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Heaton focuses on Xs and Os and GPAs
Touchdowns and field goals will not produce the only numbers Escambia County High School Head Coach Mark Heaton will be tallying during the 2010 football season. Coach Heaton and his staff are putting a strong focus on their players’ GPAs and in class performances.
The state of Alabama requires athletes maintain an overall GPA of 70 in order to be eligible to participate in sports.
Coach Heaton and his staff have taken an active role to ensure their players make the grade.
“The first thing we did when we got here was sign up every senior that we could for the ACT,” Heaton said.
The staff at ECHS has already begun taking measures to keep track of grades and provide incentives for student-athletes to work harder in the classroom. Five dry erase boards now line a wall of the Blue Devils’ field house. Four of the boards are designated to keep track of GPAs for freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors while one board will record the team’s overall scores.
“We have a contest every nine weeks,” Heaton said. “Whichever class has the highest GPA will get a pizza party or just something special that we’ll do for them.”
Heaton said there will be a team goal as well with an overall mark the entire team will be striving to meet as a whole.
Heaton said the team will have academic coaches in place that will keep track of the players’ grades and monitor any sudden drops in scores.
“They’ll be responsible for having a list every nine weeks of kids in certain grades,” Heaton said. “If there’s a significant decrease and grades start falling that coach is responsible for bringing that information to me so that I can set up a meeting with the student, the teacher if need be, and even the parent.”
At his meeting with the Atmore Lions Club Wednesday, July 21, Heaton stressed the importance of his players doing well in class as well as on the field.
“Less than one percent of high school athletes go on to play at the next level,” Heaton said. “We want our kids to be prepared to walk out and pursue a degree.”
The Blue Devils will begin fall practice on August 8 in preparation for their season opener against T.R. Miller but Heaton said their focus will be as much on books as it will be on game film.
“We want them to see that when we set a goal and they exceed the expectation, we’ll reward them,” he said. “It’s very important and we can’t have our program without that being in place.”
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