusive interviews with Lloyd, they talk about why they became coaches, about basketball saving lives, about baseball players gathering for Bible studies, about a serve-others-first mentality.

“This has been a book I wanted to put together for a long time,” Lloyd said. “So much focus these days is on the 24-hour news networks, the horrible things that people say and do. I believe this is a book that many people need to read these days. They need to know that life in the 21st century is about much more than political debates, riots and negativity. This book is a collection of stories about the good in the world, about undisturbed land in Ellijay, Georgia, about ‘Stop For Prayer’ signs in the Wal-Mart parking lot, about a man retiring after more than fifty years in city service pleading for his wife to be thanked publicly for her support.”

Former University of Alabama quarterback Jay Barker, who led the Crimson Tide to the 1992 national championship, praised Valley Road.

“Gary shows in this book how coaches, youth pastors and community leaders truly impact the people around them and in turn impact communities in such a positive way. Each chapter demonstrates the positive impact of such people and reminds me of how such people have impacted my life, and encourages me and others to do the same. This book is a must read and one that hopefully encourages us all to realize the impact we can have on the people around us.”

Sean Dietrich, the author of seven books about life in the American South, also commented on the book.

“Gary Lloyd writes with fervor that leaves the reader feeling something akin to a plate of blackberry cobbler—with vanilla ice cream, of course. This book, and Gary himself, are gems in this world.”

Valley Road was published through CreateSpace Independent Publishing. The book is available on www.Amazon.com for $10 and on Kindle as an e-book for $7.99.

Lloyd is also the author of Trussville, Alabama: A Brief History, published by The History Press in 2014. He has also written two novels, Deep Green and Heart of the Plate, also available on Amazon.com. 

Lloyd has been a journalist in Mississippi and Alabama. He grew up in Trussville, Ala., and earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from The University of Alabama in 2009. He lives in Moody, Ala., with his wife, Jessica, and their two dogs, Abby and Sonny. 

For more information, email garylloydbooks@gmail.com. Also visit www.garylloydbooks.squarespace.com and Like his author page at www.facebook.com/GaryLloydAuthor. 

Authors

·

When you tear the tape on the heavy cardboard box delivered by UPS, dreams tend to pour out. 

You run your fingers across the matte covers of a hundred books, and you almost can’t believe it’s your name printed on them, your words in black ink inside. It’s surreal. 

You have grand visions for your future. You see a line of people out the door at Books-A-Million and Barnes and Noble, clutching your book for you to sign. You see news articles about your book in publications across the country, praising its prose and description, and maybe it’s even on the bestsellers list. You see royalty checks rolling in that pay for vacations to the beach. 

Those are all extreme examples, but you dream of them, at least a little bit. Why do something if you don’t want it to be the best? But the harsh truth is very few authors reach the mountaintop of writing books, where all you do is write bestsellers that are turned into blockbuster movies. For most of us, it goes a little something like this. 

Your first book signing ever is held at a posh store near Birmingham, Alabama, where your name and photo appear on a large poster outside. You feel like royalty. You sign a couple dozen pre-ordered books in a back room. You expect to do the same in the two-hour event that follows, but mostly you chat with the store owner about his business model, and with your parents about what’s for dinner later. You sell two books to the same man. 

Your next signing is at a bookstore not far away from the first one, and maybe ten customers come in the two hours you are there. About four acknowledge your existence, as if you are the DirecTV rep begging for people’s time in Wal-Mart. You play Hangman on notebook paper with your wife to pass the time, which helps. You sell no books, but you beat your wife in at least one game of Hangman. 

Your next signing is the one you are looking forward to the most. You just know that the third time is the charm. It is in your hometown, which is also the focus of your book. The event is in a high-traffic area, near an Old Navy and a Target. It’s on a Saturday. This will be great. The publishing company has sent posters previewing your signing to be taped to the windows, so folks will know when to come by. You arrive, and the employees have no clue who you are, or about any book signing event, for that matter. You have been forgotten, and you sell one book. You try to ease your anger about the store’s forgetfulness with more games of Hangman. This time, it doesn’t help much. 

Your next signing event is a true act of desperation, held at a large grocery store in a city full of people who have never heard of you or your book. You wonder why this was even scheduled. You sit near the small section of books the store carries, and awkwardly watch as people push shopping carts full of Gatorade, chicken breasts and vanilla ice cream. One man is intrigued by your work, and he asks you a dozen questions as he flips through your book. He does not buy it. 

