You end a losing streak, putting it behind like a horrible nightmare, but life goes on. Yet it still is accompanied by pressure.
For Baylor School football coach Phil Massey, the Red Raiders’ 24-10 win over McCallie in 2009 quite possibly ensured that his career at Baylor would continue beyond four years.
“We have won one game [against the archrival] in the last 10 years,” Massey said. “We still have lots of work to do.”
Massey said earlier this week that no one in the school’s administration or any alumni had told him last year that he had to win to keep his job.
“But I knew how important this game is to this school, the alumni base and to our football program overall,” he said.
The Red Raiders’ win ended McCallie’s 11-game win streak, a streak that likely contributed to the dismissal of David Bibee, Massey’s predecessor.
“Life hasn’t changed a whole lot other than the fact that we had a lot of happy alumni last year,” Massey said. “For our kids’ sakes they were finally able to see that beating McCallie wasn’t trying to move an immovable mountain. They saw that hard work and doing the little things right really will pay off.”
Is the pressure ever really diminished, though? McCallie doesn’t have the strain of extending the streak, and Baylor ridded itself of the need to break it. But pressure remains an unwanted sidelight to one of the Chattanooga area’s biggest high school football shows.
There is added pressure on Mack Ferguson, a senior two-way lineman at Baylor. While his father’s family has lengthy ties to Baylor, all of his mother’s brothers, including former football stars Dan and Weejun Robinson, went to McCallie.
“Playing last year as a junior wasn’t as much pressure,” Ferguson said, “even though we had lost 11 in a row. I probably feel a little more pressure this year as a senior. It’s my last time to play them, and I would really like to beat them again.”
Said Massey: “You don’t want to be second fiddle whether you’re an athlete who’s a backup or as a coach. We felt like the backup and we wanted to win the No. 1 spot. The win last year alleviated some pressure that was unjust for 16- and 17-year-old kids.”
There always is pressure on coaches, even if it’s self-induced. There is that drive to be better, to be the best and then to remain at the top once there. For these two schools, there is an uncommon extra motivation.
“One of us could win a state championship, but if we lost to the other, well, we might be No. 1 in the state but we’d still be thought of as No. 2 in Chattanooga,” Massey said.
The pressure is always there, said Baylor assistant Tom Watson, a former head coach at East Ridge who has been with the Red Raiders for 10 seasons.
“I never dreaded a game, but I dread this week,” he said. “There are expected pressures that come with the game, but I dread all the activities and our kids struggling to focus on the football game because of the bonfires, the skits, the powderpuff games, the pep rallies and everything else. We have emphasized enjoying the week but also staying focused on the practice field.”
The Raiders had streak-breaking opportunities before last fall – a PAT bouncing off an upright one year and then another year when they called an overtime timeout as McCallie went for the winning field goal and missed and then made the kick after the timeout.
“The pressure mounted every year,” Watson said, “We thought, ‘When is it going to be our year?’ Every year we kept thinking this was it and it just never panned out.”
“Our theme this year is ‘All it takes is all you’ve got,'” Massey said. “I know kids in previous years felt like they had to do things that were outside their abilities. I know the kids in my five years have believed, but belief is one thing and faith is another, but winning and reaping the benefits of your labors does create an air of confidence.”
Of course there is another bottom line for the Red Raiders this season. They’re undefeated in 2010 heading into tonight’s game.
“Everybody focuses on McCallie and it’s a big game and a league game, but homecoming is actually next week against [undefeated] Brentwood Academy, and then we have a quickly improving Ensworth coming in,” Massey said.
Contact Ward Gossett at wgossett@timesfreepress.com or 423-886-4765.