Former Allen football coach Cedric Lloyd has some interesting things to say

FROM KEITH GROLLER

In the days after he resigned last July and left Allen to return to coaching and teaching in his home state of Indiana, I tried to get a hold of Cedric Lloyd. But to no avail.

I don't know what the problem was --maybe it was just wrong e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

The bottom line for me was that I was disappointed I didn't hear from Lloyd because I thought he was an impressive person and would have done some very positive things at Allen had he stayed. I thought he deserved a chance to say why he was leaving, especially with the start of practice just two weeks away.

Well, several months later, I have finally connected with Lloyd and he had some very interesting things to say in a column that will be in the print version of The Morning Call on Wednesday.

A sampling of what he had to say:

“I had no intention of leaving before my time was up,” Lloyd said. “But when you look and there’s nothing for you … it’s tough. I didn’t get any impression that there was anybody there [from the school district] to help me. I let them know, and everybody know, that if somebody knocks I would at least listen to them."

“It was a crappy deal for the Allen kids and but coaching football alone was not going to feed my family,” Lloyd said. “I felt bad because I had invested an entire summer in preparing for the 2011 season. I thought we were going to be better than we were the year before. We had some things we had worked on and we looked like we were moving forward.”

As for what bothered him the most at Allen, it was simple:

“Losing games didn’t shatter me,” he said. “What bothered me was that the kids couldn’t see that it was going to take more than a year to get over the hump. And they started bailing left and right. Every time I turned around kids were leaving.

“It bothered me because I was working hard. Why aren’t you? Where’s the dedication from your end? Every kid that left I told them to come in and at least talk to me. The parents would come in and look me in the face and tell me that I can’t win here. How then am I supposed to win if I am depending on your son and you’re taking your son away?”

The kids leaving for other school didn’t totally sour Lloyd on Allen, but the lack of support did.

“That didn’t make a difference to me because I would have coached the kids who stayed,” he said. “I was just waiting on the school district to come and say ‘Hey coach, we’ve got you no matter what.’ That just never happened.”

He believes Allen hiring George Clay is a good move and so is the change to the Mountain Valley Conference.

Read more in tomorrow's Morning Call.

http://blogs.mcall.com/groller/