‘I just don’t want it to go’
Cougar Stadium final regular season game a Clay-Chalkville rout of Pinson Valley
By Gary Lloyd
CLAY – The front seat of a Toyota Tacoma is where the postgame chaos happens, where the work really begins, for a writer.
Sure, photos are taken in the twilight of the afternoon as players walk the field. Notes are taken. Stats are kept. Interviews are recorded.
But that front seat, a HP laptop crammed between a Celtics hoodie and a steering wheel, is where the real work begins.
How do you sum up 30 years of Clay-Chalkville football in Cougar Stadium? How do you contextualize the meaning of this place, born out of a decision in the early 1990s to ease overcrowding at Hewitt-Trussville schools, so that folks understand? I guess you can’t, unless you’re writing a book about this place, this program, this season. Otherwise, you just had to be there on some Friday night in the fall, watching Clay-Chalkville do what it’s mostly done since 1996 – beat the team on the opposite (narrow) sideline.
Because summing up 30 regular seasons – five of which have now started 10-0 – is impossible, too many stories to tell in just a feature article. The front-seat chaos was particularly heightened Thursday night after the Class 6A top-ranked Cougars dismantled rival Pinson Valley, 52-14. The backspace key was the most utilized on the keyboard. The writer’s block was real, deciding what should be the lede – the game itself, a big night from running back Joshua Woods, ongoing construction for a new football stadium, or something else.
Until a text came through at 10:28 p.m. from Joshua Cheek, Clay-Chalkville’s director of football operations.
“Are you still here” it read.
“Yeah, truck,” I replied.
“Come get this picture,” Cheek said.
“Of?” I asked.
“The coaches that played here,” he replied.
Five of Clay-Chalkville’s 15 or so coaches are graduates of the school that was born in 1996 out of school overcrowding in Trussville. Head coach Stuart Floyd won a state championship in 1999 and graduated in 2000. Cheek is a 2002 graduate. Defensive line coach Derius McCall and wide receivers coach Justin Burdette are 2012 graduates. Willie Miller graduated in 2019.
I took their photo in the end zone.
“I just don’t want it to go,” Cheek said, acknowledging that the not-so-distant future demolition of Cougar Stadium has been on his mind for a couple weeks, never more than Thursday night. “Hardest place to play in the state, man, for any opponent.”
The night itself, at least during the game, didn’t feel like a grand sendoff for Cougar Stadium. And it shouldn’t. The Class 6A playoffs loom, and Clay-Chalkville (10-0) will host a first-round game Nov. 7. After that, it’s all about surviving and advancing. Win, play another home game. Win, extend the life of the stadium for at least another week.
Clay-Chalkville led just 17-14 early in the third quarter before the offensive floodgates opened. Senior running back Joshua Woods scored on runs of 26, 31, and 14 yards on consecutive drives to give the Cougars a 38-14 lead. A 50-yard touchdown from quarterback Aaron Frye to wide receiver Corey Barber and a four-yard run by Gabe Agbali capped the scoring.
“We started off slow in the beginning but we came back out after Coach Floyd gave us our halftime speech and we just balled from there,” Woods said.
It’s the first time Woods has been on a team that has compiled a 10-0 record. He smiled when he said that.
“It’s special to me,” he said. “Last regular season game, senior night, it’s special to me.”
Kicker Joseph Del Toro, who had another perfect night on field goals and extra points, echoed Woods.
“This place means everything to me,” he said. “It has a special place in my heart. I’m happy that I’m graduating here, happy that I came here, and look forward to coming back to homecoming and stuff in the future.”
Freddie Flowers, the Voice of the Cougars, spent much of the night over the PA system encouraging fans, parents, and students to cheer as loudly as they could. He wanted the final regular season game in Cougar Stadium to be one to remember. After the game, as he walked across the field, he talked through old memories. About how there was barely one restroom at one time, about no concession stands, about the lack of a visitor bleacher section meant the potential for a tackle out of bounds resulting in a roll down a hill.
“I’m ready for them to tear the crap down, man,” Floyd joked. “This turf is 11 years old. I dressed out in a closet here. No, it’s been a lot of good memories here, lot of fun times. We haven’t had many low points really on this field ever. Just a lot of winning and a lot of effort from a lot of guys. To watch it grow from no stands over there to no fieldhouse to the thing that it’s become, really just how our school has ascended to become one of the powers year in and year out has been good.”
All season, excavation has been ongoing behind the stadium, near Clay-Chalkville Middle School’s campus. A new stadium will rise from what is now busted concrete, heaps of mud, downed pine trees. Yellow and orange excavators have been present for every home game.
“I’ve enjoyed it,” Floyd said. “I want to get on one of those bulldozers and … I don’t know what they’re doing, but I would love to get over there. Looks like fun.”
Ever the jokester. But it says something. Clay-Chalkville is ready for something new, something finally of its own. After all, the home bleachers at Cougar Stadium came from Shades Valley’s stadium in the mid-1990s. The school, rumor has it, was built architecturally like a Florida school or one you’d find in Gulf Shores. A gold feature on one side of the school, some say, is meant to even look like a fish eye. So, Clay is growing up. It is time for a new stadium and a new school. A lot of change is coming in a place where change is as uncommon as a Clay-Chalkville loss.
Cheek and Burdette chatted in the cold as the clock approached 11 p.m. Thursday night, when most everyone had gone home. They played here and are coaching here, so even a regular season finale in this place meant something more to them. But there are still more games to play. The real games, in the November cold, in pursuit of a Class 6A championship. That is the focus now. But they also know that time is running short on Cougar Stadium, that even Nov. 7 could be the final game there, though they hope it comes on Black Friday. Burdette plans to bottle up some beads from the turf and keep them in a jar – or an urn – in the new fieldhouse when it’s built. Cheek wants part of the turf, if possible, and if not perhaps a letter from “COUGARS” that is spelled out beneath the press box.
Cheek, who played in the first game at Cougar Stadium as a seventh-grade tight end in 1996, stood in the cold after the players-turned-coaches had their photo taken. It was past time to go inside for a postgame meal, to go home.
“How long are you going to stay out here before you go inside?” I asked.
“I’m probably going to go up there right now, but the last game here, you’re probably going to have to peel me out of here,” he said. “I’ll probably just sit at the 50-yard line for a while.”
I remember it all. We were short changed - the school and the stadium. Boosters had to buy the visitors bleachers with zero help from Jefferson County. Pads were put on the sidelines to prevent injury from the concrete curbing. Players literally dressed in a closet. The grass field was flat and didn’t drain so by seasons end was a mud pit. Original press box was terrible. The early boosters, players, and coaches built the foundation for today’s program.