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Memorial Kids like Sinegal for Job!!!

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KFDM COOP

KFDM COOP

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From Port Arthur News.....

Coaching, politics mix for Sinegal

By Dave Rogers - The News staff writer Posted: 01/21/06 - 10:52:06 pm CST

Politics and Michael Shane Sinegal are no strangers.

Port Arthur's interim athletic director is, after all, a two-term city councilman.

And to see the rotund coach Friday night greeting parents and fellow teachers at Memorial High's basketball games at Port Arthur's Ninth Grade Campus, it was obvious that his campaign to land the job on a full-time basis was in full swing.

There was even a kickoff party of sorts. During the last period of the day, friends, family and fellow teachers gathered in his special education classroom to congratulate the ninth-grade coach on his promotion, temporary or otherwise.

"This is overwhelming," he said as people coming to the basketball games stopped to shake his hand and offer words of encouragement.

Clearly, Sinegal, a 1976 graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School who goes by his middle name, is the people's choice.

"I have people wanting me to run for mayor," he says. "But I don't think a teacher can run for mayor. I have to ask permission to leave the campus."

Not anymore.

Sinegal said he was told Friday arrangements had been made for a substitute to take over his teaching and coaching duties at the Ninth Grade Campus for as long as it takes to hire a new head coach-athletic director for the school district.

Assistant football coaches at Memorial Senior High, in limbo since Dean Colbert resigned Jan. 6, said Friday afternoon that Sinegal had not been on their campus since superintendent Willis Mackey named him interim AD Tuesday.

Nor had they heard from the coach they call "Big Sin." They had just continued following the plan Mackey gave them a week earlier: to continue an off-season program that stressed weightlifting and strength training.

Sinegal said Friday he planned to begin reporting to the high school campus Monday.

"I see this as an opportunity to try to create a positive motion to what's perceived by some as a negative," he said.

"I'm well liked by the community. That's not bragging. I had kids call me from the high school when coach Colbert resigned wanting me to take the job. I had parents call.

"When I got the call from Dr. Mackey, the kids convinced me. They wanted me to be coach."

The 48-year-old Sinegal, who didn't start teaching until his mid-30s, says he's sold on kids.

"I don't know where the district is headed, but I want to be a part of it, as an assistant principal, a head coach, an athletic director, whatever," he said.

"I have a plan."

Sinegal supporters, who touched off his campaign with letters of support in Friday's edition of The News, point to Ozen's John Clayton for proof that someone can go from ninth-grade coach to successful head coach.

Clayton made the jump last fall and led the Panthers to the second round of the playoffs.

But Clayton, a Port Arthur native like Sinegal, was a college football star in Louisiana who was drafted by the Chicago Bears.

Sinegal didn't finish his senior year on the TJ football team.

"We were pretty bad back then," he recalls of the years just before Ronnie Thompson and Todd Dodge led TJ to the state title game. "We barely won any games."

By the time Sinegal quit football he already had his first job, at Market Basket. He worked there for three years before joining an apprenticeship program run by the Sabine Area Carpenters Association.

In 1982, he graduated from the program and moved to Austin to work.

A couple of years later, he was back in the Golden Triangle, attending classes at Lamar-Beaumont. In 1988, he graduated with a criminal justice degree.

It was as a security guard for J.C. Penney in Dallas, he says, that he injured his back while catching a shoplifter. That injury, he said, led to him packing on the pounds.

In 1990, he began working as a substitute teacher in Port Arthur. Lincoln High football coach Dick Williams hired him and he was line coach for a freshman team headed up by current Ozen basketball coach Andre Boutte.

He worked from 1992 to 1998 to gain his teaching certificate in special ed.

"The school district gave me five years and I didn't do it in five years," Sinegal admits. "So I left the district in 1997."

Sort of. He worked that year for the Community In Schools program at Edison Middle School.

Sinegal says the three head coaches he has worked under -- Williams and David Suggs at Lincoln, Dean Colbert at Memorial -- all wanted him to help coach their varsity teams.

"But I chose to stay with the ninth graders," he says. "Coach Colbert called me an AD for the freshman campus. He said I was his assistant AD."

Like President Bush, Shane Sinegal says he's a unite-er, not a divider.

"The main reason I wanted to stay here was with consolidation we lost a lot of Port Acres kids, white kids," the coach says. "But I wanted to make sure kids of all ethnic groups could play.

"You can't find a kid of any race who says he was mistreated under me, and I take pride in that."

Kevin Courville, Sr., can't say enough good things about Sinegal or any Memorial coaches, for that matter.