This is rock bottom. You wonder if those eight months of research pressed into more than one hundred pages was worth it. You didn’t write the book for the money, but sitting for two hours without selling one is embarrassing and seemingly a waste of time. Then, something great happens. 

You publish your second book, and a church invites you to talk about it and sign copies. You are nervous, because talking in front of a crowd does not exactly seem easy. But you do it anyway, because it is marketing for your book. It goes surprisingly well. You talk for half an hour about your inspirations and the book’s plot, and answer a dozen questions. You connect with this group, and their laughs don’t sound like pity. Almost every little old lady that Wednesday night buys a book. You make five hundred bucks and give some back to the church. You are energized to do more. 

You put out a third book, and it’s back to the drawing board. You promote as much as you can on social media, begging for likes, retweets and positive Amazon reviews. Mostly, those come from your wife and mom. You spend hours looking up independent bookstores in every state, emailing them about your new book. You email a hundred stores and get four responses, all with words you weren’t hoping for. You do the same with various newspapers, hoping for any bit of publicity. You get three stories locally and one in Mississippi. You take your new book and the first two to many locations to snap photos of them for social media promotions. You take photos at a river, baseball field, church parking lot, abandoned business with a rusting door, Turner Field in Atlanta and even your driveway. You hope those images, along with excerpts from the books, draw attention. 

Finally, it’s time for another book signing. You’ve never attended one where there are a dozen authors, but it sounds like a good idea. There will be many people with various tastes, you believe. It is held at a general store just outside the main shopping district in town, where there is not much around. You load your own table and chairs, and a box of books. Because it is held in December, your wife bakes Christmas cookies for the event. Authors are scattered all over the store, between old Texaco signs, a crock pot, carved crosses and other antiques. 

One author has written about her experiences with cancer. Another has written a children’s book. A woman has written about adoption. One man, with more than five books to his name, plays a guitar at his table. Another man, who calls you “Brother,” passes out a poem he wrote that he printed on computer paper. Not many people come to this store during the four hours you are scheduled to stay. Four hours feels like eight. You sell one book, to a man who is about to undergo surgery and needs all the reading material he can get during his rest and rehab period. 

Six months later, you sign up for another large event, this one at a state park along a huge lake. It’s summer, and you assume that it will be well attended, with people swimming and fishing nearby. There is room for fifty authors. Fifteen or so show up. The authors are set up right on the lake, and you’re visited more by hungry mallards than locals seeking the latest in Christian fiction. You feed chili-cheese-flavored Fritos to the ducks and kick yourself for not bringing your rod and reel.

You sell two books: one to your mom for one of her friends, another to the wife of a co-worker. You mostly spend the day talking with fellow authors, about their inspirations and writing processes. You learn about how a man stumbled upon hundreds of documents that told the story of his father in World War II. You learn about adoption. You learn what it takes to write more than three hundred pages. More than anything, you learn about people. You get to know these people better. They become friends and supporters. 

You sell only the two books that day, but you soon realize that might be more than the others sitting near you sold. Some have traveled far for this event, and you feel for them. You help one author take his books back to his car. But they are happy, not deterred by going home with the same amount of books they brought. It is their passion, this writing thing. You learn, after three years grinding in this industry, that money isn’t everything. The industry, like most everything else, is about relationships. Your wife has been to all your events, baking cookies for them, taking in the little bit of money you make, smiling through dozens of games of Hangman. Your mother-in-law has driven to each book signing since she’s lived in Alabama, and even made you a book-themed tablecloth that is asked about and complimented by fellow authors at every event. Your parents and brother have come, and they have bought copies at signings even though they know you’d give them books for free. 

I didn’t get into this industry to make thousands of dollars, though a few hundred would be nice. I did it to tell stories that are worthy of sitting on your bookshelf or coffee table, to put something in print that provides some light in an increasingly dark world. Who knows, maybe some day long after I’m gone someone will read one of my books and say, “I needed that.” I’m going to keep writing as long as I’m able, with that in mind. These authors I sit with in an old general store or in the blazing heat to sell maybe one book inspire me. They fuel my passion. I hope I fuel theirs.

And that’s worth more than any royalty check. 

New homes

·

Their dreams were so big, but their budgets weren’t quite enough. 

There was the woman pursuing a master’s degree, dreaming of one day opening her own daycare center. There was the other mother, hoping to go back to school to earn her own degree. There was the kindergartner who was on her church’s praise team, who needed a stable place to live. There was the woman who wanted to show her young daughter that you can beat the odds, that anything is possible with God. 

