Preps!
Emerson Wilson wanted an opportunity to improve himself as a football player, so when coaches from a 14-and-under youth league, the Michigan Warriors, showed up at his house and invited him to work out with the team, he jumped at the chance.
“I really didn’t go to play for them,” said Wilson. “I just went there to do drills and stuff like that after practice because I really couldn’t do it at home.”
But Wilson did play a game for the Warriors — and because of it, he has been suspended for three Ypsilanti high school games.
Since he had participated in Ypsilanti’s preseason scrimmage, Michigan High School Athletic Association rules prohibited Wilson from playing for a youth league team.
“After the first game I did with (the Warriors), they called the Ypsilanti coaches to get me suspended,” Wilson said. “I guess it was their plan to do that.”
Fred Jackson, the former long-time running backs coach at Michigan, is in his first season as Ypsilanti coach and believes he knows whom to blame for this fiasco — Belleville coach Jermain Crowell.
The Warriors are based in Belleville. They practice and play at Belleville High and are a main feeder for the Belleville program.
“The whole time Belleville was trying to talk me into coming to their school and things like that,” Wilson said. “I guess they were trying to work to get me there.”
Jackson believes this is just another way Belleville can attract football players to its school.
“They do this to make the kid ineligible and the Warriors coaches tell him he might as well go over there and play with them the rest of the season,” he said. “They play at Belleville and the next year you have him in your school and therefore you don’t have to worry about him coming to Ypsilanti and playing where he should be playing.”
Wilson, who played freshman football and ran varsity track at Ypsi last year, said he was asked to transfer to Belleville by several coaches, including Crowell.
“Yes,” he said. “He shook my hand and told me to come join them at Belleville.”
Crowell, the former defensive coordinator at Detroit Cass Tech, is in his second season at Belleville. He denied even meeting Wilson, saying it is a case of mistaken identity.
“I can guarantee you he didn’t speak to me,” Crowell said. “I found out the guy he spoke to and he spoke to him after the game. The guy that he talked to after the game, his son plays for me.”
However, even a parent asking a player to transfer schools in a violation of the MHSAA’s undue influence rule.
Crowell has been a lightning rod for undue influence innuendo. In his first year at Belleville, he had three players from Ypsilanti Lincoln transfer. Crowell denied any undue influence, saying he didn’t meet them until after they enrolled at Belleville.
Jackson said Belleville’s roster is filled with kids who don’t live in Belleville.
“People believe I have the ability to help get them in college; that’s why people come,” Crowell said. “They don’t come because I solicit them. I don’t need nobody else’s kids.”
Jackson, who left Flint Southwestern in 1979 to begin a college coaching career, said all he wants to do at Ypsilanti is coach Ypsilanti kids.
“That’s a racket within itself for little league football, the team that’s a feeder program for Belleville High School,” he said. “You know they had to tell this kid a bunch of crap to make him do it. Obviously, it’s been going on around this area and they need to be exposed.”
For his part, Wilson missed Friday’s 20-8 loss to Monroe and will miss Ypsi’s next two games as well.
“It’s betrayal,” he said. “I let a lot of people down. It was my act, it was my decision to do that. Everybody thinks it’s just three games, but to me it’s more than three games. I’m missing varsity experience. I learned it was a big mistake.”
Contact Mick McCabe: 313-223-4744 or mmccabe@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mickmccabe1