Thursday, August 21, 2008
North Cross undergoes team building
Second-year head coach Lee Johnson has nine transfers from public schools, including seven new players on his squad this season.
Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times
North Cross head coach Lee Johnson is still adjusting to the differences between coaching at private and public schools.
2008 High School Football Preview
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You never know who you will see at a North Cross football game.
Just ask second-year head coach Lee Johnson.
Accustomed to more sideline security during his stint at Glenvar, the North Cross coach realized things would be different with the Raiders during an early 2007 game.
“We were down at the end of the coaches’ box,” Johnson recalled. “I sent a play in, and I turned around to say something to the receiver who was going to run the next play in and there was a fan standing right there. That was new to me.
“We had the same thing at Brunswick, and it was one of theirs. He was over there listening to what we were saying. The coach up top said, 'Who’s that standing right by the coaches’ box?’ We moved him on back over.”
Who will North Cross fans see on the sidelines and on the field this year?
They’d better find a lineup card.
A new ballgame is playing at the corner of Electric Road and Colonial Avenue in southwest Roanoke County.
North Cross’ roster includes seven new transfers from public schools — including star running backs Sid Brown (Christiansburg) and Tyler Caveness (Cave Spring).
Moreover, all of them are repeating a grade in school and will receive an extra year of eligibility at North Cross they would not have received under a Virginia High School League rule that limits athletes to eight semesters of play once they begin the ninth grade.
Under the rules of the Virginia Independent Schools Athletic Association — of which North Cross is a member — athletes are eligible if they have not turned 19 before Aug. 1, or did not begin their senior year somewhere else, Johnson said.
Typical of private schools, North Cross has scholarship money available to many of its students. Also typical of private schools, North Cross stays in business by recruiting students — all of them.
“There’s not a master plan, like we’re going to have this number of kids each year,” North Cross headmaster Tim Seeley said. “Athletics is the most visible, but in all our programs we’re trying to find kids who are interested and want to come. Every student here has been recruited.
“Our plan is not that every year we’re going to enroll eight new kids that are going to support the program. We’re going to try and rebuild it at every level.”
Johnson said no preferential treatment is given to athletes when it comes to financial aid. He said all the players who have transferred in since he’s been on the job made the primary contact with the school.
“All the kids go into the same financial aid pool that any kid would go into,” he said. “They go into the same pool an elementary kid goes into. Our financial aid is a first-come, first-serve thing. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Nobody over here gets 100 percent. That was one of the rumors I heard coming over here was that we have full scholarships. We don’t have that.
“There is a cap on that. But as long as we can get kids in at the price they can pay, we’ll take as many as we can get.”
Johnson said North Cross’ curriculum sometimes requires transfers to pick up some extra courses, resulting in an extra year of eligibility.
“Our graduation requirements, you have to have three years of language, you have to have physics,” Johnson said. “I would consider it more of an academic move than an athletic move.”
Caveness, who transferred to North Cross from Cave Spring in January, said the opportunity to receive an extra year of football eligibility was his main reason for changing schools.
Caveness played as a junior at Cave Spring last fall after he was injured in 2006. Now he is a junior with two more seasons to play for the Raiders.
“I’ve got another year here,” Caveness said. “That will help with college recruiting. It wasn’t so much grades, it was just missing that one year to play. Over there, I wasn’t able to make that up. Now I’m able to do it. Now that I’m held back a year, I’ll get a lot more attention.”
North Cross’ football roster still isn’t bursting at the seams. With the seven new transfers and two that came in last year, the Raiders have just 25 players in grades 10-12.
Johnson said not all prospective transfers are admitted.
“It’s got to be the right situation,” he said. “We’ve had a couple come in. If they start off, 'I don’t like the coach or the coach didn’t like me.’ That’s a big red flag. We’ve had to turn some pretty good ones down. I didn’t like the way they were doing.
“It’s hard for a kid to leave the high school he’s in. This situation is not for everyone. You don’t have to go here.”
Johnson, who has designs that North Cross can eventually catch up to VIS powerhouse Liberty Christian, promises that the school’s academic mission will not be compromised in the pursuit.
“We’re not going to let that happen,” Johnson said. “As long as people in admissions and the administration know that, you can’t control what people outside say. It’s important we don’t do it. I don’t want to build an anti-athletic faction against an athletic faction and have two different cultures.”
Seeley, a backup quarterback on Dartmouth’s 1978 Ivy League championship team with a postgraduate divinity degree from Harvard, has a vested interest on both sides of the issue. He is in his seventh year as a football assistant, spending five seasons under longtime North Cross coach Jim Muscaro.
“Our philosophy is to have a really good [athletic] program as part of our academic program,” Seeley said. “It doesn’t do us any good to enroll kids who aren’t going to be successful [academically]. We aren’t going to have different tiers. We aren’t going to have different tracks.”
Johnson has quickly learned that coaching at a small private school is different from life in the VHSL, not just because the head of the school is an assistant coach.
The Raiders play all their home games on Friday afternoons because their field doesn’t have lights. A tiny section of bleachers is on each side of the field. Many spectators stand and it doesn’t cost a cent to get in.
“My wife’s used to going to varsity games and sitting in the stands,” Johnson said. “She’s like, 'Y’all need to get some bleachers.’ I agree. We’re working on that.
“Our plan, I’m hoping to get it in place this winter, I’d love to get some extra bleachers. I’d like to get a press box built. We’re trying to change the culture and get it more football oriented. It’s getting there.”
Some pretty good football players have walked across Thomas Field.
NFL Hall of Famer Howie Long has been spotted on occasion watching his sons — Chris, Howie Jr. and Kyle — play for St. Anne’s-Belfield of Charlottesville. Former University of Pittsburgh running back Rashad Jennings starred several years ago at LCA. In 2004 when North Cross reached the VIS Division III title game under Muscaro, opposing Blessed Sacrament-Huguenot was led by lineman Kyle Jolly, now a starter at North Carolina.
“I made the mistake of underestimating who we were going to play,” Johnson said. “The teams were a lot better than what I thought. I had kind of fallen into the realm of private school wasn’t as good at football. Virginia Episcopal had as many athletes on the field as I’ve seen.
“We went against as good of athletes as we did in Single-A. The biggest difference is there’s just not as many of them. The teams aren’t as deep.”
North Cross, which has added a JV team this fall, had just 86 male students last year in grades 9-12, Johnson said. To improve quickly, Johnson has to find players without relying on kids who first showed up on campus at age 5.
“You need those guys. But at the same time, our enrollment’s got to grow, and they’ve got to come from somewhere,” Johnson said. “I don’t want to wait on a kindergartner to come through.”
Brown also transferred to North Cross over the winter and was a member of the Raiders’ basketball team that finished as the VIS Division III runner-up. Brown said an incident during Christiansburg’s season finale against Blacksburg left him without the option of returning to the Blue Demons program this fall.
“Things went wrong there,” Brown said. “It was things off the field, but the thing with me not coming back was on the field. A few things were said. The best decision for me was to come here. I was originally going to Hargrave, but luckily for me, I found North Cross.”
North Cross won the 1993 VIS championship under Muscaro and was the runner-up in 2001 and ’04. A return to those days and even bigger things seems realistic.
“It can get as big as it needs to,” Caveness said. “With how they can bring in players and what they can offer in the school, it has to go up.”
