A culture of winning
By: Kevin Dunleavy
Examiner Staff Writer
October 9, 2009
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| The walls of football coach Bill McGregor's office are lined with the faces of more than 300 DeMatha graduates who have gone on to play in college.` (Andrew Harnik/Examiner) |
On a lowly campus lacking athletic facilities, the DeMatha Stags have built a national powerhouse
Wedged awkwardly off Route 1 in Hyattsville, between a sagging commercial strip and an aging residential neighborhood, DeMatha Catholic High School has none of the earmarks of a private school athletic powerhouse.
There is no grandstand, no track, no football field, no sign announcing you’ve entered sacred turf, just a banner on the backside of a brick school building that reads, “DeMatha College High School - Gentlemen and Scholars.”
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It’s an unlikely home for a sports program that has spawned the winningest high school basketball coach of all-time (Morgan Wootten) and produced more current NFL players (seven) than any other school.
While DeMatha’s success in major sports is recognized nationally, the Stags’ excellence extends to a range of athletic pursuits. Since the Catholic league was established in 1969, DeMatha has not only won more basketball (28) and football (17) titles than any other school, it also has claimed more wrestling (23), baseball (21), lacrosse (17), golf (14), and track (11) championships.
So how does DeMatha do it?
“They have an unbelievable reputation and their alumni are very involved,” said Good Counsel football coach Bob Milloy. “They want to win. Their commitment never changes.”
That commitment is reflected in the composition of the student body. Of DeMatha’s 970 students, 660 play interscholastic athletics. According to Principal Dr. Dan McMahon, 40 percent of the students receive financial aid. Most of them are athletes. Tuition at DeMatha is $11,300.
Little of the tuition goes toward athletic facilities. On its cramped, urban campus, DeMatha is capable of hosting events in only two sports - basketball and wrestling. The football team practices off campus at dusty Riverdale Park. It plays most of its home games at nearby public schools. Several years ago, DeMatha had its homecoming game on the field of its opponent, Archbishop Carroll.
“In some sense, I think it gives our guys an indomitable will,” said McMahon, who said the school has no plans to build its own athletic fields.
An exception is a new convocation center, nearing completion on campus, which will house a gymnasium. It also will include a wrestling room. It will be the first time the wrestling team, winner of an astonishing 23 straight WCAC championships between 1986-2008, will have its own facility.
For years under coach Dick Messier, the team conducted practice wherever it could find space - classrooms, cafeteria, even a warehouse at a nearby car dealer ship. But somehow, DeMatha draws elite wrestlers, many of them willing to make daily commutes from wrestling hotbed Southern Maryland.
DeMatha can even draw top athletes in a sport such as golf.
“We just do a lot more for the kids,” said former golf coach Ben Spotts, a 1959 graduate of DeMatha, whose son, Dan, took over the team two years ago. “We provide fashionable apparel, Pro V1 balls, we play the area’s best courses, and we fly down to Florida before the season. We have alumni and friends that make it all possible.”
The drawing power of DeMatha has no bounds. One of the school’s best basketball players of the 1990s, Joe Forte, moved from Atlanta to attend DeMatha. More recently, another Stags’ standout, Jeff Peterson, moved from St. Louis.
Build an athletic powerhouse and they will come.
DeMatha is sensitive to its reputation as a “jock school.” McMahon and others are quick to point to DeMatha’s academic triumphs and its elite music program, which includes more than 400 students.
Coaches and athletic directors at rival schools have long complained that DeMatha accepts athletes that their schools wouldn’t touch. But for decades, the Stags have steered clear of the problems associated with admitting risky students.
“We do take some kids who are at risk and they don’t all work out,” said McMahon. “But that’s part of what we’re about. We want to have a wide range of students.”
While drawing elite athletes is part of the equation, Redskins defensive back Byron Westbrook says hard work and mystique also are factors.
“We outworked a lot of other people, especially in the offseason, running steps at Cole Field House or Byrd Stadium,” said Westbrook. “When you put that uniform on, you know mentally you’re going to be better than the other guys from the start. They’re already intimidated.”
