While toiling out a season as a coach — at least once — is a rite of passage for most fathers, Lake Highlands mom Debbie Youman did a double take when she met the men who would be coaching her son Daniel’s community football team. She says: “When I learned that none of them had a child playing on the team — I thought they were nuts.
“Why would these 20- to 30-year-old men want to spend six or seven hours a week sweating over nine and 10 year olds they didn’t even know?”
The simple answer is: a love of the game of football and a love of kids. However, the reasons run even deeper. Mark Davis, or “Tank” as his players know him, serves as the head coach for the Steelers. It was he who put together this group of men, comprised of his brother and close friends — all of whom played high school football in the neighborhood: Mark Evans, Glynn Roberts, Jaamont Humphrey, Demetric Roberts, Patrick Freeman and Chris Moore. Through their efforts, the Spring Valley Athletic Association’s Steelers football team saw three successful seasons, and young players learned invaluable lessons both in football and in life.
“It all started in 1995,” explains Davis. “I had designed an offensive and defensive plan that I was looking to try out. Since I love kids, I thought about getting a football team together to coach as a way of testing out some of my ideas.”
Although he no longer resided in the area, Davis had fond memories of playing in the Spring Valley Athletic Association, so he approached them about the possibility .
“They gave me a shot at coaching a fourth grade team,” he says.
While many SVAA teams hail primarily from one school or another, Davis’ team was a SVAA conglomerate made up of boys from different schools in the area. In fact when Daniel tried out, he thought he would be placed on a team with all his friends from Moss Haven Elementary. However, there were simply too many boys to put on one team and, although very disappointed, Daniel decided to give his team a chance. It is a decision he has never regretted … although his mother wondered at first.
“The first practice was three hours long on an August morning, with temperatures over 100 degrees,” Youman says. But she adds that the young coaches immediately began building a sense of community within the team. They hosted pizza parties to build friendship between the boys. They tracked the boys’ school performance, insisting that they maintain good grades. They developed and celebrated the boys’ individual strengths on the football field, while assigning those with particular talents to help coach the others.
Coach Jaamont Humphrey says of this whole life approach: “We coach them the way we were coached.”
Humphrey has strong memories of the almost paternal relationships he had with his football coaches. Coach Chris Moore agrees. “Coach Dubey (at Berkner) made such a huge difference in my life,” he says.
All the men recount memories of their coaches acting as counselors, driving teachers, tutors. Says Davis: “We started this as a way try out the offense and defense I had developed, but now we see it as an opportunity to give them the tools to achieve success in all aspects of their lives.”
Success didn’t surface immediately. “Our first scrimmage we lost 18-0, and I was definitely worried. But, Glynn and I made some changes and went on to a 7-0 season, beating the team in the playoffs who had been the champs the last three seasons,” says Davis.
SVAA teams stay together for 4th, 5th and 6th grade. So over the next three years, the brothers began to recruit friends to help coach the team. And, their success on the field continued as they refined their coaching techniques.
The Steelers coaching philosophy paid off again this year, when the team went undefeated and unscored on in the regular season. The season-end award ceremony was an emotional experience for parents, players and coaches. “This is definitely the hard part,” says Davis. “But we try to keep up with all our players.”
“Heroes come in all shapes and sizes,” says Youman, “I am always impressed when I read stories of the many volunteers in our community, with their unending devotion to those around them.
“Three years ago, I met my heroes.”
