Anthony Johnson, the athletic director at Bishop McNamara High School in Forestville, Md., learned on the morning of Sept. 2 that his school’s varsity football game wasn’t going to take place that night. Johnson’s squad had been slated to face Coolidge Senior High School of the District of Columbia Interscholastic Athletic Association, the league for the city’s public high school teams.
“People from Coolidge told us around 11 a.m. that they couldn’t line up security guards, so they were canceling it,” Johnson says. “I’ve been here 20 years and I’d never heard that one before.” The D.C. school, it seems, had stopped looking for guards at least eight hours before kickoff.
A week earlier, Coolidge officials had offered another novel excuse to back out of a meeting with Archbishop Carroll High School, a game that was scheduled to be the season opener for both teams. Carroll Athletic Director George Leftwich says his Coolidge counterpart told him that his players hadn’t had enough full-contact workouts to play a real game.
The reason for the lack of practice? “They said it was the earthquake,” Leftwich says. Coolidge’s AD, Keino Wilson, defends his team’s failures to show up, citing “safety reasons.”
Carroll administrators offered to move the game to the following Monday so Coolidge could get more workouts in. Coolidge initially accepted. But they reneged the night before the makeup, citing rain. The game was never played.
The multiple excuses left Leftwich sad, mad, and confused. “I mean, yeah, there was an earthquake, but it was over,” he says. “Other schools had the earthquake, too, and they could play. I didn’t get it.”
Coolidge is perhaps D.C.’s most prominent public school football program, thanks to the hiring last year of Natalie Randolph, believed to be the nation’s only female varsity head football coach. Randolph made the cover of Parade magazine, and her presence explains why ESPN filmed last year’s matchup against Carroll. But in other ways, the team is pretty typical of a DCIAA squad: Carroll, for instance, won that ESPN game in a blowout. And so far this year, Coolidge is hardly the only District of Columbia Public Schools team to have trouble even getting its players out on the gridiron.
Take Ballou Senior High School, the 2006 city champ and a perennial contender in the Turkey Bowl, the annual Thanksgiving battle to determine the city’s top squad. The Knights also didn’t play either of their first two scheduled games. Their season opener was scrapped because rival Roosevelt Senior High School—another DCIAA team—couldn’t dress 18 eligible players, the required minimum. A week later, Ballou canceled its game with KIPP, a fledgling charter school in Anacostia, because Ballou couldn’t find a medical doctor to work the sidelines, as required by league rules. DCPS’ official explanation has since shifted to blaming Ballou’s failure to hire adequate security.
Cardozo Senior High School had to forfeit its Sept. 2 opener against Options Public Charter School, also for a lack of eligible players. The next week, Cardozo and DCIAA rival Anacostia Senior High School were scheduled to play an official game on the evening of Sept. 9. That contest took place, but it was taken off the books for reasons DCIAA won’t disclose. Anacostia staffers say, instead, the teams met that afternoon in “a scrimmage,” and that no official stats were kept. It’s a strange assertion, since scrimmages are ordinarily held only in the preseason, and the change leaves each school with just eight regular season games scheduled for 2011.
Then there’s Dunbar High School, the Shaw school whose alums include NFL players Vontae Davis, Vernon Davis, Arrelious Benn, Josh Cribbs, and Nate Bussey. But even Dunbar has been a mess this year. Its Labor Day game against Paul Laurence Dunbar High School of Baltimore was stopped in the second half because of an on-field brawl. Players from the D.C. school, which was getting blown out when the fight started, were blamed for inciting the brouhaha. The Washington Post reported last week that Willie Jackson, DCPS’ interim athletic director and overseer of DCIAA, ruled Dunbar must forfeit upcoming games against Cardozo and Bell Multicultural High School; the school has fired first-year coach Ashaa Cherry for letting ineligible players on the team.
A few DCIAA schools were, in the end, able to find enough players, security guards, and doctors to actually play ball over the holiday weekend. Alas, the results of the games that were played paint an even more brutal picture of the sorry state of D.C. high school football.
