Introducing the MAC, East Tennessee’s new middle school football league

How a new middle school football league plans to fill in the gaps on and off the field in East Tennessee

Disclaimer: The publisher of BLANK has coached alongside Nathan Meeks at both West and Bearden for several years.

It may be a stretch to say that football kept Nathan Meeks alive during intense fighting in and around the Iraqi city of Fallujah back in 2005, but it certainly made his time as a U.S. Marine easier.

Meeks, a native of Middle Tennessee, joined the Marines in 2002, like so many other young men and women who watched the Twin Towers fall on Sept. 11 and felt a patriotic duty to do something. He was sent to Iraq, where Fallujah became a focal point of U.S. efforts to root out insurgents in April and November, 2004. While Meeks and his fellow Marines fought to pacify the city, life lessons from the gridiron likely played a role in his own survival, he told BLANK recently.

“It’s definitely a love you have for the game; if you compared it to music, musicians just kind of have to have that in their life, because it’s part of their DNA,” he said. “Football is the same for me, especially being overseas and using some of the life lessons you learn through football — not giving up, not quitting, just keep playing.

“That translates into life. Sometimes, the ball’s not going to bounce your way, so how are you going to react to that adversity? I think that’s the unique thing that the game of football teaches — how are you going to respond when something doesn’t go your way?”

Those life lessons are at the heart of the new Middle-school Age Conference (MAC), a new league of eight area middle school teams designed “to provide a structure through which middle school-age players develop their skills on and off the gridiron with a concentrated focus on character development, academic achievement and community service,” according to the website, www.macfootball.news. It’s born from a desire to bring a more structured approach to middle school football in East Tennessee, where a “true” middle school league doesn’t exist.

Meeks himself coaches the Bearden Middle School team, and the new conference was born from a desire to approach youth football in the same manner that 93 other counties in the state do it, Meeks said.

“Ninety-three of the 95 counties have true middle school football, but Knox is one of the only ones that doesn’t,” he said. “There’s been talk for 10 years about getting a middle school type of format for this area. This is an eight-team conference that’s kind of like the SEC East or West, in that it’s eight programs with a shared vision and a like mind, and we’re going to put together a format that plays at high school stadiums on Thursday nights. We’ll have a junior varsity and varsity format. The sixth graders will play at 6:30, followed by the varsity game at 7:30.”

The current way the county league in Knoxville is structured is around individual age groups. Outside of Knox County, the age groups are combined, and sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders are on the same team.

That, Meeks pointed out, creates a bond that transcends age differences and develops sets of players that strengthen the high school programs into which they feed.  “When seventh- and eighth-graders play together and get to high school, they’re going to be the junior and senior classes, so the sooner those kids can form relationship and friendships, it builds a stronger sense of community,” he said.

The idea behind the MAC is so much bigger than just the games, however. While the eight teams that make up the fledgling conference are feeder programs into some powerhouse high schools, not every student is going to wind up in a state championship game. Even fewer will go on to play college ball. And while it may be every kid’s dream the first time he puts on pads, NFL play is a winning lottery ticket few will ever get a chance to obtain.

Meeks and his coaching peers, whom he is quick to credit when asked about getting the league off the ground, don’t devote large chunks of their lives to the game in order to produce NFL stars. They do it because it’s a calling, and because the opportunity to shepherd young people into becoming better students, better citizens and better human beings is of greater importance than turning them into better athletes. Besides, Meeks knows from personal experience that those who truly love the game aren’t a part of it for stardom.

Meeks started playing during his seventh grade year; a broken arm sidelined him, but he picked it up again in eighth grade, playing all four years for Hillwood Comprehensive High School in Nashville.

“We were an average football team,” he said. “My senior year, we made the playoffs for the first time in 10 years. I played a little bit of everything, really — some backup quarterback, mostly strong safety and tight end.”

A scholarship led to a semester at Cumberland University in Lebanon, but he quickly realized that the NFL would forever be out of reach. Transferring to the University of Tennessee, however, he still wanted to be a part of the game, and so began volunteering for the old Inskip program that developed many of the players who would go on to take the field at Central High School. After four years in the Marines, he came back to East Tennessee, started a landscaping business and looked for opportunities to get back into coaching.

West High had just restarted its feeder program and needed a coach for the 7- and 8-year-old players. Meeks volunteered, and there he began to understand just how much bigger the game was than what took place on the field beneath the stadium lights of an autumn Friday night.

“I came back and was coaching 8-year-olds, and you kind of think, ‘Well, football is football,’ but then you realize you’re dealing with 8-year-olds, which is kind of like herding cats at that age!” he said with a laugh. “If you can get them all lined up and pointed in the same direction, you’re doing good. So I learned a thing or two at that age level. It taught me patience, because when you’re dealing with an 8-year-old, you have to kind of adapt. You can’t coach them the same as you would a high school student.