Habitat for Humanity is a wonderful organization, and it chose a neighborhood in my coverage area to build dozens of homes. I got to cover those builds, in which ten homes were constructed in two weeks. It was called a building blitz. Those events were tons of fun. The neighborhood was cut into a steep hill, almost a small mountain. I’d park my truck at the top in a cul-de-sac, where there were no homes. From there, I’d walk past the new homes, their roofs littered with nail gun-wielding volunteers, others carrying furniture inside. The families that qualified to move into those homes would be working, too. They had requirements: to contribute three hundred hours of “sweat equity” and attend workshops on financing and budgeting. The mortgages came with zero interest. 

There was always a key ceremony when the work was done. Each house was dedicated and blessed with a Bible, and the new occupants would speak to the crowd, if they weren’t too nervous, or could push past the tears. Those moments were always chilling. Imagine a single mother with a six-year-old girl, working full time while studying for college tests, and still managing to cook breakfast, give rides to and from school, and help with homework. Adding a stable home to all those tasks lifted a huge burden on these people I saw weep in front of their new homes. 

After I moved on from the daily journalism grind, I decided to drive through that neighborhood, where I had heard that another building blitz had taken place. In that spot I once parked, there was a home. It had four blue columns, tan brick and a rocking chair on the concrete porch. It was nice, and I liked that this neighborhood seemed almost at capacity. I saw a boy outside in his pajamas playing basketball, because during the summer, there are no wardrobe rules. 

I left thinking about those struggles that most of those people surely experienced before Habitat for Humanity selected them for a new home. It couldn’t have been easy. Their tears proved that. I pulled out of the neighborhood and turned right. About a mile down the road, there was a church, its marquee board showing Isaiah 43:19. I looked it up on my iPhone. 

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

Under that verse, there were these words: “A new day coming soon.” 

It could not have been more applicable.

Establishing a solid foundation

·

He is a young newspaper sports editor, but he gets it. The guy who was once my intern, who covers much of the Birmingham, Alabama, area now, says that establishing relationships is what the job is all about. I wish I could take credit for his genius, but he is a natural all on his own.

The publishing group he works for covers some of the most successful athletic programs in the state of Alabama. There is the football program vying for a state title every year, a basketball program that has been ranked nationally, baseball and soccer dynasties. His absolute favorite team to cover? A softball team.

He notes that the team’s head coach befriended him in a heartbeat, and talked to him as if he had known her for ten years the first time he met her. Soon after covering a few of their games, the players were eager to get to know the young sports editor and were excited any time he came to a game. The head coach even allowed him access to multiple practices before departing for the state softball tournament, and encouraged him to stand in the dugout during games. She was also willing to have dialogue during games. He says it is not uncommon to get a phone call at eleven o’clock at night from the head coach, just to talk about why a certain player is struggling or what her little girl did that day. Why is this?

“With her and many of the other coaches I’ve covered, I’ve been lucky enough to earn their trust quickly, using discernment to not write about certain things I get to see behind the scenes, but also using some of those things to drive home a point and make for a great story,” he says.

He has also assisted a major university’s athletic programs by working in the media relations department. Had he stayed on that path, he would have likely worked with the same people every day. But as a sports editor, he routinely visits many different people.

“Instead of being limited to the handful of employees I was with at a job, now the people I interact with on a daily basis are coaches, administrators and athletes along with my coworkers,” he says. “Most of these people are thankful and appreciative of what I’m doing.”

He says that his philosophy as a community reporter is to establish relationships within the circles of people that he covers. He is learning to also be the guy behind the camera, and he Tweets game-face photos with hilarious captions.

“I’m not just there to write about them, take pictures of them and Tweet about them,” he says. “When you do that, you put off a certain vibe and people associate having to act a certain way around you, guard their tongues, and you are on the outside looking in at all times.”

He dives in to that philosophy a little deeper. 

“Establishing a solid foundation with that athletic director and that coach does wonders,” he says. “For one, that player that you’ve never talked that you’re doing a story on? That player has seen you interact with the coach, and has noticed that you’re not just some random guy that shows up needing something. That makes your interview subjects much more comfortable. Secondly, when you have a solid relationship with someone, interviews are allowed to be much more conversational, which ups the quality of your material ten-fold.”

People tell you things when you have developed solid relationships with them, and the sports editor knows that. It opens the door to more stories and allows people to tell things they otherwise would not tell a reporter who covers his or her team every now and then. 

