Coach Portrayed in 'Titans' Recalls Tensions

Margarita Martin-Hidalgo
09/28/00

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Reuters) - The former Virginia high school football coach portrayed by Denzel Washington in the new movie ''Remember the Titans'' recalled on Wednesday the challenge he faced almost 30 years ago in building a team amid deep racial divisions at a newly integrated school.

``Titans,'' which opens nationwide on Friday, recounts the tension, drama and the defining triumph of the 1971 state championship football season at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. It features the roles of two coaches, one white, one black, who worked together to build a winner.

At the time, the Washington-area community had merged two mostly black high schools and one mostly white high school into a single campus as part of a redistricting plan that also affected other schools in the city and angered both whites and blacks.

``The atmosphere was very tense,'' said former coach Herman Boone, 64, as he signed T-shirts and posters for hundreds of students at T.C. Williams on Wednesday. He said white and black pride among students in the early 1970s simmered dangerously and fostered racial distrust. Other racial strains in the community, including the city-wide redistricting controversy, compounded the potentially explosive climate at the school.

Boone, who is black, was named football coach that year and immediately found his team caught in the racial and cultural crosscurrents. Boone says he was ``too white for the black players and too black for the white players.''

Most of his black players threatened not to play for him, Boone said. The relationship between his players was very ''standoffish'' because he said they lived in two worlds. He said white and black players tolerated each other, but did not mix.

Boone said the players also were wary of each other because they had been gridiron foes at different schools and now they were on the same field as teammates.

``There were a lot of misconceptions simply because we did not have experience with minorities,'' said Douglas Williams, 45, a lineman on the team. But he said stereotypes eventually broke down as the players got to know each other. He also said that players disliked Boone because he was ``tough,'' but later grew to respect him, in part, because he treated everyone the same.

COACHES LEARN TO LISTEN TO ONE ANOTHER

Assistant coach Bill Yoast -- a white former head coach at one of the other Alexandria high schools passed over in favor of the younger Boone for the top job at T.C. Williams -- told the Washington Post that the two men disagreed at first, but learned to listen to each other. The coaches stressed character and talent, not race or culture in their effort to build a cohesive atmosphere.

``The primary focus was that we all wanted to play football and that we all wanted to win football games,'' Williams said of a key force that motivated the players to unify under the Titan banner.

Three decades later, Boone said he sees a different picture at T.C. Williams from when he became head coach, and feels a different atmosphere. The students have their differences, but they like each other and respect each other, he said.

For one thing, T.C. Williams is more diverse. In 1971, the school population was roughly 80 percent white and 20 percent black. School records showed last year that 46 percent of students were black, 27 percent white, 20 percent Hispanic, and 8 percent a mix of Pacific Islanders with other nationalities.

The school's students come from 84 countries and speak 56 languages, said Susan Stambaugh, an aide to the principal.

``There's no tension,'' said Boone of today's T.C. Williams where he occasionally substitutes as a coach. ``You don't see any, you don't feel any. They truly mean Titan pride.''