A Championship Life Forever: The Chesterfield Community High School Story 2005-2006

By Derrick Copeland SR

A Championship Life Forever: The Chesterfield Community High School Story 2005-2006-this story is about a group of high school basketball players who learn the understanding and key principles of pride, education, and winning life through the teaching at a small high school with the help, love, and passion of the founder, teachers, staff, and basketball coaches. The story will show you how young men from different walks of life came together by setting goals that enable them to activate their God-given gifts and be successful on and off the basketball court for the rest of their life. This story was seen through the eyes of the author, Derrick J. Copeland Sr., whose two sons, James and David, were a part of that great team. The story will show how young boys turn to men and brought a change to a school, basketball program, and community forever. You will learn the blueprint for living and winning a successful life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781640284623

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A

Championship Life

Forever

The Chesterfield Community High School Story 2005-2006

Derrick J. Copeland SR

ISBN 978-1-64028-461-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64028-462-3 (Digital)

Copyright © 2017 by Derrick J. Copeland SR

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

296 Chestnut Street

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

The Beginning

I am going to start this story where it really began for me, at the end of the 2004-2005 season when my son James, who played for Chesterfield Community High School boys’ varsity basketball team (a small high school in Chesterfield Virginia), lost in the regional playoff game to end the season. I was waiting for my son when I overheard James and some of the players returning next year to tell their head coach Toby Campbell that they wanted to return to the playoff and the regionals next year. Now that statement would have just gone through my good ear and out of my bad ear, but I started thinking about that statement and who was returning next year. As I looked around at the remaining players, I started to wonder if Chesterfield Community High School basketball team had enough good players coming back the next year to make it to the district high school championship game and also make it back to the high school regional championship game, since they were losing two of their best players. Phillip Smith and Jason Moore, who combined an average of 40 points a game, were leaving. Phillip Smith was a great player who was awarded the James River District Player of the Year Award, and Jason Moore, a 5'9" guard with great speed who was selected to the James River first team all-district all-star team, would be missed. Both young men were great players who were headed to college with basketball scholarships, and without them next year, I knew it would be very hard to make up the 40 points that they would be losing next year. James and the returning players had already made up their minds and set goals for the next year. They were determined to return to the regional championship next year.

Summertime, the Off Season, and the History of Chesterfield Community High School

The summer was going very well. My son James had just completed his junior year at Chesterfield Community High School, and for the first time he was happy about his school year because he passed all of his classes and for the first time he was able to complete a full year playing high school basketball. During the summer he was also working hard on his basketball game, as he was practicing and playing great basketball games with his AAU summer basketball team. For James knew he would have to step his game up next year with the loss of Philip Smith and Jason Moore.

My youngest son—David, who had just completed the eighth grade—was also having a good summer playing basketball with his AAU basketball team. David also made a name for himself playing great games with his school basketball team during the winter and during the summer. Everybody wanted to know what high school he would be attending next year. All I knew was the only thing I was looking at was David’s academic future more than his basketball future, and because of the change I saw James was making at Chesterfield Community High School, I was starting to lean toward him attending Chesterfield Community High School.

Chesterfield Community High School was once called an alternative school with no more than three hundred students during the day school and approximately three hundred students during the night school. Mr. Jamie Accashian, a former head football coach at Meadowbrook High School (a high school in the community) from 1983 to 1994, and Cheryl Chambers, who was the math lab coordinator at Chesterfield Community High School, had started the program by teaching nineteen underachieving students at Meadowbrook High School. Their goal was to start a program to help keep kids in school. With the help of Jim Porach, then the principal at Meadowbrook High School and to this day a great supporter of the program at Chesterfield Community High School, Ukrop’s Supermarkets CEO Robert S. Kraut and a private program called Communities in Schools helped build the program to where it is today.

The school within a school continues to grow and eventually moved into the old George Washington Carver High School building in Chester, Virginia. George Washington Carver High School was the only school from 1948-1970 for African American students. The George Carver High School principal was Dr. William Albert W. A. Brown from 1948-1970. Chesterfield Community High School became an alternative educational high school in 1999 and moved in to the old George Washington Carver High School building, which was closed at the time and not being used. Chesterfield Community High School now has 350 to 400 students in day and night school. The night school students are not eligible for high school sports, which make this story so amazing. Ms. Chambers says she looks at it as a ministry; she states the staff for Chesterfield Community High School is here to help and change lives.

For the students to attend Chesterfield Community High School, they must go through an application process. Students come from all over the Chesterfield County. Some of the students who attend the school had fallen behind academically at their home schools, and some of the students may have had a problem fitting into a traditional setting, causing them to act up in class or have bad attendance in school.

Ms. Barbara, the Communities in Schools coordinator, states the focus is keeping the kids interested in class and through personalized attention in smaller classes, as it helps students succeed in school and their life. The largest class has about seventeen students, and the school has the same graduation requirements and standards of learning requirements as any other high school. They also have the same standards for the athletic eligibility in the Virginia high school league. Coach Accashian, as he is called by the students, say more than 80 percent of the students graduate and go to college, and 60 percent of the students make the honor roll. Some students, after spending a year at Chesterfield Community High School, want to return to their home school, but a far, vast majority of the students stay at Chesterfield Community High School.

Student athletes are just a part of the student body at the school. Ms. Vicki Davis, who teaches English at Chesterfield Community High School, states what they get happy about is a student who makes the honor roll and comes to the honor-roll breakfast; you can see how good the students are feeling and how happy the teacher are for them.

Anthony Sally was headed for basketball stardom at L. C. Bird High School in Chesterfield County. As a freshman, he was averaging 15 points a game. As a sophomore he was playing great until he was academically ineligible at midseason. He’s stated his priorities were backward. Basketball came first, and school fell somewhere down the list. That has changed since the 6'2" senior point guard attended Chesterfield Community High School. He states it was his last hope.

Anthony Sally spent his last year before coming to Chesterfield Community High School at Mount Zion Christian Academy in Durham, North Carolina, a powerful basketball program, but Anthony felt a great need to attend Chesterfield Community High School, where he was able to work on his academics and play basketball in front of his family and friends. Anthony Sally would attend classes at Chesterfield Community from 7:15

am

to 1:50

pm

; he then would go to practice from 2

pm

to 4