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Hernando Today

Dream Weaver

Photo by JOE DiCRISTOFALO

HCA's Head Coach David Raley has guided the Lions to a 9-0 regular season and a spot in this Saturday's Sunshine State Athletic Conference championship game versus Mount Dora Bible.

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By MARTY MILLER

Hernando Today correspondent

Published: November 13, 2008

Like a lot of people in life, Hernando Christian Academy's second-year head football coach David Raley is doing things he never thought he would.

Raley has discovered that life takes some funny directions.

He started by becoming a pastor and wound up having his 2008 football team finish the regular season undefeated.

Raley, a pastor at New Life Assembly Church in Trilby for the past 10 years and the head coach of the 9-0 HCA Lions, watched as his team edge St. Petersburg Canterbury on Nov. 1, 26-24, to finish the regular season unbeaten.

History in the making?

The Lions are attempting to become only the second team in the history of Hernando County to finish a year undefeated and untied. They're chasing the feat of the 1949 Hernando High team, which finished 10-0, under Head Coach Tom Varn.

Raley's team is completing its preparations for Saturday's first-ever Sunshine State Athletic Conference football championship game. The Lions will tangle with Mount Dora Bible at 8 p.m. at The Villages High School.

At first, Raley said he never dreamed he would ever become a minister.

"My dad is a pastor and my grandfather's a pastor, and I had no interest in doing it," recalled Raley.

He played high school football at Titusville and Milton High School as a quarterback and wide receiver. "But I was injured most of the time. Then I was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 11th grade and I went down to about 135 pounds."

It was then that Raley discovered coaching.

"I've been coaching football since I was a teenager," said Raley. "I started coaching football when I was sick in the youth leagues and I've been coaching ever since."

He began coaching kids in Jacksonville and then went to college at Auburn University.

After he graduated, his life took another turn.

"I graduated from Auburn and two weeks later I'm working at a church and I've been doing ministry my whole life," added Raley.

After being an assistant coach at Paxon and Jackson High Schools in Jacksonville, Raley got married and moved to Pensacola.

"Once my children started coming around, I coached ninth grade football at Pensacola High School and then at Marianna Middle School," Raley said. "Once my kids started getting older, I moved here to Brooksville."

Raley started working five years ago at HCA and at the start, his job had nothing to do with football.

"He was a band teacher for us when we began to put together a football team five years ago," pointed out HCA Athletic Director Mike Drummond.

When Head Coach Steve Johnson found out that Raley had coaching experience, he asked him to join his coaching staff.

"Steve Johnson is one of the few people I know who has the personality to come in and start a football program," recalled Raley. "I mean, he looks like a football player. I was his offensive and defensive coordinator for three years and then when he left, they asked me to be the interim coach. I said yes because I really didn't have anything else to do," he said.

Kids: No. 1

The reason Raley is a coach today is because of the kids.

"I've been coaching since I was 15-years old and I love the games," he explained. "We don't get paid much, it's just a stipend, but we all coach because we love the kids and love football."

After going 6-2 last year in his first year as head coach and having the interim tag taken off his position, Raley had some serious problems leading up to the 2008 football season. In all, 16 kids who played in 2007 for Hernando Christian Academy last year left the program.

"We hit a bump in the summer and things got shaken up. I didn't know what I was going to do, I didn't even know if we were going to have enough kids to have a team this year."

"I had to beg kids to stay. I had kids on this team I had to say, 'Look, I need you to stay.' Because they thought everyone else was leaving. It was really emotionally difficult because they were good friends of mine."

He also knew that he had to stay and coach because of his quarterback, David Rotteveel.

"I said no matter how I feel, I have to stay for him," Raley said. "He wants to be a pastor and he would have no place to go."

But in the end, HCA kept enough players to have a team in 2008 and everyone concerned is happy they did. Along with going 9-0, a senior offensive line has led the Lions to 10 straight wins dating back to last fall and a chance to earn their first football trophy.

"There are several reasons we're 9-0," Raley said. "One is good senior leadership. Our offensive line is all seniors and it's the culmination of five or six years of labor. I've had some of these kids since they were in eighth grade."

Another reason for the 9-0 record, according to Raley, is who they've played this year.

"Maybe the most important part of our record is playing in a league where all the schools are the same size," stressed Raley. "I don't have to play big 1A schools like Tampa Prep and Indian Rocks Christian who have 300 or 400 kids in them while we only have 105 in our school."

The other reason is the players he has along with the assembled coaching staff.

"This is a bunch of kids who don't even know about how to get a big head," he said. "They come out to play every day and the work hard. These boys have heart and besides that, I've got an excellent staff working with them."

In the end, Raley and his team will get a chance to conclude their season on a winning note Saturday going for the SSAC title. It'll be a rematch. In the previous meeting in Lake County, HCA won 29-7.

When asked what he thought would happen immediately after his team won the title game, Raley laughed. "I don't know, except probably everyone will run around trying to catch me with a cooler of Gatorade."

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