NAJ0523g – Sports

The home Team

7:54 plus 4 secs sound

INTRO:

Not so long ago, a ball game at Western Guilford High SCHOOL was the only place to be on a Friday night. western was the heart of a tight-knit community that turned out in force for school sports. Dramatic growth in this part of greensboro has transformed the school, and the community. BUT THE ATHLETIC FIELD IS STILL A PLACE WHERE CLOSE TIES CAN BE MADE. Alison jones reports for our series "north carolina voices: studying high school."


SCENE: (loudspeaker announcement at baseball game): We want to welcome all of our guests. For those visiting Western Guilford for the first time, just a reminder the concession stand is open. (Fade down, cross fade with sound of announcing national anthem) It’s located on the right field line where you’ll find cold drinks, popcorn, hot dogs, candy and ice cream sandwiches.

COPY: (Over sound of cross-fade above) It’s a mild spring evening at the Western Guilford baseball field. Parents, aunts and uncles in black and gold baseball caps fill the metal bleachers by right field. Younger brothers and sisters sprawl on the hill above, or drift towards the concession stand.

SCENE: (Loudspeaker) Now if everyone would please rise and face center field join the staff, the coaches and the players as we have our national anthem sing by Ms. Felicia Bailey. (National anthem starts, fade down after “Oh say can you see”)

COPY: (over sound of National Anthem) Henry Bondurant is here tonight as usual, sitting on a camp chair by the first base line. People call him “Mr. Western.” Bondurant lives just down the street. Until last year, he mowed the grass on the Western baseball field each week.

ACT: (Henry Bondurant). When I was 12, 13 we used to shoot rabbits on these fields. So I’ve been here since I was a little boy. I coached Little League baseball out here for 49 years, and several of these players out here played for me back when they were 12 years old. The catcher, the first baseman, second baseman, the short stop. The coach out there, (fade up sound of Causey talking to team) I coached him back in ’81. We won the city league

championship.

COPY: (over sound of Causey talking to team) Chris Causey played for Western as a student in the 1980’s. Now he coaches the baseball and football teams, and teaches social studies.

SCENE: Causey to team: …Team it up!

Other coach: Guys let’s jump on ‘em!

Causey: Team on three. One, two three.

Players: TEAM!

ACT: (Causey, over sfx of player walking onto the field)….My first game I watched here was the state championship game in ‘77. I was a little kid. So I grew up in awe, wanting to be a Western Guilford football or baseball player, wanting to come here…When I came through here everybody kinda had grown up in same neighborhood, we all went to same middle school, most of the people here were from two-parent homes. You didn’t have a lot of the apartment complexes and things feeding here where you have a lot of people in transit where they’ll be here a year, gone a year. (It was much more a community school.)

COPY: (over ambi of game) Many parents who’ve come out tonight are transplants, including Bill Victory, who relocated from Connecticut, and Larry McMorrow, who moved here from California. But while the community is more transient now, Victory and McMorrow say the connections between parents and coaches are as important as ever.

ACT: (Bill Victory) We have two boys who…they don’t sweat in the classroom; they sweat on the field, if you know what I mean (laughs). But you know it’s almost like the coaches have more of an influence on them at times than we do. Last year, my son, he was really struggling with his schoolwork, you know, just not keeping up, and …I asked the junior varsity coach, I said, “Could you talk to him?” and he did. And you know it means a lot more coming from them than coming from me. I guess because of the

reputation.

SFX: (Loudspeaker announcement) Doing the catching for the Hornets, Lawrence McMorrow (fade down)…

ACT: (Larry McMorrow--Lawrence’s Dad) Being a single parent, there’s a lot of people have stepped up to help as far as making sure he’s in class for me when I’m working. Coach Causey’s picked him up almost daily, so they’re pretty good buddies. I never had to worry about getting him to school, you know? (fade up music in car as Causey drives kids to school)

COPY (over “Bo Diddley” song in car as Causey drives kids to school): Lawrence McMorrow is in Causey’s van as usual this morning, along with Josh Pless and Thomas Arnold. McMorrow is the one baseball player in the bunch. But all three play football for Causey.

Song: Bo Diddley Bo Diddley have you heard…

Causey: Right here’s where we usually almost get in a wreck. Help me out here guys.

McMorrow: OK coach.

Song: Leap right out and count to four....

Gotta be – gotta be – rough and tough…(Cross-fade with next scene of Causey at school, talking to players).

COPY: (over cross-fade) Causey and his crew arrive well before school starts, to a classroom decorated with history displays, Star Wars posters and Elvis figurines. Before the first bell rings, Causey is doling out informal lessons.

