Doyel: Miracle homecoming at Attucks, with a few mistakes

Gregg Doyel, gregg.doyel@indystar.com
Members of the Crispus Attucks football team kneel before the game against Bishop Chatard on Sept. 26, 2016.

INDIANAPOLIS – They are lined up on the sideline, all on one knee, the first Crispus Attucks football team in 31 years staring at nothing but its future.

Warming up in the far end zone, players from Bishop Chatard are throwing glances at the Attucks sideline. It's eerie, what the Attucks players are doing. Kneeling. Facing an empty field. Not moving.

Drums are beating in the distance. They are getting closer.

Attucks coach Troy Moore is walking up and down the sideline now, spitting fire, and his players? His players believe. They are nodding their heads and making guttural noises. Still on one knee. Still staring straight ahead.

Now someone is trotting up to Moore, whispering into his ear. Moore tells his players: The Crispus Attucks band is waiting at the other end of the field. The band wants the players to run onto the field through a tunnel of their classmates.

Now the Attucks football players are clambering to their feet and scurrying around the back of the stadium. I can hear them celebrating as they disappear. They are still chattering happily when they emerge at the other end. They are ready to run through the tunnel.

The drum beat gets louder.

* * *

Mistakes were made.

Look, this isn’t just Attucks’ first football season since 1985, after IPS converted it to a junior high in 1986, a middle school in 1993, and finally restored it to a high school in 2006. What happened Monday was its first home game since then. If it looked like nobody knew what they were doing, well, now you know why.

The Tigers come sprinting through the band and then mill around on the field. The band is about to play the national anthem, but there’s a problem. No American flag.

To be honest, this game wasn’t even supposed to happen. Not here. Because Attucks has insufficient lighting and a field that rises and falls like a country road, athletics director Josh Varno had made arrangements for the Tigers to play home games at Shortridge.

But then Varno got to thinking.

“We wanted to play here,” he says. “At least once.”

And so Varno went behind the stadium for dirt to level the field, covered the dirt with grass and invited district officials for a look. The district signed off on a game. One game. This game.

Homecoming. On Monday.

Doyel: Hope (and football) for Crispus Attucks

OK, so back to the American flag. There wasn’t one. Attucks assistant Jason Ashley tells his players to place a hand over their heart for the anthem, but then a player notices something in the distance … is that an American flag on the OneAmerica building? It sure is. So with the Attucks team staring at a flag one mile to the southeast, at the corner of New York and Illinois streets, the band plays the anthem.

But again, mistakes were made. For most of the first half the game clock either wasn’t running when it should, or was running when it shouldn’t. The Attucks band was playing whenever it wanted, including the time it launched into “I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5 as the Attucks offense was trying to run a play. Assistant coach Jason Ashley jogged over to the band and informed them the time to play is when Attucks is on defense, not offense.

“We have to hear the calls,” Ashley told the band, smiling to soften the blow.

The band has a sousaphone. Someone took a paintbrush to the bell, painting it like the inside of a tiger’s mouth. There are teeth. There are fangs.

Mid-note, the tiger goes silent.

* * *

Crispus Attucks alumni watch the Tigers face off agains the Bishop Chatard Trojans. 
.

In the stands, nine older men are watching the game together. They are wearing green golf shirts with the words “Crispus Attucks Lettermen Club.” They have waited decades for this day.

“I’m not going to lie,” says Walter Smith, a 1964 graduate, as the game continues. “It touches your heart.”

Once upon a time, Attucks was a football monster. In the 1930s and '40s it went 150-33-3 under Hall of Fame coach Alonzo Watford, then kept winning under Graham Martin, who played for Watford before going on to Indiana and Howard and becoming one of the “Golden Thirteen” – the first 13 African-Americans commissioned in the U.S. Navy in 1944.

“There’s so much history here,” Dewitt Fleming, a 1967 graduate, is telling me.

“And what’s paramount,” says 1966 graduate Theodore Williams, a member of the Anderson University athletics hall of fame, “is that Attucks doesn’t go away.”

That’s only a rumor, but the closing of Attucks is a very real concern of the Lettermen Club. For sure, IPS has considered selling some of the land at Attucks – including the football field – and these graduates from the 1960s wonder what could be next.

“This is a prime piece of real estate,” Williams says.

“A jewel,” says 1969 graduate George France.

To them, the first football team in 31 years isn’t merely a point of pride for Attucks. It is a beachhead in the battle for its very existence.

“Football creates that school spirit, and it teaches you to grow up and socialize,” France says. “A football team is vital, because it means more kids are taking ownership in their school.”

On the field below us, 35 kids from Attucks are taking ownership of their program. They are playing the Bishop Chatard freshman team and they are losing 14-0 in the second quarter, but they are not giving up. Playing a schedule against local varsity, JV and freshman teams, Attucks is 0-4 and has been outscored 120-36. But they are here. They are competing.

Troy Moore dials up a reverse by 5-6, 138-pound freshman Calvin Jacobs that gains 14 yards. Sophomore Jesse Hatcher is churning into the middle for tough yards. On the sideline someone is yelling, “Never give up!”

Gold helmets are nodding.

* * *

The game is over and Bishop Chatard coach Rob Doyle Sr.  asks Moore for permission to speak to the Tigers. He has seen something. He wants to share it.

“It’s hard to start up a program,” Doyle tells both teams at midfield. “It’s really hard. But your effort is not going unnoticed. You guys are going to be good someday.”

Chatard won this game 21-0, but Attucks was fighting to the end. Attucks has three quarterbacks, all freshmen, and by the third quarter all three are injured. Moore remembers seeing his senior defensive end, 6-3, 244-pound Kyle Beatty, throwing the ball around the weight room. Beatty is a bowler, with one 300 game and several in the 290 range, but he hasn’t played much football and he’s never played quarterback. Moore puts him in anyway, and Beatty is throwing beautiful spirals all over the field, some going 50 yards.

Most of Beatty’s passes fall incomplete, but his performance, his untapped talent, is what Moore is talking about when he gathers his team after the game.

“Some of y’all are going to make it,” Moore tells his players. “I guarantee it. We’ve got D-1, D-2 talent in this huddle right now, but if we’re not working hard enough, nobody’s going to see it.

“I’m not going to call out any names, but we’ve got guys who aren’t coming every day to practice. You know who you are. Who hasn’t been to every practice last week?”

About 15 hands go up.

“That’s a problem,” Moore says.

Players are silent. They have a coach who does not tolerate nonsense, who sits players whose grades aren’t acceptable. It’s not enough to be eligible by district standards. Players have to be eligible by Moore’s standards.

In the 1990s Moore attended Prairie View (Texas) A&M when the Division I-AA Panthers were losing an NCAA-record 80 consecutive games. Moore didn’t play football – he earned a golf scholarship – but he remembers the way the football team carried itself on campus.

“Those players held their heads high with the hopes of being part of the team that broke that streak,” Moore tells me later. “That’s what I try and convey to these guys every day.”

To his team, Moore has one more thing to say.

“We ain’t going away,” he says. “Every one of you is going to come back here some day. You see those names up all over the school, right? Some of you have that chance. Work hard and get your name up on those walls. Start your legacy now. You understand?”

“Yes, coach!” his players scream.

The scoreboard has been turned off as players walk off the field, to the parking lot, to the rest of their week. It is just as well. The scoreboard showed only one winner on Monday.

The scoreboard was lying.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel