2007

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Underwood's job was

O n 'fuesday afternoon, the Terry Underwoodera endedat East Central Com– munity Collegewith little fanfare. The situation was simple yet complicated. It's been years since Underwood produced a winner on the field at East Cen– tral. The reason he's gone are simple but the reasons for the losses are complicated and ones that whomever inherits the pro– gram will have to face. There are plenty of people "close to the program" that say it was time for Underwood to leave, that he had plenty of opportunity to be successful. For the most part, I disagree. Instead of judging Under– wood on his 2007 team, let's look at this thing from a wider prospective. After several straight losing seasons, Underwood made :.a decision a few years ago that was a risky one. He decided to go a different direction with his football program when he told offensive coordinator Tim Coats that his services were no longer needed. I don't know how this all came down and don't want to get caught up in semantics, I just know that the general con– sensus was that Coats was fired. This was a risky move, mainly due to the fact that Coats was the son of popular EC coach Teannie Coats, who had brought the program out of the wilderness in the mid 90s. Coats was a smash-mouth, option sort of offensive guy. Underwood tried to go with the trends and go with a more wide– open attack that had been so successful at Pearl River and other juco schools. He hired a young coordinator, Mike Volar– vich to run this new pass-happy offense. After Hurricane Katrina, the

first year was b~sically a do– over for the Warriors. The second year was much bet– tel: When it came right down to it. even though Underwood wanted to spread the ball out and throw,

Robbie Robertson

on third-and-one he still wanted to run the football to get a frrst down. So after two years. Volar vich was out and Underwood assumed the offensive coordina– tor duties this season. And I have to say lhat the Warriors were better on offense than they have been in some time. Unfortunately, it was some ill-timed lapses in pass defense that cost the Warriors in some big game.:;. Two plays in two games and the WarriOrs ha\ e a "'mning record this s~son. Several other things really hurt Underwood in his time at EC. The frrst. wh irh he had no control ovet~ '\Vas the competi– tion he played. In the last few years, he's had to deal with nationally ranked teams like Pearl Rive1~ Gulf Coast. and Jones. Gulf Coast was co–

national champion this yeru.: Pearl River was dominant for a stretch there and Jones is always solid. Take this year for instance, East Central could have had its best team .in years MOCRf. T and still not had any better lud against those teams. That's just :ORO the nature of the beast injun im

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CART SC01 UNIO \'\!INS SPIRI

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college athletics.

Then there is recruiting. When you look at all of the junior collefte recruiting dis·

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tricts in the state, East Central's m1y be the weakest. right next .---- ---- --

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