August 10, 2016
By KEITH RYAN CARTWRIGHT
Rutherford County Schools
It was more than a celebration of high school football.
For the second consecutive year, students from Eagleville School, faculty, administrators, parents and members of the community gathered at the football stadium for the annual Eagles Community Tailgate to mark the beginning of the school year.
There were hamburgers on the grill.
Cold drinks.
And high school football.
They haven’t always had high school football in Eagleville — a rural town of less than 1,000 residents — but for the past 13 years the boys of fall have been the focal point of Friday nights. And there's plenty of anticipation for the upcoming 2016 season.
“It’s a small town football atmosphere here,” said Bruce Haley, who is beginning his 34th year as an agriculture education instructor at the school. “There are a couple things that make it Eagleville: churches and schools.”
He added, “Everybody is involved.”
In the early 2000s, Haley once spoke to the Rutherford County School Board as a parent of two sons —Isaac and Lytton — and his desire for them to have the opportunity to grow up playing football, but it was the late Rhonda Holton who worked tirelessly to make football a reality.
Holton, who came to Eagleville from Chapel Hill, originally arrived as an assistant principal and later became principal.
“She couldn’t believe we didn’t have football,” recalled Haley. “That was something she took under her belt.”
Teri Cook, who along with her husband Lance, have been involved in Eagle football for the past decade, said, “(Holton) was instrumental in wanting the school to have a football team. You can have other sports and, like I said, my son (Ethan) plays those sports, but football has a unique quality that brings the community out on Friday night.”
Much like a Monday morning watercooler, the football stadium is a rally-point for Eagleville and a center-point of pride for those who call the town home.
“She’s the mother of football here,” said Bill Tollett, who succeeded Holton as principal of the only K-12 school in Rutherford County. He is a firm believer in the notion that high school football gave the town, that many would otherwise overlook, an identity of its own.
“There’s nothing like it, I’m talking on Friday nights.”
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Founded in 1832, Eagleville was originally named Manchester and didn’t take on its current name until four years later, in 1836, when the city opened its first post office.
However, the longstanding sense of pride in being from Eagleville took on new meaning in 1877 when the city agreed to become part of Rutherford County after Williamson County officials refused to build a road connecting the town with nearby Franklin.
“When we’re facing some sort of adversity, that’s when the community rallies,” said Tollett, who as soon as he arrived in Eagleville knew he would never leave.
One of the most recent adversities the 28-year educator witnessed took place earlier this year.
A group of athletic boosters raised 100% of the money needed to build an indoor hitting facility to be shared by the high school baseball and softball teams. However early in the construction phase, a storm blew in and knocked down the framework.
In a matter of minutes, more than a week’s worth of work toppled over.
After seeing news reports and social media updates, parents and community members were on hand the next morning to clean up what was left, and more importantly, recover as much of the materials as they could. Thankfully almost all of the trusses for the roof were intact.
“We had a whole crew of people here — not getting paid — dragging what was salvageable from the rubble,” Tollett recalled. “We cleaned up and just started over. The community rallies to our benefit all the time. The support has been tremendous.”
“We’re a community-driven school,” added Jason Brown, one of two assistant principals, the academic testing coordinator and athletic director at Eagleville, “so we have a lot of support from members in our community who want to see Eagleville students succeed and are willing to volunteer or support in lots of different ways. … People outside of our community see the close relationship that the school has with the community and they want that for their child.”
Located 18 miles from the town square in Murfreesboro, Eagleville is among a select group of rural schools. And its 987 students out-number the latest census figures, which listed Eagleville’s population at 655 — a growth of more than 35% since 2000.
Agriculture is a major industry in the southwest corner of Rutherford County and naturally the high school has one of the most successful FFA programs in the state.
The program is second to none, said Tollett, crediting Haley's leadership.
It would be a mistake to think the FFA program is merely preparing tomorrow’s farmers. Haley has long since been known for developing leadership skills and teaching FFA students the importance of preparation, attention to detail, work ethic and public speaking.
“That’s the main focus of the FFA now,” Haley said. “It’s not about sows, cows and plows anymore. It’s about being able to speak in front of a group, being able to go in front of an employer and making that employer understand you can’t run this business without hiring me.”
Tollett added, “(Haley) has shaped so many of the kids who come through here.”
Haley’s impact on the FFA students parallels the mission of Eagleville school, which is to “facilitate achievement of state and national standards in a focused, supportive and safe environment thus enabling our students to acquire the skills necessary to achieve post-secondary success."
Eagleville and its many programs — scholastic and extracurricular — are meant to foster creativity, enthusiasm, respect, pride, and of course, a sense of community, and as their website indicates, “achieve their full potential academically, physically, emotionally and socially.”
Being a true K-12 school, relationships among classmates as well as between parents and faculty are built early-on in the education process.
It’s a rural community school but with all the benefits of being part of a large, progressive and proactive district like Rutherford County Schools. Brown doubts other schools of its size have all the same resources as Eagleville.
