Feature image Christina Kong
Piner Head Football Coach Terence Bell sat down with Michael to discuss last season’s 10-2 record, and advancing to the NCS Semi Finals, as well as the ongoing conversations with his players regarding the social justice protests that have gone on throughout the conuntry for the last three months.
Terence was just happy to be back at his alma mater of Piner High School. Bell had attended every home game for Piner of the previous season, and wanted to change the culture. It started with recruiting.
You may ask, “Isn’t that illegal?” It is in one sense, meaning it is illegal to recruit athletes to come to your school for athletic reasons. One of Bell’s Assistant Coaches, Maurice Stokes posed the question to Bell saying “Why don’t we go recruit from other sports?”
They did just that, attending many other sporting events, from basketball, to baseball, to soccer, to rugby, and finally badminton. They were able to convince some athletes to come out and be involved with the Prospectors 19 man varsity squad.
Another question I posed to Bell was about the idea of running up the score. For the record, I did not assume Piner ran up the score at any point last season, but I did bring up the fact that the lopsided scores they had could raise criticism from throughout the area about the sportsmanship of the team. His response was spot on saying “We think of it as Piner vs Piner. We aren’t paying attention to the score, no matter if we’re winning or losing. We just try to play football.”
Listen to the full interview below, or watch the video interview on YSN365 TV at 8pm.
https://anchor.fm/michael-baribault0/episodes/Conversation-with-Terence-Bell-ejfvus