When Myles Wright thinks about playing football at Michigan's Big House this fall, a huge smile lights up the St. Frances senior's face.
Wright sees the chance to play in a legendary college stadium as just one of the benefits he and his Panthers teammates will reap from new head coach Henry Russell and much of the rest of the coaching staff that moved over from Gilman after coach Biff Poggi departed last winter.
Not all of those opportunities will be as exciting as playing Paramus Catholic, N.J., in Ann Arbor on Sept. 2, but Wright already sees how they will help him and his teammates.
On the field in the tough Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference, Wright said his team, "can go either way, really" this fall, but the new coaching staff has already bolstered the academic side of their recruiting resumes with a summer of classes in English, math and SAT prep.
"I knew a lot of the coaches, because they recruited me when I was in middle school," Wright said, "so I already knew they were good people and I knew that was going to be a good opportunity because of the reputation they had coaching up players that played for them that're in the [National Football] League now. I knew we were going to be in good hands."
Russell and 13 other Gilman coaching transplants got the Panthers off to an early-morning start on the first day of MIAA football practice Monday. Former DeMatha coach Bill McGregor, offensive coordinator Chris Baucia and defensive coordinator and former Baltimore Colt Stan White made the switch. Russell said he was also pleased to keep former Panthers head coach Messay Hailemariam and three members of his staff.
They've been working all summer to prepare for the 69 boys who turned out for the first day of practice. About 18 players returned from the Panthers squad, including Wright, a tight end ranked the No. 19 overall player in Maryland in the Class of 2017 by the recruiting website Rivals.com. Twenty players transferred in, Russell said, mostly from public schools and from the now-defunct Eastern Christian program. Three younger players transferred from Gilman.
For the former Gilman staff, which moved to St. Frances in February, the transition has been labor-intensive.
The coaches have had to figure out how to deal with challenges they never faced at Gilman, Russell said, such as where to practice with no stadium field on the St. Frances campus in East Baltimore, how to get everybody to the practice field, how to make sure all players have transportation to school and how to set up a summer school program.
"It's a total night-and-day difference," said Russell, who had been Poggi's associate head coach at Gilman. "This [Monday] has been one of the few days we've actively focused on football. At Gilman, the kids have the means to get where they need to be on time. Last night, we were still trying to figure out how to get 15 to 20 kids to practice and where they were going to stay for the week."
Still, Russell said the response from the players has been positive to the athletic and academic changes.
"The kids sat in classrooms that were 90 degrees with no AC and they did an awesome job," he said. "I couldn't be more proud of the kids and that's the thing at the end of the day, with everything going on, that motivates you, because their energy and enthusiasm about wanting something better for themselves, it's been awesome to watch that."
Russell said his staff could not have gotten up and running without the help of Hailemariam, who is now director of football operations. Hailemariam said he was glad to stay.
The Panthers were 2-10 last season and did not win an A Conference game, although two years ago they were 5-6 and beat four A Conference teams, including McDonogh.
Hailemariam said he believes Russell and his staff can bring the stability to the program that he was unable to, in part because he could not pay his coaching staff and that led to significant turnover. He also said it doesn't matter that most Gilman coaches are white and do not come from the same background of many of the Panthers, who are almost all African American.
"I won't say the transition has been seamless. It is not the best word to say," Hailemariam said. "But it hasn't been as hard as I anticipated because Coach McGregor coached at DeMatha for a long time, so he's familiar with some of the demographics here. They're awesome coaches, but it has been a little shocking to them, to say the least, but they've done a tremendous job of transitioning and being open to advice and figuring the best way to adjust the way they coach."
St. Frances athletic director and basketball coach Nick Myles agreed.
"They're just good people and I think our kids relate to good people," Myles said. "I think race has never been a problem around here. There's a lot of diversity in the staff but those guys are really, really great. They've got a solid foundation, very organized and the kids are excited to be able to compete on the highest level and try to attain their goals of going to college for free."
Russell's main goal is to get players into college with the tools that will help them get their degrees and build the lives they want whether they play football or not. He also wants to build the Panthers into a program that can compete on a national level as Gilman had, reaching as high as No. 13 in one national poll last fall.
"What we want here is a place Baltimore can be proud of," Russell said, "where kids in the city can say as a fourth, fifth grader, 'Hey, I want to go to St. Frances and be part of the football program there.' I think the biggest part is where these kids will be 15 years from now — what are they doing with their lives, are they making an impact on their community, are they being a good father, being a good son... 'Building men for others' [their motto at Gilman] is still first and foremost."
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