Robin Hood where are you: Can Red Clay tumble the reign of rich-get-richer football dominance?

Zeb Blum has no small task this fall as the new head football coach at Alexis I. duPont High School, a team renowned for its spectacular Tiger Stadium halftime shows, not its record.

“The band is great, but if we do the right thing, it’s going to be football that people will be excited about,” says Blum.

He hopes that player discipline and hard work will translate into wins this year.

But wins have been hard to come by for A.I, which went its standard 2-8 last year, a record mirrored by other established Red Clay Consolidated School District programs like Charter, Dickinson and McKean high schools.

In sharp contrast are Christina School District’s Newark and Glasgow, and Brandywine School District’s Concord and Brandywine, which have fared far better in the Blue Hen Flight A and B conferences.

What would it take for Red Clay football to become true contenders against its two neighboring districts? Coaches and players on both sides of the win-loss record respond.

McKean and Dickinson: plug the choice drain

When Craig Stephenson joined the coaching staff at Dickinson 16 years ago, it was a recent Division I state champion under coach Marty Apostolico, and a decade later won the Division II championship as well.

In those days, Dickinson was still a true community school. But the Rams’ last Blue Hen Conference Flight B championship came in 1995, just when the choice/charter school movement was taking hold.

Since then, it’s been lackluster. Last year, the team went 2-8.

A big part of the slide comes from losing talent through the school choice program, which allows students to attend different schools than the ones to which they are assigned, coaches say.

“Today, athletes can kind of choose and pick where’d they’d like to go,” Stephenson says, which results in talent drifting toward successful programs like Concord, which has performed well for nearly 15 years.

Even winning coaches like Concord’s George Kosanovich agree with his friend Stephenson: the open market helps successful programs and hurts struggling ones.

“It’s getting to be somewhat common knowledge that we pick up choice kids like crazy,” Kosanovich says of Concord, whose enrollment is 1,200 when it should be 800. “We’ve raped other schools of their good kids – not that we wanted to do this. It’s just the way things are in Delaware.”

Stephenson says a lot of players think if they don’t go to the “right” school, they won’t get the recognition somebody else does, and that belief feeds into the phenomenon.

Case in point: senior quarterback Ryan McCarthy of Brandywine Hundred used the choice program to get into Concord. He did it because it is a place where “you can really determine your own future,” he says. “I know that kids want to come here. The reputation’s good – a winning program.”

The trend also shows up in Red Clay.

Example: at McKean, coach Mike Ryan saw kicker Alex Carlton leave after his freshman year to enroll at Newark High in the Christina district, where he went on to play in the playoffs each year at Newark, set a field goal record in June’s Blue-Gold All-Star football game, and went on to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Tough problem, few answers

But how does a struggling school and team win its talented kids back?

“It’s the biggest problem we have,” Dickinson’s Stephenson says. “If you’re on the bottom, you can’t attract kids. I wish I knew how to change kids’ perception.”

McKean’s Ryan says he’s learning how.

“It’s something that goes through my mind a lot,” says Ryan. “I believe the same type of thing that coach [Kosanovich of Concord] believes in. It’s treating kids with respect, running a program with dignity, doing the right thing. I’ve had countless conversations with guys like [Newark coach] Butch Simpson and Coach K.”

Kosanovich says it can be done.

“When you’re taking away the best kids academically, it is difficult,” he acknowledges, but the teams that are having a tough time have good men running them. “It’s tough turning the corner but it can happen.”

Concord was once there, until it broke through with an 8-2 record in 1995.

Winners’ secret: consistency and player buy-in

At Concord – choice advantage aside – the coaching staff attributes consistency in dealing with youngsters as the key to a successful program that has bragging rites of state championships in 2003, 2004 and 2006.

“If I treat one kid better than another because he’s ‘the player,’ and you’re just No. 38 out of 40, that’s not it,” Kosanovich says. “You are going to be successful if that 38th player is giving you the best effort he’s got as the first player with talent.”

Kosanovich and his staff are also careful to speak with the same tongue.

“We don’t always agree. That’s why we have our meetings,” he says. “But when we walk out, we’re all teaching and coaching the same thing.”

Getting players to buy-in by using all of them is equally important, coaches say.

“You can’t just suck everything you can out of them Monday through Friday and on Saturday they don’t get to play,” Kosanovich says.

In many successful teams, player buy-in extends beyond the field.

Matt Ley of Brandywine Hundred, a tight end for Concord, says the Raiders have a sense of brotherhood that other teams do not enjoy.

“We have transfers here who say other teams fight in the locker rooms. The coaches don’t get along. And it’s just not a good atmosphere for everyone,” he says. “I just feel like from starters to j.v. backups, everyone’s tight.”

Dickinson: stability, staff and solid attitude

Dickinson’s Stephenson has faith in his talented staff, which includes members of the 1992 state championship and 1988 playoff teams.

He also has faith in his players, which includes two-way lineman Josh Watson and quarterback Thomas “T.J.” McGrath, who lead the Rams this year.

Watson of Elsmere and McGrath of Heritage Park want to be part of Dickinson’s turnaround.

“We’re going to take pride and carry our school on our backs,” Watson says.

“The main thing is people don’t come out because they’re like, ‘You guys aren’t good,’” McGrath says. “I think if we play good, they’ll see.”

McKean: pride and perseverance in the face of adversity

It is not as if the Highlanders have never tasted success in the modern era. In 2005, McKean got off to a 5-0 start, ending 6-4. The 2006 team fell to 5-5, and last year the Highlanders slipped further to 3-7 in a tough Flight B Conference.

But, McKean head coach Mike Ryan says those aren’t the most important numbers.

Ryan and his staff have worked hard to ensure hard-nosed players graduated, and they are doing good things with their lives – a winning record that truly matters.

In addition, Ryan – a 1988 McKean grad that bleeds green, blue and white – is moved when he speaks about how his team played like a champion in a season-ending victory over archrival Dickinson despite its harsh record.

“We played like it was a playoff, like it was a state championship. For those guys to give that kind of effort, after going the season and only winning two – to me that’s success.”

Pat Rexrode, the 5-foot-11, 260-pound center and four-year varsity player, says it is not fair to label today’s McKean as a losing program based on last year.

“We were a young team back then,” he says. “And we’ve progressed a lot since. It’s about now. We’re trying to build up more respect for ourselves. We can flip that around and maybe go 7-3.”

A.I.: character counts

A.I., a popular choice school, may not seem to be suffering the talent drain of McKean and Dickinson, but it does have to contend with top students being drawn away to Charter and the constant pressure of Catholic schools like St. Mark’s and Salesianum luring talent away.

At A.I., Blum, who moved up from assistant coach after four years after former Hodgson and Caravel coach Larry Cylc failed to turn A.I. into a winner, believes football is about more than focusing on the Xs and Os.

“The first time I addressed them, we spoke very little about football,” Blum says. “I’ve stressed to the players already that I expect them to be the leaders of the school in terms of character and integrity.”
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Red Clay’s Charter School of Wilmington coaching staff declined to be interviewed for the story.