Coach Who Turned Around Morehead State Program Speaks Out

Morehead State football coach Matt Ballard thought his heart might break.

Looking at his audience at a candlelight vigil marking national child abuse prevention month, he saw too many children and adults whose lives had been shattered.

So Ballard, who makes his living teaching a game of controlled violence, decided to tell them about the uncontrolled violence of his childhood in Davidson, N.C.

“What I shared was very personal,” he said of that spring evening in Morehead. “I spoke from my heart, to let them know that I knew what they were going through. All that I tried to do was try to give the kids some hope.”

He told them about the knots still in his head from the beatings he took from his alcoholic father, a 6-foot-4, weightlifting construction contractor who threw him and his brothers through doors.

Later, he told other people about the time he heard his mother scream and found his father choking her with a telephone cord. He ran at this father, who let his mother go, then came after him, forcing Ballard to leap from a second-story window to escape.

For the 41-year-old Ballard, hope is summed up in a simple philosophy: “Whether it’s child abuse or football: Yes, you can break the cycle. You can overcome anything.”

Although he enjoys the occasional beer and has disciplined his now-16-year-old son Matthew with spankings, Ballard says he has broken the pattern of alcoholism and abuse in his family.

“I’ve just seen so much pain and anguish and hurt and fear,” he said. “You just decide to be something different. You decide you’re not that.”

In a similar way, by sheer will, Ballard turned Morehead’s football team from a perennial loser to the nation’s top non-scholarship program.

In 1994, Ballard arrived at Morehead after a successful tenure at Union College, an NAIA school in Barbourville, Ky., which he led to its first conference championship.

Morehead had just three winning seasons in 22 years and had just announced it was dropping scholarships. The program where Phil Simms honed his quarterbacking skills before going on to the NFL was widely assumed to be on the brink of extinction.

Last year, in Ballard’s fifth season, Morehead finished with a best-ever 9-2 record, nearly becoming the first non-scholarship program ever to make the I-AA playoffs. The Eagles were top-ranked among I-AA’s non-scholarship programs, and Ballard was named non-scholarship coach of the year.

He has never forgotten a booster’s comment after he took the job: “At least they can’t fire you for losing.”

“I just couldn’t believe the low expectations,” he said.

At his first team meeting, Ballard promised his players they would have fun. It was a foreign notion to a team that believed football was drudgery.

“People said, ‘What’s this guy talking about?”’ said Chris Berry, a freshman halfback in 1994.

“‘We don’t do that. We’ve got to work. We have a job to do.’

“But then guys came out and were enjoying themselves in practice every day.”