Winning Ugly at Clayton Valley Charter: Ugly Eagles face Elk Grove in NorCal final
Sometime in the early 1970s, as legend has it, a gruff old football coach in Contra Costa County mandated his football players cut their hair and trim sideburns, to polish up a look common for the times.
The players at Clayton Valley High School rebelled. The coach then deemed his shaggy lot to no longer be the Eagles but instead the “Ugly Eagles.” The mascot stuck. It’s became a school staple. But some contend that as early as 1968, Clayton Valley coaches encouraged players to trim up, and they did, and still became Ugly.
The school in 2012 also added to its name – Clayton Valley Charter.
Sometimes Clayton Valley Charter goes by the “Uglies” for short, but most often, they have been identified with power running and championship success under fiery eighth-year coach Tim Murphy.
Clayton Valley Charter (8-5) will host Elk Grove (10-4) on its black field turf Friday night in Concord for the CIF Northern California II-AA championship game, where there may not be a single pretty pass. The programs live to mix it up in the trenches and run right, left, up the middle and repeat.
And the forecast calls for rain, setting up perfectly for a heavy day of running. CVC employs a double-wing setup, a throwback from the 1940s, and Elk Grove goes with the triple-option, a page out of the 1970s. Elk Grove’s mascot is also unique – Thundering Herd – so this makes for quite a mascot bowl.
“People in our community like Ugly Eagles, but when I’m in Oakland or Sacramento or somewhere, some look at me sideways when they put ‘Ugly’ on our shirts,” said Jim Scheible, the executive director at Clayton Valley Charter and a passionate football follower. “That mascot is a badge of honor for us. It’s about grit. We get into it. Outside the school weight room, we have a big blue and red UGLY up there.
“Now, we haven’t convinced the cheerleaders to wear Ugly yet.”
Ah, but some girls do wear some of it. Murphy also coaches the CVC girls lacrosse team that includes his daughter, Kennedy, a chip off her father’s grizzled block.
“The girls embrace the mascot, and their jerseys have Ugly in cursive,” Murphy said with a laugh. “My daughter loves it. We have fun with it.”
Murphy has made football fun at all of his stops, right on into his strength and conditioning courses on campus. He has his fourth CVC team in a NorCal final.
Murphy is a product of the Bay Area and is lifelong pals with former Folsom High coach and current Sacramento State assistant Kris Richardson, as they were teammates growing up.
Murphy in the early 1990s would visit Dave Humphers at Nevada Union to study the workings of the run-heavy wing-T. Murphy added wrinkles to the scheme and led Ygnacio Valley of Concord, Clovis East of the Fresno area and Clayton Valley Charter to first-time section-championship seasons. His teams annually rush for more than 5,000 yards. His current group has gone for nearly 4,300 yards behind 17 runners. Elk Grove has gone for 5,533 yards and 75 touchdowns behind 14 runners.
Along the way, Murphy has been cast with something of a villain role, beyond his bouncer-body look, his arm-sleeve tattoos and his point-blank opinions.
“We kind of are the villains,” Murphy said with a laugh. “Me against the world sort of thing. We have the black field, go by Ugly Eagles, been accused of running up the score. How do you do that running the ball with backups? We’ve never been accused of keeping our starters in too long, but I’d be embarrassed having a reserve running back take a knee at midfield.”
Clayton Valley Charter also hears rumblings that it recruits kids to come their way, which Murphy and Scheible dispute. They say there is a waiting list to get into the 2,200-enrollment school.
“We have 708 applications for 575 spots, and we do a blind lottery,” said Scheible, the one-time administrator at Sacramento Charter High. “We get calls about trying to get a student in, but it’s not about a kid’s grade-point average, 40 time or vertical leap. We have the benefit of being a charter but also have those restrictions.”
Clayton Valley Charter football was deemed too good, too fast and too powerful to continue residing in the Diablo Athletic League. So coaches pushed to have the Ugly Eagles pushed out, which was similar to what some Sierra Foothill League coaches a year ago wanted to do with Folsom. CVC wasn’t opposed to a move to the East Bay Athletic League but it wanted more time to schedule nonleague opponents.
In the North Coast Section Division II finals last week, CVC rolled 27-7 over Campolindo of Moraga, the school that led the realignment efforts. Murphy said beating Campolindo was “poetic justice.”
Murphy holds kids accountable. He has twice removed his leading rusher from the roster in recent years for transgressions, including blowing off practice. He booted 1,000-yard rusher Makhi Gervais this season and plugged in new Uglies.
“We haven’t missed a beat,” the coach said. “We won’t hesitate to remove a guy. We can remain successful. You lose a quarterback in the spread offense, and it’s over. For us, we keep going.”
Murphy has also used football as a way to bond and heal for his players. Ugly Eagles running back Omari Taylor lost brother Omar on Halloween night in Orinda to gun violence, a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Taylor rushed for 152 yards and two touchdowns against Campolindo. Murphy admires the kid’s resolve, of how he never missed a class or a practice.
“Our guys just find a way,” Murphy said.
This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 12:18 PM.