There’s no denying a sense of belonging.
“They start in kindergarten and they come all the way through together,” Tollett said. “When they come into high school, you don’t have to get to know people. Everybody is already familiar with the school and familiar with the way things are done. Familiar with the tradition. Familiar with the community involvement.”
He added, “Fortunately we have a lot of people who like what we’re doing.”
While Eagleville may compete athletically against other rural schools its size, academically their test scores are comparable to any other school in Rutherford County or on a state level. In fact, their graduation rate of 99.1 percent is among the highest in the state of Tennessee.
Brown credits their success rate to a program called “VIP Time” in which each high school student is assigned an advisor.
According to Brown, time is built into student schedules for them to meet with their advisors on a daily basis. Administrators also created an online document that lists students with late or missing assignments so their advisors can work with students to keep them from falling behind.
“We have communication between the advisor and the teacher,” Brown said, “and their grades reflect that.”
In addition to the accountability factor, Brown noted that nearly every student is also involved in at least one extracurricular activity. He believes doing so creates a sense of purpose, expectation and responsibility among each student that is also reflected in their overall GPA.
Classroom size is another factor.
An average class consists of 22 or 23 students and, for the third year in a row, Brown said the graduating class of 2017 is right at 100 students.
Tollett explained that with a decade-long relationship with students, his staff has already addressed potential learning issues and attempted to “do some real problem solving” long before their senior year in high school.
They not only see students mature in the classroom, but also grow from young kids into young adults.
“We see a lot of those things and it helps us to develop a lot of these personal relationships,” said Tollett, who explained that in a K-12 environment the school experiences the trials and tribulations of each student in and out of the classroom. “Relationships with the students are key nowadays.”
In some cases, parents happen to be former classmates of some of the teachers. In fact, 12 current full-time teachers and four other full-time staff members grew up in the area, graduated from Eagleville, and after finishing college, returned to serve the school.
“Our teacher faculty is really a difference-maker because, for one reason, they come and they don’t want to leave here,” said Tollett, who declared 2016-2017 the "Year of the Teacher" in Eagleville. “We’re going to dedicate this year to the teacher and try to do as many things as we can to make it easier on them.”
Tollett, who is beginning his 28th year at the school, considers himself lucky to have started his career in education in Eagleville.
He began his tenure as a science teacher and later served as a physical education teacher. He coached three sports — volleyball, middle school and high school basketball, and baseball (and, over the years, helped out with many other sports) — before becoming assistant principal for seven years.
He’s now beginning his sixth school year as principal after succeeding Holton in 2011.
Those who have only recently met him call him Mr. Tollett, while those who have known him longest still refer to him simply as "Coach."
Instead of motivating players, nowadays he’s motivating teachers and students with a vested interest in the “success of kids.” However, his smile illustrates the much-talked about “Eagleville pride” when noting the athletic department “facilities are second to none.”
The Eagles compete in Class A athletics and students are encouraged to play multiple sports rather than focus on one sport year-round, but they begin grooming football players when they’re still in elementary school.
First-, second- and third-graders are among the students who attend pep rallies on Friday afternoon as was the case with Isaac Haley. His first introduction to playing Eagleville junior pro ball was in third grade and then he played middle school football before eventually playing for the high school team.
The younger Haley — his father Bruce is a longtime teacher at the school and his mother Ann Haley is the principal at John Colemon Elementary School — is a junior at MTSU and is returning for a second year as a volunteer football coach. He is also a defensive coordinator for the middle school team.
“It was a big deal and there was a lot of pride playing for the Eagles,” Isaac said.
He added, “I’ve come to Eagleville School basically every day of my life. I’ve been to every kind of event you can think of at Eagleville and still do. I was lucky to grow up a teacher’s son so I got to be around him. I was blessed to grow up in that environment.”
The players — not just football, but all sports — take pride in representing Eagleville.
There was a time that, like Eagleville, other rural communities in Rutherford County — Lacassas, Kittrell and Rockvale among them — used to have one school, but the high schools were consolidated in the 1970’s after Riverdale and Oakland opened in 1972.
“You have to make an effort to get here,” concluded Tollett, who said Eagleville is “fortunate” to have held on to the K-12 concept, “but once you’re here you don’t want to leave.
"The thing that sets Eagleville apart from the other nine (high schools) in the county,” Tollett continued, “has to be the small-town feel. (It’s) a little more personal, a little more individual attention and a little more time to build relationships.”
The elder Haley agreed.
Haley described the school and the town it represents as “family.”
“What kept me here all these years was the size of the school, the community and it was a good place for my children to go to school,” Haley concluded. “The school and the community kept me here. Nowhere else is there a community like Eagleville.”
PHOTO: Longtime Eagle supporter and football parent Tom Wallman, left, enjoys the annual Eagles Community Tailgate with a future Eagle. / KEITH RYAN CARTWRIGHT