In search of pride

A Norman Rockwell setting it isn’t – but coaches say they think it could be.

From the warped chain-link fence, to the rusted railings on the bleachers that sit half-empty on many a Friday night, and the hole in the press box door, the Waynesboro High School football field has seen better days, and nights.

And, until Thursday, it had rusted-over goal posts, which just received a much-needed coating of yellow paint.

Still, the state of decay at the facilities matches the recent fortunes of the football team, which opens the season tonight at Western Albermarle. In the last five seasons, the Little Giants have gone a combined 9-41.

The interior, the locker rooms, are no better than the facilities outside.

Without air conditioning, a large floor fan sits near one of the doors to provide ventilation. Urinal blocks are used to mitigate the stench.

The size of the locker room – with just two urinals, two showers and “two of everything,” Little Giants head football coach Steve Isaacs said – also means coaches have to stagger practices for the varsity and junior varsity teams to give players adequate space. There are 58 lockers – 44 are full-size and the other 14 half-size. The coaches’ office, which has mostly equipment they bought for themselves or had donated, has no telephone.

“A lot of these kids – what they come from is a hole, and they ought to have a respite here,” Isaacs said.

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GIANT PRIDE: In purple block letters, the words sit on the back wall of the auxiliary gym, once the only gym in the school but now used for physical education classes and cheerleading practice. It, too, has seen better days.

One of the backboards is missing a section of wood, nets on the rims are tattered – if there are rims – and paint is chipping off of the walls. 
“It’s going to take a lot of resources to upscale that place a little bit,” Principal Tim Teachey said.

Walk to the adjacent former girls locker room, used for road football teams coming to Waynesboro,  and one finds a musty room with a few chairs, a closet holding mostly old football uniforms – used by the varsity through last season that are now being passed down to the JV – as well as other equipment.  Those uniforms have faded and are too small for the varsity players now, Isaacs said.

With $8,000 that came from the school division, Isaacs paid for 50 new home and road uniforms while buying a single $300 helmet designed to help prevent concussions.

Farther inside the musty room are scattered desks and chairs. There’s also a separate room in back that used to be a shower area, but with a donated washer and dryer, is now used for coaches to wash uniforms. The hot water needed for the washer just came two weeks ago.

Isaacs said he hopes to get a grant from Lowe’s to fix up that locker room – tearing out the old shower fixtures and putting in a larger office for the coaches while adding increased storage. Two of his coaches, with backgrounds in construction, would cut costs, he said, by doing some of the work on it. 

It is a matter of pride for Isaacs, and he said something must change.

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Isaacs’ assistants, some of whom played football for the Little Giants in the 1980s, said little has changed since they took the field.

Asked about the problems with the athletic facilities, JV coach Marty Walter responded, “You got a couple of days?”

Walter, who graduated from Waynesboro in 1991, said the facilities have remained much the same since he was a little boy in the 1970s running around on the field.
The press box is the same, but now with a hole in the door and it’s cramped and creaky.

“There’s very little room to work,” Walter said.

Wires sticking out of the fence around the field pose a hazard, he said.

Other assistants said there is plenty of tradition with the school’s football program, but to look at its current state, no one would know it.

The only noticeable improvement Isaacs and his assistants said they have seen is the addition of the new scoreboard, sponsored by Martin’s grocery store.
The school underwent its most recent renovation in 2003 with the addition of a cafeteria, and it added a new soccer field and track in 2006 above the current field. The coaches said there’s been talk, too, of adding a fieldhouse.

The school administration and faculty gives the team great support, Isaacs said, but making improvements to the facilities will take more.
“It’s going to take money, and this is not the time to be talking about money, I guess,” Isaacs said.

State budget cuts hit public schools hard last year, and more are expected as a result of a $1.5 billion spending gap.

Teachey said the school division has done well in supporting its teams, citing a new wrestling facility at Kate Collins Middle School, a new drop-down batting cage, “one of the nicer” baseball fields and a new soccer field and track above the current football field.

The soccer field, too, will soon have a restroom and concession stand.

But the football field is in an area that is land-locked, leaving no room to expand facilities, Teachey said.

“Some of the constraints are with the building and the placement of the field itself,” Teachey said. “There’s not a whole lot of space.”

The football team holds fundraisers every year, receives support from the city’s Little League program and it receives additional money through the school division budget, but Isaacs said it needs more to improve the image of the program.

The stadium, and the football team, by extention, is the face of the community, Isaacs said, and he thinks that with some work, the stadium could be a “bucolic” setting that could be a rallying point for a community descimated by job losses and higher unemployment.

The coaches point to the two banners that hang on the fence and note that there’s more room on it for sponsors.

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Commitment to Excellence: Those words appear on top of the press box. One of the goals listed by the Waynesboro school division is to give students rich learning opportunities, but Isaacs said that needs to extend further – to “the whole child – intellectually, mentally, spiritually and physically.”

“It’s bigger than us,” Isaacs said. “I really think it’s bigger than the school division. It’s bigger than the high school. It’s bigger than the superintendent. I think it’s a frame of mind. So how do you fix that?”

Isaacs and his coaches, who know many of their “hard-scrabble” players come from less-than-ideal backgrounds, want something better.

“Our kids come in here, and for the most part, they don’t look for an excuse. They don’t use what they don’t have as a crutch,” Isaacs said as he watched sand being put on the field and heard from one of his assistants that the goal posts might indeed, get flags on top and a fresh paint job after all.

But what comes first? A winning team, or improved facilities that might inspire a better performance.

“I want them to be advocates for their kids and their programs,” Teachey said of the school’s coaches. “I need them to do that, and I expect that from them.

They do that in a nice way, but an earnest way, and I know their hearts are in the right place.”

Isaacs said there needs to be ownership taken to get to a solution that would improve the facilities, and by extension, the outlook of the team.

Teachey said with traditional funding sources drying up, it will be up to the community to pitch in more, citing Fort Defiance High School’s Extreme Makeover, where the community galvanizes support from students, parents and the school community as a whole to make needed improvements around the school that, because of budget cuts, otherwise would go undone.

“I thought that was just a good way, and you’re going to have to see more and more of that,” Teachey said. “And that’s going to be new for the community to understand that.”

Said Isaacs: “We’ve just got to start. We’ve got to decide if it’s important. If it is, let’s start.”