“I could go on and on for how establishing relationships with people has created a culture of trust with the people that I interact with every day,” he says.

Another friend of mine, one who was not my intern, has covered major university athletics and football recruiting in Alabama. He has been at the forefront of Alabama football coverage, and the dismantling and resurrection of the UAB football program. All those high-profile stories, but he still routinely finds himself on the sidelines on Friday nights.

“I enjoy high school sports because it’s easier to unearth unique stories,” he says.

He remembers a couple of them. There was the football player who lost his mother unexpectedly, but who couldn’t have been more gracious with his time to talk about it. There was the other blue-chip football recruit who also lost his mother at a young age. 

“I think telling stories about kids humanizes them and their team,” he says.

He recalls a Christmas basketball tournament in 2005 in Dothan, Alabama, that he covered. One of the teams had a little guard who hit a half-court shot at the end of the third quarter. After the game, someone mentioned to my friend that the player had lost his grandfather in a house fire a few days prior. The following day, the player opened up about it in an interview, and my friend turned the story around for the next day’s newspaper, when the boy’s team played in the third-place game. 

“Seemed like he got extra applause when he got the ball,” he says.

Being a champion

·

It was quite ironic, the note resting on the corner of his desk. 

I had come to interview the head football coach, to talk about his experiences as a coach in Texas and Alabama. I found out that Matt had made quite a few stops in his career. He was a walk-on wide receiver at the University of North Alabama before becoming a student assistant at the University of Alabama for two years. From there, he headed to Pittsburg State in Kansas as a graduate assistant. He moved to Tennessee to take a job at Carson-Newman University, where he learned to really get to know the hearts of his players. He left from there to head west again, this time to Missouri Southern State University as a wide receivers coach. After two years, he was promoted to offensive line coach and recruiting coordinator. That is when his love for high school football was rekindled.

He was assigned to recruit central Texas, a hotbed for star football players. Missouri Southern State’s head coach handed him a huge three-ring binder, full of schools and names. He was instructed to just start calling around, asking high school coaches if they had players worthy of being recruited. The list of schools was arranged alphabetically. Matt closed his eyes, slid his index finger down the first page and landed on a school. He called the head coach, who told Matt that he had a wide receiver that no one was recruiting. He had been one of the most prolific wideouts in the state’s history, but he was short. Matt traveled to Texas a few weeks later on a recruiting trip and met with the coach. There were pictures all over his office. The two had an hourlong conversation, just about life. Matt says it was likely the most genuine conversation he has ever had. Football, in terms of Xs and Os, did not come up.

“There was a heart about it,” he says.

After the visit, Matt, who was single at the time, called his mother to tell her about this coach and how impressive he was. He returned routinely to recruit the area and visit. He went to games with this coach. He stayed at his house instead of a hotel. He learned how important relationships were.

“That relationship just stuck,” he says.

That coach’s son was hired at a Houston-area high school. His choice for offensive coordinator? Matt, who took the job. He spent three seasons there, the first of which included meeting his future wife. They now have two daughters. As his third season as the offensive coordinator came to an end, an opportunity to move back to his home state of Alabama arose. He chose to take it. On his final day in Texas, as he was clearing things from his desk, a piece of paper caught his attention. It was a note from a player.

Matt tells the story from the beginning. He was teaching a weight training class for non-athletes, students who wanted to work out but did not play a school-sponsored sport. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, students in his class went outside and ran. One of his students was five feet, eight inches, maybe one hundred forty pounds. 

“He doesn’t look like a high school football player, especially in the state of Texas,” Matt says.

On one of those running days, the boy ran a forty-yard dash in a very quick 4.5 seconds. Matt asked him if he had ever thought about playing football. He told him that he could run down the field on kickoff coverage, maybe be the team’s twelfth man. The boy had never thought of playing. Matt took him to meet the head coach. The boy’s schedule was changed, and he became a member of the football team. He was never a starter. He practiced mostly on the scout team and played on kickoff coverage, though he did score a touchdown once.

“He was on the team, and it meant a lot to him,” Matt says.

Fast forward to Matt’s last day on the job. He finds the handwritten note on his desk. It reads, with just a couple typos corrected, “Hey coach, you probably weren’t expecting this but I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while. I hope you know you changed my life. Remember when you first recruited me, in weight training? That changed everything. You might not have known but before that happened I was in a lot of trouble, already been in (juvenile detention) and involved with a lot of bad stuff. You changed that you made me feel needed, needed on a football team. I think it was the best decision I have ever made. And you gave me the option, if you didn’t I wouldn’t know where I would be right now.” 

