The height of the COVID-19 pandemic may have been four years ago, but its effects on Memphis high school football were long-lasting.
Memphis Shelby County Schools was the only district in the state to cancel seasons. The impact of a season off was felt at every level, and the Memphis high school football landscape shifted.
Whitehaven coach Rodney Saulsberry Sr. called it a “reset button.” MASE executive director Ron Gaston, a former area coach, called in a “setback.” First-year Melrose co-coach Jarrett Morrow said it “killed Memphis football.”
Four seasons later, the city is “catching back up” in the words of the 20-year veteran Saulsberry.
Three Memphis area teams, MASE, Melrose and Houston, competed at the TSSAA football championships in early December, with only MASE winning, capturing its first-ever Class 1A championship. It marked the most teams to compete at the state finals since 2016 when four teams won — Saulsberry’s 15-0 Whitehaven, Memphis East, Trezevant and Lausanne.
Houston’s first-ever 6A championship in 2023 snapped a three-year streak of no Memphis-area champions which began in 2020, the year in which only the area’s municipality and private schools competed.
“The dynamics changed,” Gaston said. “You saw a lot of kids leave (the inner city) and go to the private schools because they were playing.”
Saulsberry didn’t experience the mass exodus of players that some programs did, but the year lost affected programs and area football from little league up to high school. He argues it stretched existing gaps fueled by resource and funding differences.
“In football, you actually have to play to get better, so losing a year of growth and development affected the teaching portion of the game,” Saulsberry explained. “I think we’ve recovered pretty well. The middle schools are doing a lot better. The growth and development is catching back up.”
Perhaps football in Memphis has returned to normalcy in the years since 2020. Maybe the budding programs like those that played in Chattanooga are a sign that things are even better. Maybe it’s simply like Morrow says, that more kids — like his son Jamarion Morrow did as a senior at Melrose — are now choosing to “stay in the city.”
Nevertheless, from Midtown to Orange Mound to Germantown, the city is united — encouraging each other’s successes and the continued rise of the area’s football teams.
“It felt great to represent Memphis and the 901,” Gaston said. “It’s not about MASE, it’s about the city of Memphis.”
Memphis coaching veteran Cedric Miller and members of his MASE team ― who captured the 1A title on Dec. 6 ― stayed in Chattanooga the next day to support Melrose and Houston.
“This was about all of those inner-city schools that people have written off. This was for the whole city,” Morrow said after the team’s loss to Macon County in Melrose’s first title game appearance in 19 years.
Given the challenges faced within the Memphis area, especially when compared to football in other parts of the state, Miller credited the resiliency of the city’s coaches and players for their triumphs this season.
“We have to come out here and get it out the mud,” Miller said after his team knocked off defending champions South Pittsburg. “We don’t have the fields, we don’t have the weight rooms. People wouldn’t believe some of the stuff we go through as coaches in the city to make sure our kids are getting what they need at times.”
Weeks later, Saulsberry unknowingly referenced the same concept of “getting it out the mud,” or “making the most of what you have even when you don’t have much.”
“In the city, it’s tougher because we have so many schools, you’re cutting the pie into so many slices,” Saulsberry said. “When you have those municipalities where all the money is going to one school, they’re resourced better than we are. It’s not a complaint, it’s just the reality of things. Our job is just to continue to build,” he added. “Our kids have to be a little bit hungrier.”
That hunger, or “undenied toughness” as Miller called it, was evident throughout the season, as four state semifinalists (Fairley alongside the finalists) marked the most since five in 2019.
With this year’s three area finalists, the area’s deep 6A field and surging programs like Fairley, Southwind and others, there is reason to believe that more Memphis state finalists and/or champions could become the trend, especially with the area’s 6A group being divided between Regions 7 and 8 in the upcoming cycle.
“Whoever is the best team in West Tennessee will have a chance to get to the semifinals and that’s the way it should be,” Saulsberry said.
The coaches, and likely many outside of Memphis agree that this is a basketball city. However, the coaches will also argue that football has been and will be strong for a long time.
“I know Memphis doesn’t get a lot of love from Middle and East Tennessee and I understand because we’re a basketball city, but we play good football down in Memphis too,” Miller said.
Wendell Shepherd Jr. is The Commercial Appeal’s high school sports beat writer. Reach Wendell at wendell.shepherd@commercialappeal.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @wendellsjr_.
