Photo by Michael Wade
Vestavia Hills head coach Buddy Anderson talks with Ben Willoughby (7) during a region game against Thompson in 2017.
It is seemingly impossible to make Buddy Anderson blush. One can try as hard as his student-athletes play for him, but in turn, Anderson will deploy the verbal equivalent of a goal line stand.
In 2016, when the Vestavia Hills High head coach won his 324th career game, passing famed University of Alabama head coach Paul “Bear” Bryant to become the winningest coach at any level of football in the state, Anderson said that didn’t make any difference. He said his roster full of student-athletes made the difference.
Oak Mountain head coach Cris Bell has said Anderson’s passion for the game and for young people is what has allowed him to have success in more than 40 seasons as a head coach. Mountain Brook head coach Chris Yeager, who has faced Anderson more than a dozen times, has said Anderson is driven by his purpose, principles and convictions. He calls Anderson’s career a calling, not a profession. He learns something with each game the Spartans and Rebels face each other.
“We trust him,” said Vestavia Hills senior tight end Michael Vice. “We all respect him. He makes us believe in the system.”
The system goes beyond one of the premier rushing attacks in Alabama high school football. It goes beyond a shotgun formation that has found popularity as more athletic quarterbacks have come through Vestavia Hills. It starts, in fact, with a foundation not necessarily built on the football field named in Anderson’s honor.
“We’re education-based. High school athletics are, to me, still are and always will be education-based,” Anderson said. “We’re educators first. We’re educating through sports, in this case through football. I grew up in a coach’s home and my father and mother both were educators. Football is just another way of educating young men about life. A lot of things that happen on the football field are just little snippets of how life will be one day.”
Anderson can’t count the number of former players that have divulged the lessons they learned while being members of the Vestavia Hills football team.
“Through football we’re teaching them life lessons,” Anderson said.
Every season, the Rebels have a motto. There has been “Respect all, fear none;” “Today, not tomorrow;” “Rise as one Rebel;” “One percent a day;” and many more. This season, the focus is “The right way.”
“Doing the right thing at the right time the right way for the right purpose,” he said. “They will hear it more than once. We will talk about doing the right thing the right way for the right reason. Repeatedly we’ll talk about it.”
High school football in recent years has become a whirlwind of scholarship offers, 7-on-7 tournaments in the summer, college visits and fancy highlights. There is more pressure on high school coaches to win and win quickly. The focus can shift from the team to the individual.
“Yes, we want to win, but we don’t want to win at the cost of doing things the wrong way,” Anderson said. “We want to do things the right way.”
Anderson said that is the philosophy he has always adopted.
“Now, we try to be hardnosed and we’re very demanding with their effort, we give our best effort in everything that we do, but there’s time for tough love and time for putting my arm around them and picking their spirits back up,” he said. “There’s a time for a little bit of everything.”
A season in Class 7A, Region 3 — arguably the most talented region in any classification — will require that “little bit of everything.” Vestavia Hills has not made the playoffs since 2015, and it will not be easy in 2018.
Seven of the Rebels’ 10 opponents made the state playoffs last year. Home region games will be Tuscaloosa County, Hewitt-Trussville and Hoover. Away region games include Spain Park, Mountain Brook, Thompson and Oak Mountain. Vestavia Hills will take on Homewood, Shades Valley and Huffman in non-region play. There are no cupcakes on that schedule, and the Rebels are up for the challenge.
“Coach Anderson tells us we are going to be the right people at the right place at the right time this year,” Vice said.
Then, Vice proved with only four words why his head coach continues to be so impactful after four decades.
“And we believe it.”
