Bill Khan
Sports Scene
Courtney Hawkins has had more talented teams, teams with seemingly more promise, during his seven seasons as Beecher’s football coach.
But none achieved more than his 2012 Buccaneers, who took a season that started as one of Hawkins’ worst and turned it into his best.
Beecher reached the state semifinals for the first time, despite a 3-4 start that left it needing to win its final two regular-season games to even have a chance of making the playoffs as an extra qualifier.
Beecher had enough playoff points to make the postseason, then took full advantage once it got there. The Buccaneers beat Lutheran High School Northwest, 39-33, and Hamady, 42-7, to win their first district championship. They added a third playoff victory and their first regional title by upsetting defending state champion Nouvel Catholic Central, 19-15.
It all came to a crashing halt in the semifinal with a 54-6 loss to Detroit Loyola, but even the sting of that lopsided loss couldn’t diminish what Beecher accomplished after its season appeared to be in jeopardy with three losses in four games at midseason.
“I guess with the youth and the fact we snuck in at 5-4, it’s surprising that we went this far,” said Hawkins, a former three-sport All-Stater at Beecher who played nine seasons as a wide receiver in the NFL. “But with that being said, the way that they’ve worked and the way they’ve stayed committed, it’s been one of my best groups from that standpoint. I’ve had some groups that had more success early in the season. This team has great senior leadership. We have some young kids who are just phenomenal in terms of following the senior leaders. They’re very coachable, very good kids. This is my first year of having some kids who don’t want to play basketball. My starting quarterback, [freshman] Marcus Wright, said, ‘Coach, I’m a football player.’ We don’t get many of those here at Beecher.”
Ah, basketball — the enormous elephant in the room whenever coaches for other teams at Beecher try to persuade athletes to give their sports a try.
Beecher has won four boys’ basketball state championships, including one last March, as well as two girls’ state titles. It has a reputation as a basketball school, which is a source of pride on one hand, but a source of frustration on the other. Hawkins has beat his head against the wall trying to get some of the talented athletes on the basketball team to give football a try. He’s had only minimal success but hopes that the football team’s run to the state semifinals opens some eyes. In his role as athletic director, Hawkins emphasizes to his coaching staff that kids should be encouraged to play multiple sports.
“It’s still a struggle,” Hawkins said. “If, right now, we said there was open gym, we’d have enough kids in here to make two varsity football teams. It’s just unfortunate that some kids get caught up in,‘I want to specialize’ and thinking they’re a little better than they are and selling themselves short.”
Long playoff runs may become the norm for Beecher in the coming years. The Buccaneers had a young squad, starting two different freshmen at quarterback and playing other freshmen at key positions.
Wright eventually seized the job, showing leadership beyond his years and commanding the huddle like a senior.
“This is how I know the kids really respect him,” Hawkins said. “We always name a fifth captain. A couple of times, my senior captains I named came to me and said, ‘Put Marcus in this week.’ That hasn’t happened since I’ve been here. We let the kids pick that fifth captain; they’ve never picked a freshman.”