SCENE: Causey: Listen to this, Pless. This is from Georgia Tech. “The most crippling failure disease – excuses.” There you go - right there.

COPY: Coaching gives Causey the chance to teach what he values most – character lessons. For instance, he says, kids don’t handle failure well anymore…

ACT: Causey: …because we don’t allow them to fail anymore. What are the kids learning? They’re not learning responsibility, because if I don’t do my homework, that’s okay, if I don’t do well on a test, I don’t study, I can take it over. But in the real world, if you don’t meet your deadline, you’re fired.

COPY: On the athletic field, he says, the rules are clearer. (record separately, and with next copy.)

ACT: Causey: The best example I had in my life was getting cut from a ball team, and my high school football coach telling me I wasn’t good enough. It didn’t turn me into a bad person, it didn’t make me quit, it made me work harder. Because somebody got in my face and said you’re not good enough. I had to deal with the fact that either I gotta get better, or I’m not going to participate.

COPY: Devease Simpson is a linebacker on Western’s football team, and a top-ranked discus thrower. But even a Western sports stars like Simpson gets a tongue-lashing from Coach Bracy Maynard when he misses practice.

SCENE: (Coach Maynard and Simpson)

Coach Maynard: I told the fellows up here you miss without telling me --you’re done.

Simpson: Okay.

Maynard: That applies to seniors, freshmen, sopohomores. I’d hate to lose the number two discus thrower in the state. But you know what if it means saving the team, getting rid of one, I’ll do it. Fair enough? … Alright?

Devease: Alright coach, alright. (hand slap)

COPY: If Devease sometimes bumps up against the coaches’ tough love, he also gets tremendous help from them. He’s counting on a football or track scholarship to get him into college in the fall. (sound up of Simpson “ Just looking for you coach.”) Causey has written dozens of schools to make that happen.

SCENE: (Devease Simpson and Coach Causey)

Devease: Where’d you come from?

Causey: I was just getting changed. It’s hard to find me. I’m like a thief in the night.

Devease: I just checked in there, didn’t see anything new.

Causey: No, nothing new today.

Devease: Any calls?

Causey: No. But like I said, Winston-Salem State is probably going to be one of our best opportunities for you.

Causey: I can’t say enough about this young man. He represents us well as a student and an athlete.

ACT: (Devease Simpson) The coaches go out of their way to take care of you, not just during the season. The coaches here -- it’s more than just football, it’s having a family and staying with your family, and doing what you can for your family.

COPY: Devease’s mother moved her family to North Carolina from New York, hoping for a better future for her kids. Now both Devease and his twin brother, Trevease, are poised to graduate, and college seems almost in Devease’s grasp. It’s something he doesn’t take for granted. Devease’s older brother died young, shot during an attempted break-in. Most of his cousins back in New York have dropped out of high school, and none have made it to college.

ACT: (Simpson) Seeing us all graduate is a big step for my family.

COPY: Devease Simpson appears headed in a good direction. That’s the sort of reward

Chris Causey looks for in coaching, and teaching. He’s frustrated by a climate that worships tests. And he wishes schools worried more about producing good citizens.

ACT: (Causey) I talk to them about learning how to learn and being responsible. Well that kid that comes in—if I can teach responsibility, be on time, do your homework, be respectful to each other, alright, that kid leaves this classroom, I’m feeling pretty good. …That kid’s going to be successful because he’s going to be a good employee.

COPY: These days, fashions in education favor easily measurable, short-term results. Causey prefers to take the long view.

ACT: (Causey) I think so many times in education we try to measure success by a test score, and we try to do it within a six-month frame. You can’t tell how successful you’ve been as a teacher until 8,9 years down the line… We’ve got several people I’ve coached that have come back to work here... You look at them and you say okay we were a success. They’ve got a family. They’re a good mom or dad. They’re responsible. They’ve bought themselves a home. They treat people right. That’s a success.

SCENE: (loudspeaker) Ladies and gentlemen that’s your ballgame..(fade out)

COPY: It’s the final inning, and a light rain has just begun. A few fans have started up the hill out of the ballpark, a grassy bowl that was once a dairy pasture. Coach Causey’s mother and father are still in the stands, just as they are most game nights, waiting to see how things turn out.

ACT: (Paul Causey) We’ve missed one game with our two kids in their life. And we hardly miss a game now.

COPY: In the morning, Chris Causey and his dad will watch Chris’s 5- year-old son play his first T-ball game. For tonight, it’s another win for Western.

SCENE: Player: Goodnight Mr. Causey.

Causey: Goodnight, Jimmy pitched great.

Goodnight Mr. Causey, goodnight Mrs. Causey. (fade out)

I’m Alison Jones

For North Carolina Public Radio WUNC, I’m Alison Jones