H.D. Woodson High School, the reigning DCIAA champion, put up just 63 yards of offense while being shut out 48-0 by the Martinsburg High School Bulldogs at their West Virginia campus.
Our Readers Say
Who gives a flying f**k?! Fix the education first.
Mr. McKenna: Great article!! Hopefully your words will ring loud to those who don't realize how that function called a JOB that they are PAID money for is not being done properly and its full impact on kids and the community.
Oh, and congrats that Dan Sydner is no longer suing you. I appreciate your articles :-)
~Former DCPS athlete
It was unfortunate that Troy came along when the Chancellor and Mayor was only interested in firing teachers.
MICHELLE RHEE DIDN’T HAVE A CLUE! TO ALL YOU CLOWNS WHO THOUGHT SHE WAS EVEN ONE IOTA OF WHAT SHE PORTRAYED HERSELF TO BE WILL SEE OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF YEARS HOW MUCH OF A FRAUD SHE REALLY WAS! JUST BECAUSE SHE REORGANIZED THE WAREHOUSE DOESN’T MEAN SHIT. ALL KINDERGARTENERS KNOW HOW TO PUT STUFF IN ITS PROPER PLACE. IT’S THE ONES THAT DON’T HAVE ANY SOCIAL SKILLS LIKE RHEE THAT WE LABEL AS SPECIAL.
DUDE FROM TEXAS HAVE SOME GOOD IDEAS AND SOME SHOULD BE IMPLEMENTED. HE IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT IN HAVING EACH SCHOOL FILTER ROSTERS AND STUDENTS FOR ELIGIBILTY. IF SCHOOL ALLOWS A STUDENT TO PLAY THAT HAS NOT MET REQUIREMENTS THEN THAT SCHOOL SHOULD BE PUNISHED ACCORDINGLY. THERE SHOULD ALSO BE DIVISION COORDINATORS THAT COACHES REPORT TO IN ORDER TO HELP FACILITATE SOME OF THOSE ADMIN THINGS LIKE SECURITY AND MEDICAL.
DCPS PUT AN A.D. IN PLACE! COACH SAAH OFFERED UP HIS SERVICES.
@ John SLIM ACADEMICS AND ATHLETICS GO HAND IN HAND!
YO LANIER WHY CANT WE HAVE UNIFORMED MEMBERS OF MPD POSTED UP AT GAMES TO PROVIDE SECURITY? THAT WAY THEY PROVIDE A SERVICE, GET TO KNOW THEIR COMMUNITY AND WILL ALSO SHOW THAT DCGOV CARES. RECRUIT SOME EMT’S FROM DCFD, RECRUIT SOME MED SCHOOL STUDENTS FROM HOWARD, G.W. AND G'TOWN TO VOLUNTEER TO WORK SOME GAMES. IT’S ONLY ABOUT THREE HOURS A WEEK FOR A HOME GAME FROM SEPT THRU NOV.
AS FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS THEY HAVE AN ADVANTAGE OVER DCPS. THEY DON’T HAVE A RESIDENCY REQUIREMENT TO ATTEND THEIR SCHOOLS. AS LONG AS THAT STUDENT FULFILLS HIS ACADEMICS ACCORDING TO THE SCHOOL THEN IT’S ALL GOOD. EASTERN SHOULD REACH OUT TO FRIENDSHIP COLLEGIATE AND OFFER UP UNUSED FOOTBALL FIELD IN EXCHANGE FOR GATE AND CONCESSION RECEIPTS.
YO MS HENDERSON YALL BETTER GET IT TOGETHER! WITH OUT TRYING TO SOUND LIKE YUCKMOUTH MOTEN IF THEY DON’T FIX DCIAA PROMPTLY LIVES WILL BE LOST TO THE STREETS, TO DRUGS, TO POVERTY AND TO THE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR UPSTAIRS.
