After all of the issues Gray Collegiate has had with the speculation of region opponents forfeiting football games, newly established charter school American Leadership Academy has had their own challenges scraping together a schedule for their inaugural season.

It’s not quite the same situation as Gray Collegiate, as American Leadership has yet to play a game, belong in a region or even have an assigned classification. The Patriots will play the 2023 season as an “at-large” team, meaning they are not eligible for postseason play. They won’t technically field a varsity team this season, as they are slated to play a junior varsity schedule of only six games.

American Leadership head coach Robin Bacon has had some struggles trying to find opponents who will play them as well as finding teams with JV availability.

“We’ve had a lot of issues with people dropping us,” Bacon said. “The toughest thing is people are locked into two year contracts so you got to find gaps here and gaps there which we’ve been able to find a few. Obviously next year we get aligned into a region in the South Carolina high school league but this year was very difficult because of the situation where we have to deal with coming in in the middle of realignment is always difficult.”

However, they do have an official schedule now for their first team. They’ll kick off their season Sept. 7 at Irmo followed by games against Gray Collegiate, Lugoff-Elgin, Gray Collegiate again, Keenan and Calhoun County. All games will be on the road.

Bacon did have some things helping his cause to fill out a JV schedule. Given his standing as a board member of the South Carolina High School Coaches Association and the connections he’s built in the Midlands over the years, he was able to finalize certain games after experiencing some initial schedule changes throughout the summer.

However, when they finally field a varsity team and get full SCHSL membership, there is still the elephant in the room of being a charter school competing against other public schools. Bacon does believe the recent ruling involving Gray Collegiate’s forfeiting opponents not being subject to fines can set a precedent that affects them in the future even though he doesn’t see them having any advantages off the bat.

“This is football. I understand that certain people have certain situations but everybody’s different. We’re completely different than every charter school that’s out there,” Bacon said. “Not that it’s good or bad or anything else, but we’re very similar to the typical high school schedule. It’s probably more difficult to come to school here and play here because of our standards.”
Bacon went on to allude to the school’s dress code and their “2.0 policy,” which states that if a student’s GPA drops below 2, after two weeks, they’re pulled off for two weeks.

Along with the school’s standards, Bacon said that they won’t actively be recruiting players to attend their school.

“The sad thing about it is, there’s so much widespread recruiting among public schools. I can name schools, I’m not gonna do it,” Bacon claimed. “There’s widespread recruiting going on so when they use that term, we’re not in that situation and we’re never going to be like that. So the guys that know me and know the kind of person I am know that we’re going to do it the right way.”

As of now, they’re locked into their schedule and are looking forward to seeing what type of program they can build from the ground up in this first season. The team has been able to squeeze a few practices in on the practice field next to the school while construction is still being done on the turf football stadium they’ll eventually play on. So far, Bacon likes what he sees from the team he’s been able to field so far.

“I can tell you this, I’ve been really impressed with our junior and sophomore class,” Bacon said. “We don’t have a lot of juniors but the kids we got are great leaders. They work extremely hard.”