Hamilton High football coaches fired, but why?

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The Friday night lights were shining Friday night at Hamilton High School, but the football team took the field without their coaches.

The entire staff has been fired. The coaches say they realize they’re also mentors, and losing the team before they can even finish the season hurts.

“I’m here for my boys. It hurt, like I done shedded tears, real tears over this,” said former Hamilton coach Marlon Beckett. “I had to beg several players out there right now to play today.”

Beckett is one of the nine coaches fired after an incident in last week’s game, when Hamilton took on Sheffield.

“My athletic director at the time was going through something or whatever, came into the game upset Friday he wanted to pull certain kids” because of questions about eligibility, said former head coach Jerel Blanchard, who could not attend Friday’s game.

He says the encounter on the field centered on the athletic director, Alfred Burchett, who claimed a player was ineligible to play.

Blanchard claims he tried to calm Burchett.

“He was kinda already upset, we asked security to remove him,” Blanchard said.

That on-the-field episode ended with Hamilton forfeiting the game, handing Sheffield the win. A few days later, the district fired the coaches — and kept the athletic director.

“I wasn’t given any paperwork, I wasn’t even given a courtesy call from the principal saying, ‘Coach Blanchard we are going to have to let you go due to this, this and that,'” Blanchard said.

And this wasn’t the first time the coaches have lost their jobs.

“We’ve been coaching on pins and needles since June. We were fired in June,” Beckett said.

Beckett says they were rehired right before the Jamboree back in August

We reached out to the TSSAA about this situation. They say they have been in communication with both schools and “decisions regarding the coaching staff would have nothing to do with TSSAA.”

For now, the former coaches say they’ll continue to support the boys wherever and whenever they can as they search for answers.

“Those 30 kids that are out there right now, they made me a better man. These nine men that got fired they made me a better man,” Beckett said. “But through it all we still gone be champions and we still going to win.”

The big question is why the were coaches fired.

Coach Blanchard and others we spoke with say they want to know why there was not more of a formal investigation.

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We’ve reached out to Memphis-Shelby County Schools for comment but at this time have not heard back.

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