“I remember the day of our first game of the season, I got to the fields and was excited, and I saw one of our players sitting on the bleachers, crying. Bawling. And I thought, ‘Whoa, what’s going on here?’ So I asked him, ‘Hey, man, did you have a bad day at school?’ And he said, ‘No, my mom can’t come to the game.’ And I said, ‘What’s going on? Is she working?’ And he told me, ‘She went to the club last night. I don’t understand why she can do that, but she can’t come to the game.’

“That’s when it hit me — ‘Wait a minute, this is way bigger than coaching or football,’” he said. “It’s such a different responsibility.”

That responsibility is one of the reasons he stayed with those 7- and 8-year-olds as they grew older, up until their eighth grade year. When his original group of players transitioned to high school, he stayed on as the eighth grade coach and took over as the commissioner of the West feeder program until 2014, when he moved to Bearden, where he’s been ever since.

“You watch these kids grow up and go to high school and play on Friday nights or even at the collegiate level,” he said. “And a lot of them don’t ever play there, but you’ll be out to dinner or at Home Depot, and they’ll come up and shake your hand and say, ‘Hey, coach!’ To go from a little youth league kid to them being in their senior year of college, we’re having a different kind of conversation at that point. It’s more of a mentor or a friend, and it’s just extremely rewarding.”

The MAC will launch this fall with eight teams: Alcoa, coached by Mike McClurg; Carter, coached by Melvin Burns; Farragut, coached by Dee Smith; Gibbs, coached by Joe Curington; Halls, coached by Don Starnes; Hardin Valley, coached by Jason Lay; Karns, coached by Robert Daspit; and Meeks’ Bearden team. There is room for expansion, of course, but for now, the conference is composed of a representative from each school, and the even number of teams makes scheduling easier. They’ve adopted rules and bylaws and drawn out a schedule (kickoff for the new conference is Aug. 8), but the work is far from done.

“Right now, we’ve still got some behind-the-scenes work to do as far as social media and coordinating with the Scarecrow Foundation as far as our community service project,” Meeks said. “As far as the meat of the structure, it’s in place as far as what’s needed for the league to function.”

Partnering with the Scarecrow Foundation — a nonprofit, East Tennessee-based organization set up to fight hunger — “allows MAC student-athletes the opportunity to volunteer in various communities in the area and to serve the needs of others first. By doing this we are able to strengthen communities and build stronger relationships outside of athletics,” according to the MAC website. It’s part and parcel of the entire purpose of the conference: to develop players who excel off the field regardless of their athletic ability on it.

“If you’re only going to focus on wins and losses and scoreboards, then you’re missing the point of the game,” Meeks said. “We’re wanting to offer and develop and address some things outside of the game, whether it’s academics or volunteering in the community. The wins and losses are going to take care of themselves. But if you’re producing good kids, whether they (play in) high school or college or end up being a business owner or a husband or a teacher or whatever, the effects of the game last longer. If you make an effort to invest in those things, then it stays with them.”

That’s one reason Meeks and his fellow coaches pitched the idea of a new league to the high school coaches into which the new conference’s players will transition into. It was critical to receive their respective blessings, he added, because the best high school programs work closely with their feeder teams.

“Having support from the high school coaches and athletic directors has been huge. Coach Courtney at Farragut, Coach Jones at Hardin Valley, Coach Taylor at Karns, Coach Cummings at Halls and Coach Shinlever at Bearden – to name a few – really helped to make this happen.

“If you look at a four-year snapshot of youth league records, and then follow that up and look at the high school records over the next four years, it’s almost identical,” he said. “You can predict the success a high school has based on the success of the feeder program.”

Another plus for high school programs associated with the new conference is the focus on academics. MAC volunteers will provide study halls for athletes to receive classroom assistance, as well as teacher-tutors free of charge, and the athletes with the top grade point average in each grade level will be named “Academic All-Americans,” a status that qualifies them to attend the state championship game in style. In addition, the individual middle school with the highest cumulative GPA among the players will be named “Academic National Champion” and receive a banner to hang in the school. There will also be three awards given out to players demonstrating the most dedication to character, service and academics.

“There are three things that are the bedrock of the league — character, academics and community service,” Meeks said. “We really want to focus on some of the things outside of the game, because that develops character. That allows us to recognize kids that maybe aren’t the best athletes on the field but deserve as much credit and recognition. And we really want to focus on the academic side of things, because that’s what’s going to pay off much longer.

“We’re trying to hit those things outside of sports, to stress that academics come first, that putting the needs of someone else comes first. As a by-product of them doing those things, you’re going to automatically have a better athletic program.

“We’ve had tremendous support from the very beginning. Coach Curington at Gibbs made so many calls to help make this happen. Coach McClurg at Alcoa brings 27 years of wisdom. Melvin Burns at Carter, Randy Garrett at Karns and Chuck Clevenger at Hardin Valley have been commissioners in the county for nearly 10 years or better,” said Meeks. “Guys like Don Starns and Jake Bishop from Halls have also been phenomenal. We have a great deal of experience and wisdom on the leadership committee thanks to these guys,” Meeks added.

“When you pitch a new idea and vision to men like them and get their support immediately, you feel like you have created something that could become very special.”

email Steve Wildsmith at wildsmith@blanknews.com