A game plan for life in Petersburg

Getting to Petersburg football practice in the afternoon is a lonely drive.

Grass grows ankle high around empty driveways. Salons have hand-painted signs advertising over dark windows. No cars are parked at the gas pumps. Streets are blocked off in the middle of the day, but no one is working on them.

Making it to the football field isn't necessarily easy for the kids that live there, either. The dropout rate for Petersburg High School is more than four times the state average. Of those who stay in school, 60 percent qualified for free or reduced-price lunch this year.

The unemployment rate in Petersburg is almost twice that of the rest of the state. State police crime reports indicate that it is the most dangerous city in Virginia. In 2005, the latest year for which figures were available, the average per capita income was less than $16,000 and over 27 percent of children lived below the poverty line.

And just last week all but one of Petersburg's public schools gained notoriety for once again failing to meet pass-rate benchmarks on the Virginia Standards of Learning tests.

Coach Mike Scott's football team stands as something positive in Petersburg -- a group of teenagers trying to prove they're more than their test scores and better than their circumstances.

"The football team is just an example of how the school feels right now," Scott said. " . . . They're on a mission to prove to everybody that they're intelligent and they're very capable."

The Crimson Wave last made the playoffs in 2003, when the season ended in a loss to Meadowbrook. Tonight, Petersburg hosts Meadowbrook (3-1 and ranked fourth by Times-Dispatch) in its Central District opener.

The Crimson Wave is 4-0, its best start since 1993. That year, Petersburg went 5-0 to start and 0-5 to finish. Mike Scott was at Hargrave Military Academy that season, en route to a four-year career as a defensive back for East Tennessee State. The year before, in 1992, he quarterbacked the Crimson Wave into the Division 5 playoffs.

Scott became coach in a sweeping athletic shakeup at Petersburg last spring. He inherited the position from Remus James, who both recommended him for the job and reassured him that the team would improve on its 2-8 finish.

Scott, who had assisted Remus since 2000, officially was named to his first head coaching job on the first day of practice.

Remus left the program poised for success, says Scott, who sounds like a man who unwrapped a gift and found inside it something precious, something requiring care.

"I feel like I'm needed here right now," Scott said.

Part of his job, he says, is preparing for football games.

This week the challenges are formidable -- Meadowbrook's elusive dual-threat quarterback, Desmond Coble, will test Petersburg's defense. And the Monarch's 6-8, 340-pound lineman, Morgan Moses, is too much for most teams.

But Scott's job extends beyond the football field.

He is determined to keep his kids academically eligible. He holds a mandatory team study hall before practice every day, expanding on a tactic Remus started.

Demondre Woodson, a running and cornerback for the Crimson Wave, said Scott has asked him to be a team leader. And, he said, Scott's plan for the team is working. "People are working harder, giving a better effort, than last year," Woodson said.

Scott said he takes responsibility for about 100 teenagers on his varsity and junior varsity teams. And when he finally goes home, often after midnight, he's got three more -- a 13-year-old, a 5-year-old and a newborn.

About two weeks before the season opener at Halifax, the 33-year-old coach finally followed through on getting baptized. Faith was the only place he hadn't yet tried to find support.

"These kids have been through so much, had so many challenges," he said, "and I wanted to give them the best chance at life that I could. I knew that old Mike Scott would have difficulties doing that. So it was time to improve myself -- and the best way I knew to improve myself was turning to God."

Already he was giving his time, running summer sessions from 11:45 a.m. to 7:45 p.m. so his players would be accustomed to a routine of class work as well as practice -- and so they had somewhere safe to spend their day. He was giving his money, paying out of pocket for meals the school didn't provide. He was giving his heart, listening to the problems of 100 teenage boys trying to grow up in a tough town.

Teaching his players football is a luxury, he said. Teaching his 100-plus children how to live is an obligation.

"When I came in, I gave them four priorities," Scott said. "Faith, family, academics, then football. And we just keep it in order, just like that. I wasn't concentrating on the wins and I'm still not, really. I could care less about the wins. I'm more worried about what they're going to do when they leave this school -- life after high school."
Contact Andee Sears at (804) 649-6021 or .