Cato June (Ana alum who played at Michigan and then with Colts and Bucs) had a one-day clinic down at ANA HS this summer. Alums in the pros want to help and give back, but it doesn't seem the system would even know how to use their help.
Lets you further know Rhee was some sh*t and left town just in time.
Having lived in the Anacostia area for the last 20 years, but having grown up across the river in Fairfax County, there were always jokes made about DCPS' playing on fields that had far more dirt, rocks, and glass fragments, than grass. Schools in the city rarely had a field for practice and a separate stadium with bleachers for fans to watch. Instead, the practice field was also the game field and often times fans watched standing because of broken bleacher seats if there was seating at all as most stadiums only had seating on one side.
I follow high school sports pretty closely, and one of the main issues this article didn't discuss is how the numbers of kids playing football is way down. But not just in the inner city, its happening even in the close in suburbs too.
I attended Stuart High over in the Baileys Crossroads/Lake Barcroft area. I didn't play football but from 6th grade until high school graduation in 1975 I probably went just about every Friday night game over a 10 week period. Most games had 3K to 5K attend, even for some of the teams they weren't that good. The varsity team might have 50 to 60 players, the JV would have at least 30, and the freshman team another 30 or so. In the farther out suburbs in Fairfax County you might be able to double that number. Today, many inside the beltway schools in Fairfax and Arlington County's are lucky if they have a total of 70 to 80 kids between varsity, jayvee, and freshman. And these are schools whose enrollments number between 1400 and 1800 students.
With charter schools syphoning off kids form DCPS, the typical DCPS high school might not have more than 700 students to choose from. And thats the offical number not the ACTUAL number, which appears to be much lower. With an absence of father figures in the home, many of the male students of these schools have no interest in playing football. A lot of kids don't even know the rules.
Thats one problem.
The other is DCPS open enrollment policy where kids can go to pretty much attend any public school they wish. That has made DCPS high school sports driven by recruitment. A few DCPS who have a go-getter as coach may have 50 kids or more on their roster, most of them not even living in that schools attendance boundary.
Ballou's program has cratered when their head coach, Moe Ware, left to take a college assistant job and the Knights football program has dropped off significantly. Before he went to Ballou, he was head coach at Coolidge and that school had a good program. Then four years ago he left to go to Ballou and took many of his best kids with him. His leaving is in part what led to Natalie Randolph becoming head coach because the schools football team went very very good to very very bad over a two year period where they struggled to find a qualified man to take the job. Randolph, already being a teacher at the school, stepped up to apply when no one else appeared qualified to do so. She seems to kow what she is doing, and because of the stability, they Colts may be a team to watch in DCPS this season.
Dunbar doesn't appear to have fallen off as bad since Craig Jeffries left at the end of the last year but that is another school that went from producing Division 1 scholarship athletes to appearing now to struggle to win games.
Over 20 yeas ago, Richmond, VA had a similar problem with interest in high school football. What Richmond did was to combine schools to be able to field complete teams. Thomas Jefferson, Huguenot, and George Wythe high schools became Jefferson/Huguenot/Wythe. They stayed separate academic schools but for athletics competition they combined under one umbrella. Armstrong and Kennedy High Schools combined, and so did Maggie Walker and John Marshall. It worked for a while for the Richmond schools, with Marshall-Walker becoming a power in the Central Region. But students and parents wanted to go back to neighborhood school athletics, especially for basketball, so after about a 10 year run, they went back to individual schools. I think DC might need to take a page from Richmond and do the same here. There are several schools, Anacostia-Ballou, Roosevelt-Cardozo, Eastern-Spingarn come to mind as schools that might benefit from combining their athletics teams. On the other hand, those schools also have students that have beefs with one another which may or may not be problematic.
In any case, seeing how high school football unites so many communities, its sad to see that after DC has put a lot of money into facilities, both athletically, and also the academic buildings, that interest has fallen off so much.
If the DCPS puts out great students, the recruiters will show up for the student-athletes. THEN we can bitch about the ADs and coaches not getting their act together as far as making the scheduled games go off when they're supposed to.
