PREP PREVIEW: Capital City Conference members look to mirror 2020 success
Granger Shook returned to his alma mater and led the Trinity Wildcats to a quarterfinal berth last season. (Tim Gayle)
By TIM GAYLE
Last year, Capital City Conference teams collectively had the best football season in their history, with all five making the state playoffs, four reaching the quarterfinals, two reaching the semifinals and one making the finals.
Nearly 30 years ago, when former Montgomery Academy coach John Tatum and others formed the “conference” of local private schools -- Alabama Christian Academy, Catholic, Montgomery Academy, St. James, St. Jude and Trinity -- it was to facilitate scheduling, especially in sports where the teams excelled such as tennis, soccer and softball.
Yes, Capital City Conference teams made sure to schedule each other in football, too (although Class 1A St. Jude didn’t always have a football team and finally closed), but if teams wanted to test their mettle, they wandered outside the conference for tougher opponents because rarely were two CCC teams at the top of their game at the same time.
ACA, which last season won a region title for the first time under the current format established in 2000, has only reached the quarterfinals three times in school history prior to last year’s trip -- 1989, 1990 and 2017. In 1989, the Eagles were derailed in the quarterfinals by Catholic 7-6.
Catholic, which owned the city’s small-school scene in 1989, had only four playoff wins outside of that season (all in 2017, 2018 and 2019) before breaking through to reach the finals last year. After Catholic edged ACA in 1989, the Knights were turned back 10-7 in the semifinals by Georgiana, who did Catholic a favor by denying them an opportunity to face Hazlewood in a championship game won by Antonio Langham’s team 75-0.
Montgomery Academy was the first “big kid” on the block, reaching the semifinals in 1986, 1987, 1988 and 2002 before doing it again last year. The 1987 team, which included current coach Robert Johnson, was the only CCC team to win a football championship until Trinity did it in 2003.
St. James reached the quarterfinals in 1985 and 2003 and the Trojans owned the conference’s “worst” record last year at 7-4 as a youthful and inexperienced team reached the playoffs in a rebuilding season. Their regular-season losses last year were to Montgomery Academy, ACA and Trinity.
“Last year we were primarily a freshman-sophomore football team,” St. James coach Jimmy Perry said. “We ended up going 7-3 and should have won the playoff game. We just didn’t have the experience to do that. We’ll have it this year.
“That was everybody else’s best year and our down year. We’re looking forward to being better.”
Trinity reached its first quarterfinals under Randy Ragsdale in 1992 and made nine more trips before somebody other than Ragsdale finally accomplished the feat last season. Granger Shook, in his first season as head coach, reached the quarterfinals before losing to Montgomery Academy, which lost the following week to Catholic.
To Shook, it was very reminiscent of his senior year at Trinity (2003) when Catholic and ACA had losing records but didn’t play the Wildcats. MA was a respectable 8-4 under Tatum, but one of those losses was a rout to Trinity. St. James, coached by Johnson, reached the quarterfinals before losing to Trinity for the second time that season.
The Wildcats went on to post a 15-0 record and win the state championship, the last captured by a CCC team.
“I remember a long time ago, we beat St. James in the quarterfinals and that was the last CCC team left,” Shook said. “This past year, there were three left. I think it just goes to show you the quality of players. I think it shows you the commitment of the schools. Successful football programs aren’t that way just because of a good coach. You have to have good players and you have to have a good investment from the administration and the fans.
“I think Trinity has all that. I think it’s safe to say that the other schools have that as well.
So what will the 2021 season look like? Because the teams are scattered through three different regions, it’s not only possible but highly likely that all five CCC teams reach the playoffs again.
That means they don’t have to step out of conference for a quality opponent. For Montgomery Academy, which plays each of the other four as a non-region opponent, the trick is convincing the players that the conference games are just as important as the non-conference rivals.
“Every week, you just have to be ready,” Johnson said. “We realized that you can only be super fired-up a couple of times a season and if you play a couple of games really high, then you’re going to play a couple of games really low. So we figured out that we just have to be steady and build during the game. So the kids really bought into that message.
“I was so impressed with the quality of play. I thought we had a really strong team, but the rest of the city was out of sight, also.”
The bullseye is on Catholic after a heartbreaking loss to Fyffe in the 3A finals last year, but one slight misstep by the Knights and any of the other CCC teams might take their place in the finals.
“It’s a little different (from last season),” said the Knights’ leading tackler, linebacker Patrick Ryan. “We’ve got that sour taste in our mouths. We want to get back there. We have that drive to get back there because we got so close.”