0813 new coaches
SPHS Head Football Coach Shawn Raney
Age: 45
Wife: Jennifer
College days: Graduated with a mathematics degree from Northwestern Oklahoma State while starting on the football team for two years. Raney was named All-Conference at strong safety.
Coaching experience: After seven years as a high school coach in Oklahoma and two at Butler County Community College in Kansas, Raney coached defensive backs at UAB from 2004-2006. He then held the same position under Gene Chizik at Iowa State University before moving back to Birmingham to coach high school football. After one year at Oak Mountain, Raney engineered the defenses at Hoover for three years under Josh Niblett, culminating last season in a 15-0 state championship run.
Thoughts on leaving Hoover: “I love Josh [Niblett]. When you have a career change at age 40 after I got basically fired from Iowa State, that’s a hard pill to swallow. I had planned always to be a college coach, and I had reached the highest point you could reach. It was taken away from me like that. I had made a full circle in my career, which was tough to deal with.
Josh is a great Christian man, and I needed that in my life at that time. I could’ve stayed there forever with him. I enjoyed it. He’s an offensive guy, so he left us on defense alone. I could’ve stayed at Hoover and won 15 games every year, run the defense and been happy. But I had picked four schools in the area that I would’ve taken, and Spain Park was on the list.”
Hobbies outside of football: “I play golf. I shoot anywhere from 82 to a 92. I shot 88 yesterday, and I was thrilled. I just love doing that. I’ll never be good because I play for two months and then pack them up. I enjoy doing it because it’s a self-driving sport. You can always get better. You’re never happy with what you did.
I enjoy landscaping also. My best friend and I started a company at age 24 making $1,300 a week. It’s a lot of work but I enjoy it.”
Thoughts on the difference between Hoover and Spain Park: “Hoover and Spain Park are very similar. But football at Hoover is a way of life, and it’s been like that for many years. This school is new and trying to start new tradition. Spain Park doesn’t have the tradition that Hoover does. No one in the country does. Rather than being an Alabama guy, five-year-old kids growing up in Hoover want to be a Hoover Buc first. And I think that is lacking here because it is a new school. But I think we can get that established. I really do. It will just take some time.”
Chelsea Head Football Coach Chris Elmore
Age: 36
Wife: Cassandra
Children: Callie, 3, and Troy, 1.
Playing Days: Played quarterback and safety at Fort Payne.
Coaching experience: Coached nine years as offensive coordinator at Hueytown, including coaching quarterback Jameis Winston, who now plays at Florida State University.
Before he was a coach, he was a: Golf pro at an upscale country club in Cleveland, Ohio. He met Cassandra in Cleveland, and they moved to the South to coach.
What he’s learned about coaching from his father and grandfather: “What I learned from both of them, probably more than coaching, is just the kind of men they were: the character they had, how they treated people, and how when they would see former players, how their former players viewed them. The immediate respect you saw that they got. Both of them were disciplinarians and they were tough, but neither one of them were yellers or screamers and hollerers. They demanded respect in their own way, and I think their players appreciated that and loved them for it.”