Matt keeps that note to remind him of the relationship side of football. It was on his desk recently because he had shared it with his Alabama team a few weeks prior. He told his players that they could talk to him that way, through a note, if they were not comfortable talking out loud. 

Sometimes, of course, he has to be firm with his players. Recently, he was working on a manifesto, of sorts. It would essentially serve as the football program’s Bible, a set of regulations and expectations every player was required to meet. There were rules for practices, conditioning, weight training, games, playing time, game days, spring training, offseasons, fundraising and, of course, academics. Everything is identified and clearly stated. If the players follow it, then everything else will take care of itself. 

“I used to think that I could motivate a fence post,” he says. “I used to think that. And I have learned that I don’t have all the answers.”

One answer he does have, however, is the message he shares with his team every Friday before games. He tells his players, “Men daily represent qualities associated with courage and strength. Boys make mistakes that men have to fix. So what are you?” It is an attention-grabber. What tough football player wants to be called a boy? On Fridays, this is solely applicable to football. But during the week, this is applicable to life. He wants his players to have courage to do the right things on a daily basis, to have discipline, to put in the work that greatness requires. 

“That’s being a champion,” he says.

As a head football coach, he does not get to spend as much one-on-one time with players as he would as an assistant. He has more administrative responsibilities. This also keeps him away from his wife and two daughters more than he would like. But they make it work. On occasion, his daughters spend time in his office just beyond one of the football stadium’s end zones. They go to practice with him. He wants his daughters to see that he is not missing time at home just for jet sweeps and all-out blitzes. He wants them to see that he is investing in other people’s lives.

“I’m hoping that I can be a good example that not just it’s important to work hard at whatever you do, but let’s make sure that the job we’re doing is investing in other people’s lives,” he says. “My hope and prayer is that my daughters see the investment that I put in other people’s lives, that it teaches them one day to do the same thing.”

Root, root, root for the Cubbies

·

I sent him everywhere, to softball games in Clay and Pinson, to football games in Trussville and Gardendale. There’s no telling how many sets of bleachers I sent him to sit in, but he was always willing and eager, even when he was forced to tote his oxygen tank.

He loved sports as much as anyone I knew. He had been an offensive lineman in high school, and maintained a close relationship with his coach more than two decades later. He was an avid Auburn fan, and I forgave him for that. After all, he was my most dependable stringer.

His byline appeared often in the local newspaper, above paragraphs about winter basketball, playoff baseball in April, region football in October. Everything. His stories were rough. Run-on sentences were rampant. Ledes were buried. Names were misspelled. Apparent quotes from coaches made little sense. It often required close to an hour to edit one of his game stories. But, every time, everything I asked for was included, and it was on time. That’s how he did it.

He fought respiratory issues for a while, but that never stopped him from calling me during the week to chat about Alabama and Auburn, the Atlanta Braves, football recruiting and more. Those phone conversations often lasted an hour. Sometimes, I didn’t have time to talk long, and I’d tell him I had to go. I hate that thought now.

This friend of mine, a diehard Chicago Cubs fan, died shortly after the 2016 Major League Baseball season started. Those coming to his service were encouraged to wear their favorite team’s attire. A lot of blue jerseys filled the room, I’m sure. 

A year after his death, a Facebook post caught my attention. My friend was tagged in it. I went to his profile to reminisce a bit, to see the nice messages people had left him. What I saw instead was a game-by-game update on the Cubs’ run to the World Series, their first in more than a hundred years.

Do you remember Game 7? The game was tied after nine innings, the Cleveland Indians with all the momentum. Then came a seventeen-minute rain delay, after which the Cubs took the lead for good. Some say those rain drops were the joyful tears of long-tormented Cubs fans in Heaven, all of whom never experienced a World Series victory. I like to believe that.

As I scrolled his Facebook page, someone had posted a photo three days after the Cubs won it all. It was an envelope, one my friend had mailed off to Chicago before he got sick. It was a request to have a baseball card signed. By which player, I’m not sure. Anyway, that envelope had been returned to my friend’s mother, with a signed card, the Monday before Game 7.

The person who posted the photo said he believed it was a message, that my friend was letting everyone know that his Cubs were finally going to kick the curses of billy goats, Bartman and more.

I like to believe that, too.