Valiant Cross turns to Ware to lead football program
Larry Ware coached at Lee High School from 2008-11 before moving on to Carver where he coached six years. He is the new head coach at Valiant Cross. (File photo)
By TIM GAYLE
Larry Ware admits he had a comfortable life these days, alternating between his job with the state of Alabama and his role over the last 10 years as a community coach with St. James.
So what would make Ware give up his role with the Trojans to accept the head coaching position at Valiant Cross Academy?
“This is probably something, at first, that I didn’t want to do,” Ware admitted. “After I looked closer into it, why not?”
The school announced late last week in a press release that Ware had accepted the job from the school’s co-founders, Anthony and Fred Brock. Ware said Anthony Brock was instrumental in selling him on the job, although he also had conversations with Fred, who coached the Warriors last season.
“The service that I’m in, in molding and grooming kids, has always been attractive to me,” Ware said. “The fact that it is an all-boys school makes a difference.”
Anthony Brock reached out a couple of years ago, Ware added, “and it just wasn’t a good fit at the time. He decided to try again and some things just fell into place.”
Ware was a natural fit for the program, an underprivileged product of Tulane Court who was a model youth growing up, now called upon to teach high school students with a similar background.
“In general, everyday society, youth is pretty much the same when you’re dealing with kids of this age group,” Ware said. “I don’t think it matters what setting you’re in. I think serving this area is going to benefit those kids and myself.”
When he got to Robert E. Lee, he helped turn around a dormant program, earning “Mr. Football” honors in leading the Generals to the 1986 Class 6A state championship. He went on to Georgia, playing as the backup to Tim Worley in 1988, Rodney Hampton in 1989 and Garrison Hearst in 1991.
He got into coaching the following year, working as an assistant at Robert E. Lee and Jeff Davis for 10 years, then as a head coach at G.W. Carver and Robert E. Lee for 10 years and finally as an assistant at St. James for the last 10 years.
“What school would not want ‘Mr. Football’ being their head football coach?” St. James coach Jimmy Perry asked. “How lucky are these kids at Valiant Cross to have a guy who’s not only the best football player in the state of Alabama during his time but also a first-class individual who always represents himself, his school and his community in a first-class way? He’s just a great coach.
“I’m just so proud of him, like a proud dad of his son.”
When he was hired at Carver, he took over a program that had lost 34 consecutive games and within two years had the Wolverines off to a 6-0 start and a berth in the state playoffs. By the third year (2004), Carver would reach the 6A semifinals. By 2008, his alma mater came calling. The Generals had endured an 0-10 season in 2007 and were looking for Ware’s rebuilding touch.
His first team went 2-8 as four of the Generals’ first five losses were by a touchdown or less. By the second year, Lee was back in the playoffs.
He was replaced after four seasons by a philosophical shift at MPS, but he merely got into another profession through employment with the state of Alabama and offered his services to Perry, molding the last four running backs into all-state performers that are among the top five rushers in school history.
“I was in a comfortable situation,” Ware said. “That’s what made this a decision. But I do know that if you’re going to do some things you’ve never done before, you’re going to have to do some things that make you uncomfortable. I’ve been in an uncomfortable situation before. I went to Carver. Then I left Carver and went to Lee. Those were uncomfortable situations in their own right.”
At Valiant Cross, Ware’s biggest asset will be stability. The program started in 2020 with Willie Spears as the head coach, went through a spring with C.J. Harris and a fall with Fred Brock. Ware will be the fourth head coach in the school’s three years.
“I’m aware of the issues they’ve had,” Ware said, “but I see that everything (Anthony Brock) told me can come true. He did dangle the carrot in front of me and it did catch my attention. After I took an in-depth look with some people at the situation over there, in talking to some people, I got some ‘ays’ and some ‘nays’ and the ‘ays’ outweighed the ‘nays.’”
He will be working for a program that has a weightroom in the school’s downtown location but has no other athletic facilities to train athletes.
“The facilities are not ideal,” he admitted. “However, what they have to work with, it works. The weight room is not bad. They’ve done a good job with it. As far as the outdoor practice field, we just have to take that with a grain of salt and improve as we can.
“The coaching staff is young but hungry. They seem to be real knowledgeable about the makeup of the kids and what needs to happen and are eager for structure and to learn.”
Ware will be stepping into unfamiliar territory as a coach in the Alabama Independent School Association. The AISA classification for football is determined by male enrollment, which makes an all-male Valiant Cross out of proportion to larger schools with similar male enrollment.
“We’re not AAA in any stretch of the imagination,” Ware said. “But that’s not something we’re going to focus on. We’re just trying to be the best that we can be. Then everything else will fall into place.
“You take what you can get. We can’t go out and sign an NIL deal or go to the transfer portal for kids. We’re going to put the best 11 on the field, that’s all I know how to do. I can’t play what I don’t have, I can’t wish for what I want.”
Perry, meanwhile, will have huge shoes to fill in trying to find a community coach as knowledgeable and experienced. Ware is the latest in a long string of St. James football assistants that have either retired or left for head coaching positions, including Craig Duncan (2012-14), Nelson Hall (2012-17), Spence McCracken (2012-17), Aubrey Blackwell (2013-14) and Tommy Goodson (2016-18).
“There aren’t many Larry Wares out there,” Perry noted, “but we’ll do our due diligence and find somebody who can come in and add value to our program.”