'Success is different for everybody.' For IPS schools, football can be an uphill battle.
Of the 313 high school football coaches watching the IHSAA sectional draw two weeks ago, Jovan McCray might have been faced with the biggest challenge when he saw his team’s name pop up on the screen.
McCray, the fourth-year coach at Shortridge, will take the Blue Devils on Friday night to play Class 4A second-ranked Roncalli in a game that is a mismatch on paper and, by all reasonable expectations, on the field. The computerized Sagarin Ratings, which factors in schedule strength, ranks Roncalli as the seventh-best team in the state, regardless of class. Shortridge? No. 269.
“My thing I like to say is, ‘Success is different for everybody,’” McCray said.
IHSAA football sectionals: Playoffs!?! You bet. The 10 best games this week.
At Roncalli, the expectation is a state championship. It does not always happen, of course, but the Royals have 10 state titles to their name. Only three programs — Bishop Chatard (15), Cathedral (14) and Fort Wayne Bishop Luers (11) — have more.
At Shortridge, which is 4-4 this season, the goal is stability. McCray had 19 players his first season in 2019. The Blue Devils went 0-7. They added a few more players in 2020 but the result was the same: 0-8.
“Some days, there were guys who wouldn’t come to practice because that was the norm,” McCray said. “Sometimes there were issues with transportation. But one of the things we wanted to get across is that they have to be consistent in all aspects. That means being here every day.”
That approach started to pay off on the field for McCray last year when Shortridge went 3-5, including an 18-14 win over Crispus Attucks in the first round of the sectional, the first tournament victory for the school in seven years.
“Numbers jumped up to 40 (players),” said McCray, adding that former IPS superintendent Lewis Ferebee approved after-school activity buses before he left in 2018. “Through attrition, guys getting hurt and academics, it fell back down a bit. But this year we started with 48 guys, which for us is a good number.”
McCray, who works in the building as an economics and government teacher, convinced basketball player Elias Diallo to come out for football last year. It is a decision the 6-3 Diallo, a tight end with 23 catches for 364 yards and three touchdowns, has not regretted. Senior Nate Bateman, a senior receiver who has been with McCray since his freshman year, has battled injuries, but has 20 catches for 278 yards and three TDs in six games.
Those seniors, along with the emergence of sophomore linebacker Demetrius Davis, who has 49 tackles and 13 sacks, offer proof the Blue Devils are headed in the right direction.
“Success is hard to put in wins and losses,” McCray said. “We feel like we have enough talent and manpower that we should start to get on the positive side of the win-loss column. Can we put our hand in the ground and get a yard when we need to? That’s what we need to be able to do to get on the other side and stay there.”
Manpower. Size. Numbers. Facilities. That is where IPS football programs fight an uphill battle. Take one look at the Shortridge football field, which drivers going north on Meridian Street during rush hour can see on their commute home every day, and it looks more like a Class A field than a 4A stadium. There is no fieldhouse or press box.
Take a look at Roncalli’s 90-player roster and 14 coaches and compare it to Shortridge’s roster of 40 and five coaches. In addition to McCray’s roles a coach and teacher, he is also the strength and conditioning coordinator.
“Our school is honestly more set up like a (Class A) school size-wise,” McCray said. “We don’t have much room for growth, which is a challenge. We have to be more efficient with what we do have. But when it’s 7 o’clock, nobody cares. I don’t think the other school is going to take it easy on you because you don’t have a press box. If you are consistent enough, sometimes that grit is all you need. You use whatever you have.”
McCray would not be here if he did not think he could win. He grew up in Richmond, Va., where his father, Joseph, coached high school football. He was recruited to Indiana State as a linebacker before transferring to Marian. He was an assistant at North Central in 2014, then went back to Virginia for two years, including one coaching linebackers at Virginia State.
He returned to Indianapolis and got his first head coaching job at Crispus Attucks in wrestling and track and field before moving over to Shortridge in 2018.
“My first thought was, ‘Why not?’ he said of the Shortridge job. “Taking over a program with limited resources is a challenge, but I felt like it was a good thing. I wanted to see how good of a coach I was and felt like I could make a difference. I felt like these guys needed good coaching, too. Being an assistant at a bigger school would fill my desire to coach, but would I be doing as much as at a smaller school? I’m a guy that’s here every day. That’s what I stress to my seniors — you can’t miss. See it through. There were some lumps, a lot of days when I was questioning my decision, but I thought about why I made that decision and it kept me going.”
There might not be a bigger mismatch on paper Friday than Roncalli vs. Shortridge. Odds are, that’s how it will look on the scoreboard, too. McCray said his team will take a “confident approach.” But there is sometimes more to it than the scoreboard.
“My thing I tell them is, ‘What kind of man are you going to be after this?’” McCray said. “I want them to look back on this and say, ‘He helped me become who I am.’ If we won a state championship and nobody got their degree, in my mind, that’s a failure. I would have helped myself and nobody else. I see the growth. School pride has gone up. The seniors stuck it out and got younger guys interested. They are having fun. It’s worth it to go through the lumps to see that.”
Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana high school football: IPS, Shortridge face uphill challenge
