Christian values motivate coach to reverse team’s slump

Ending football season with a 2–8 win/lose record is not what most coaches celebrate.
   
But Mike Clements, head football coach at Hueytown High School, knows that record in 1999 began his journey to success in 2000.
   
“Those two wins were more than the team had had in four years,” said Clements, whose first year at Hueytown was in 1999. He previously served as assistant football coach at Homewood High School.
   
The Golden Gophers 2000 win/loss record is currently 2-3 with a recent win over Bibb County of 16 – 9.
   
When Clements accepted the role as head coach last year, the class 6-A Hueytown Golden Gophers had instilled in them a discouragement that Clements would have to eliminate.
   
“They had to overcome the fact of if I was really going to stay,” Clements said, noting a vast turnover rate of head coaches at Hueytown.
   
“This year they believe,” said Clements, a former University of Alabama (UA) defensive back under Coach Bear Bryant.
   
When the players know they are wanted as a person, then they want to be part of the program, Clements said.
   
“I just made myself available to the players,” said Clements, who was part of two national championship football teams at UA.
   
Noting that every member of the coaching staff is a Christian, Clements said, “We are reaching the kids. They undersand we want them to succeed.
   
“I can reach the kids and urge them to do the best they can,” he said. “I am here to help (them), not to glorify myself.”
   
Clements noted the first area he approached with the players was attention. “I saw good athletes who had not been attended to,” he said. “The kids had had no attention.
  
“My job became easy in some respects and lots of hard work in others,” he said. “But I trusted in the Lord that things would turn around.”
   
And they did. “Once we started winning, the value of being part of a team with Christian values came through,” he said. “Everybody wants to be a part of a winning team.”
   
One mother of a Hueytown football player commented at a recent practice that Clements was the best thing that had happened to the Hueytown High School football program in a long time.
   
“He knows how to encourage and motivate the team without screaming in their faces,” the mother said.
   
She said the team’s spirit has increased tremendously and the community has a renewed vigor for the local high school.
   
Clements said, “I’m not the most unique coach; I’m not the best coach; but I know parents want the best for their kids.
   
“I can promise them that if they will give them to me, that I’ll work with them. I’ll take care of them and treat them fairly,” he said.
   
“I won’t cuss at them. I won’t be mean to them. I’ll be demanding and tell them they have to do things most people don’t have to do and that’s to make them special.”
   
Clements said he has talked with players who were ready to give up the game because the discipline it took seemed unbearable.
   
But Clements did not let those players walk away until he talked with them. “I told them that if they did not play it would be a mistake.”
   
Along with providing a structured and encouraging football environment, Clements also stresses a good education.
   
“You can’t play football all your life,” he said. “Your education is the most important thing you need to do.”