New Allen football coach says he's up to the challenge

FROM KEITH GROLLER

I have just talked with James Brown, Jr., the new Allen football coach.

I expected to be talking with a young man with little experience, but Brown is 51 years old.

He played football at Liberty in the late 1970s and left school to join the Marine Corps. Later on, he went back to get his high school diploma, graduating from St. Louis School in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1982.

"I had my GED, but I wasn't satisfied with that," he said. "I wanted to go back and get a high school diploma."

He was all-Marine tailback nine years in a row and came back to play semi-pro football in the Lehigh Valley.

He became a semi-pro coach in the area for the Lehigh Valley Outlaws and served as the midget coach for the Bethlehem Steelers and Bethlehem Raiders.

He was a member of Joe Spitale's coaching staff at Southern Lehigh and also coached for two years with Kevin Ronalds before coming back to be join Cedric Lloyd's staff last year.

So, he has been around the area and knows the game.

He also knows he's in for a challenge, but he's up for it.

"I am up for the challenge," he said. "Coach Lloyd put a system in place, and I am not going to change it. I will put a couple of wrinkles to it, and the kids are excited about it. But we're not going to change that much. I'd like to carry on Coach Lloyd's legacy. I've heard a lot of good feedback from the kids about me taking over. They feel good about it and we're ready to go to work."

Brown said that he wasn't surprised Lloyd left Allen to return to Indianapolis.

"Even after losing his teaching position, his intention was to stay, but he got an offer back home and he accepted it," Brown said. "He had to do what's right for him and his family."

Brown, whose son James played for Liberty in the late 1990s, said one of his top goals is to keep kids interested in school.

"Education comes first," he said. "I had a coach destroy my college dreams when I was in high school and that's why I left school. I won't do that to kids. I want them to have dreams and work toward achieving them."

Brown, who is an assistant highway maintenance manager for PennDOT in Bucks County, said that he will have a full coaching staff and said Allen will move forward without four transfers who left the program.

"To me, they left because they didn't want to work hard," he said. "I understand that they think they're better off going to a winning program, but the grass isn't always greener on the other side."

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