AlumniReview32014_0

Troy spent three years teaching at Dulles
School of Excellence, an elementary school on
Chicago’s South Side. His first year there, he met
his future wife, Dorothy; they married in 2007 and
have made their home on Chicago’s troubled
South Side for the past seven years.
In 2009, he moved on to teach at Benjamin E.
Mays Elementary Academy, coaching basketball
there and football both at the youth level and for
coach Glenn Johnson at Dunbar Vocational Career
Academy.
Race is an especially sensitive topic in Chicago,
which has a long and often troubled history
of segregation in housing and education.
But Troy has found his niche teaching and
coaching in African-American schools. He has
won over the doubters.
Glenn Johnson offered Troy a high school
coaching position when he saw how well the latter
got along with the youngsters in the “Mighty Men”
youth football program. Says Johnson, “He’s a
white guy, but it doesn’t seem like it makes a difference
as far as the kids are concerned. Troy treats
the kids like he’d treat his son.”
DeWayne Collins, now Troy’s star quarterback,
echoes that sentiment. “No matter what you’ve
been through, he’ll always help you, and never let
you quit. You (may) be feeling at your worst and not
want to play because of something that happened
at home. But somehow he always relates to it and
understands, and he gets us up and going. And we
go out and play harder than we did before.”
School principal Devon Horton, who like Johnson
and Collins is African-American, also saw
Troy’s empathy and patience in action. It was what
Horton was looking for when he was putting together
a teaching team to be tasked with turning
around Phillips.
“You could tell that he really cared about the
kids,” Horton says of Troy’s work as a kindergarten
teacher and as a grade-school basketball coach.
“You try to find someone who genuinely cares and
Troy in action with the Wendell Phillips Wildcats.
JOHN COLON
has a skill set. Troy displayed both. He took students
who’d never played the game and held them
accountable.”
Because of Wendell Phillips’ reputation as a
school with challenges, the football job didn’t
draw a lot of applicants. Even so, Horton wasn’t
going to hire just anyone. “We didn’t want to keep
up the recycling of coaches who had been at five
or six schools,” he says.
Hiring a white coach at a historically African-
American school drew some criticism,
but the Wildcats’ record
since speaks for itself – from a
2-7 first season, they were 7-3
and conference champs in 2011.
That earned Wendell Phillips a
promotion to a tougher conference
in 2012 and a 5-4 finish that
set the stage for 2013’s breakout
season. The future looks bright
for the Wildcats and their coach,
who now seems to be such an obvious match for
the challenge.
“Not to slight where I came from,” Troy says.
“But I wanted to do something ‘different.’”
He senses that’s something he has in common
with many of his students and football players. For
them, doing something different involves wanting
new experiences and better lives. More of the kids
at Wendell Phillips are now graduating; school
pride has soared, and Troy’s players are starting to
win athletic scholarships that will give them opportunities
to use football as a means to help them
further their educations.
With a shared mindset that aims for excellence
in all things, Troy McAllister and his students and
athletes are breaking down some of the barriers
that exist in Chicago.
“My big thing,” he says, “is that when kids have
a problem, I’m going to be here every day for
them. Over time, you build trust. And regardless
of race, religion or anything else, they start to
realize, ‘I can trust Coach. He’s going to be here.
He’s going to do what he can to help me.‘”
It’s that attitude and that positive approach to
his teaching and coaching that’s winning Troy
McAllister kudos.
None of this comes as a surprise to Pat Sheahan.
“When Troy was on my coaching staff here at
Queen’s, he was an excellent coach and a very giving
person. So his successes at Phillips Academy
are no surprise to me. Not only is Troy a credit to
Queen’s, he’s a credit to our football and to the
values our program stands for.”
Mike Clark, the Assistant Preps Editor at the Chicago
Sun-Times, reports on high school football and
basketball. B
“My big thing is that
when kids have a
problem, I’m going to
be here every day for
them. Over time, you
build trust.”
Issue 3, 2014 | alumnireview.queensu.ca 25