This may include getting rid of some of the longtime and well like Coaches and Administrators as they too are part of the problem and stand-offish to positive change because they are comfortable in their situation. The new AD for the DCIAA has to have the attituded that change is not going to be easy, but it can be done as many will try to buck the system.
Finally, as Mathieu mentioned, let's put the responsibility of eligability issues in the hands of the Principles and Head Coaches of the schools. The biggest problem is there is no recourse for using ineligable players at the Principle and Head Coach level. I have not seen a Principle or Head Coach removed from their job over the years.
I really liked the guy named Mathieu but he was forever doomed when he did not clean house. Those who were working with him were relics, matter of fact their team should be called the Tales of the Crypt!!!!!
If the student-athletes actually were exposed to quality athletics in DC, then maybe they would take more pride in their education and work harder in the classroom in order to be on the field, court, track, or in the pool. DCIAA needs to clean house and get people in th athletic offices who really care about the children and their futures beyond high school. Lead by example.
I was recently at a basketball game and the cheerleaders got more applause than the team. Those young ladies had tumbling and acrobatics down to a science, first major thought was "does Domonique Dawes have a gymnastic team in DC?" If not, then there is about 20 African-American young ladies who could be her nucleas.
You are missing the point. As someone who worked with DCPS kids and coached a DCPS school, let me firmly say that while I am no fan of the over-jocked atmosphere and celebrity-athlete status being cultivated at some schools (and by ESPN), the fact of the matter is that few things keep hard-to-reach and at-risk kids engaged with school and safe from the streets like sports. Even more, the lessons a great sports program can instill in players, coaches, fans and staff are one of a kind and are incredibly applicable to every day professional life.
I grew up trying to separate my academic/professional life from my sporting one. The more I matured, the more I realized that to do so was to miss an opportunity to make myself better in the non-sporting senses.
DCPS' pathetic sports programming is something out of a bad Jon Lovitz movie. If its foibles were presented by Comedy Central, it would seem fitting. That these insane stories of disorganization, neglect and disappointment are real -- and true across every school -- is heartbreaking. They are sad metaphors for the growing income gaps DC is experiencing.
Before anyone plays the "academics first" card again, go work in a DCPS high school for a year and find out how "easy" it would be for a teacher to engage a kid without sports (or band or drama or debate or...). It doesn't just complement education, it simultaneously makes education possible AND IT IS EDUCATION.
I was just visiting my alma mater (Roosevelt) earlier today and checking out their state-of-the-art football facility. What a shame to think that all the funds that went into upgrading DCIAA stadiums is essentially going to waste. Just another example of the taxpayers money being squandered.
It's positively disgraceful and embarrassing to have our young people subjected to this kind of incompetence from supposedly professional adults who are being paid to provide sound leadership and direction.
Needless to say, it starts at the top. I, for one, have absolutely no patience with grown folks. Anyone at DCPS who is not fully committed to their job and the welfare of the students should be summarily fired! End of story!! Based on the article, it sounds like a broom needs to be brought in to 'clean house'. If the head person at DCPS falls in this category, the mayor and city council needs to do whatever is necessary to have that person removed.
Folks need to stop looking at sports as just some side activity to be considered less important that academics. Those who have participated know that sports is the ultimate competition and character is build through competition. Having said that, if, as some have pointed out, there are a myriad of reasons beyond the control of administrators for this sad state of affairs, then those with the authority should simply remove football as part of their sports curriculum.
Yes ... I can already here those who think this is too radical a solution. But you have to ask the question ... what has more lasting harm to the students -- canceling football altogether or having them subjected year after year to the current nonsense? When all is said and done, we must remember that, regardless of the reason, these kids are witnessing a bunch of adults who can't get their act together. Do you honestly think that this kind of behavior won't rub off on some of these kids? When they become adults, perhaps some will remember this fiasco and, like their example-setters, choose not be as committed to their line of work. And we have the nerve to wonder why so many kids are the way they are!
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