The son of the Port Acres man, Kevin Courville, Jr., was in the first group of players to attend Memorial Ninth Grade after consolidation changed the paint job on what had been Lincoln's campus. Last fall, he was the only white player on Memorial's football team, a senior backup on the defensive line.

"Coach Sinegal, that's a wonderful person," the elder Courville said. "Out there (at the Ninth Grade Campus), he had a good coach, and he had good coaches when he hit Memorial High. My son did good. I'm proud of him."

When it comes to a coaching resume, Big Sin knows that his football background won't measure up with a lot of candidates.

But he says there's more to being a football leader than X's and O's.

"My coaching resume wouldn't be impressive versus other coaches that apply, but it's like Dick Vitale says, it's the intangibles. I think your (offensive and defensive) coordinators make or break you," he said.

"Look at Mr. Barbay in Newton (football coach Curtis Barbay), who I respect. Kids will play for Mr. Barbay because of his charisma. But his coordinators make him a state championship coach.

"The President of the United States doesn't run the United States. His cabinet runs it."

The man who many say could be mayor of Port Arthur, because he's so well-liked, isn't liked by everyone.

School board president Julia Samuels wasn't happy that Mackey, with whom she is feuding, picked Sinegal to be interim AD.

"I shared my view with the superintendent that I felt an interim AD was a distinguished position. I said to him that Mr. Sinegal has no respect for the board of trustees.

"We had a board workshop trying to get access to the property for the high school and Mr. Sinegal was advocating for one spot and he spoke very disrespectfully to the school board."

"I'm been in politics now five or six years," Sinegal says, "and I think there's a lot of politics being played these days."

But he suggested a case of mistaken identity might be more likely in this instance.

"I've never disrespected Mrs. Samuels," the coach says. "My brother Robert is very active in politics, too, and I think she gets us mixed up. I know she said I was at the noon board meeting they called a couple of weeks ago (Jan. 10), but I wasn't there. I couldn't get out school.

"She had me confused with my brother. We're both fat."

Sinegal said he first got interested in politics in the late 1990s, working behind the scenes to support Tom Gilliam and Rose Chaisson in city council races. In 2000, he first ran for city council and lost. In 2002 and 2004, he won election as an at-large councilman.

"Even though I'm on council, I don't get into politics," he says. "I don't play the game. I do what I think is right.

"I think Dr. Mackey's giving us a vision. I think if everybody gets on board and stops the petty politics, we're going to be a better district that what we've got now."

His support of Mackey could lead one to believe that Sinegal might be the superintendent's pick for the job on a permanent basis.

But the coach says he and the superintendent are far from old buddies.

"Dr. Mackey has told me he needs someone to coordinate athletics until he hires someone else," Sinegal said. "That's all I've talked with Dr. Mackey. Mrs. Gatson (assistant superintendent Jeanie Gatson) called me and we worked out the details."

Gatson said Friday Sinegal will be getting a temporary boost in pay. Currently he earns $39,816 a year as a teacher, plus $8,693.80 for being head ninth-grade coach.

"He'll get a stipend on top of that for the days he's working as athletic director," Gatson said. "But it will not be anywhere near what coach Colbert was making."

Sinegal resigned as ninth-grade coach in the fall of 2004 and had to be talked into returning by Colbert.

"I was contemplating applying for one of the assistant principal jobs at the high school to try to help with discipline," he says.

Some who know him are concerned about his health. A knee injury slowed him down in 2004 and his weight is always a concern, especially considering the stress likely to come with heading up an entire athletic program.

But Sinegal, who says he considered and dismissed the thought of a gastric bypass in favor of dieting, intends to hit the ground running Monday.

"I have the keys and I'll be going to the high school Monday morning," he says. "Scouts are coming in. I'm scheduling all the (college football) recruiters, getting ready for signing day (Feb. 1), and I'm going to be there for realignment (Feb. 2).

"Dr. Mackey has faith I can do it. I know I can.

"Whether I'm there in the fall, I don't know. Whether I'm in there in May, I don't know. I'm going to tell the coaches I'm going to work as if I'm going to be there, so whoever gets it, they won't have to do anything but walk in."

http://www.panews.com/articles/2006/01/22/sports/01news.txt

SFA85

SFA85

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Posted

I like Big Mike and so do those 100 plus freshman and more importantly, Mackey has a friend on the inside to help with keeping the kids in the program, setting up a decent non-district schedule, and aiding in the job search.....

Big Mike has a lot of friends thought the community of PA....

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