NORTH LITTLE ROCK — For Central Arkansas Christian coach Tommy Shoemaker, it turned out to be not so easy to follow his mentor at Mustang Mountain.
Perhaps that’s why the 2015 season was such a special one for Shoemaker and his team.
CAC finished 11-2, the best record at the school since Tim Perry — Shoemaker’s high school coach at Alabama Christian Academy in Montgomery — led the Mustangs to a 13-2 mark in 2005. Shoemaker’s eighth CAC squad reached the Class 4A state quarterfinals, won the school’s first outright conference championship (4A-2) since 2007 and put together a 10-game winning streak.
Those statistics helped make Shoemaker the River Valley & Ozark Edition Coach of the Year for 2015.
“This was my 19th season as a head coach, and I’ve been fortunate to have teams win conference championships and even a state championship, but I told my kids this is one of my favorite teams I’ve ever had,” said Shoemaker, 47. “Going into the season, we were picked fifth in the league, and I thought, and our coaches thought, that we were better than that.
“It was just a lot of fun seeing them come together as a team, and then toward the end, they just had that attitude of when we went on the field, they just knew they were going to win. They were really confident at the end in themselves and their teammates, and they had a lot of trust in us as coaches that we were going to give them a game plan to put them in a position to win. It was a lot of fun and certainly something we’re going to try to build on.”
Shoemaker’s first seven Mustang squads went 7-4 (with a conference runner-up finish) in 2008; 5-5 in 2009 and ’10; 5-5-1 in ’11; 7-4 in ’12; 4-6 in ’13 and 6-5 in ’14.
His eight-year record at Mustang Mountain is 50-36-1. He is 3-5 in playoff games.
Perry, who also hired Shoemaker as an assistant at ACA following his graduation from Harding University, led the Mustangs to a 68-21-1 record from 2001-07, including a 15-5 playoff run that featured a state championship in 2004 (13-2) and a runner-up finish in ’05 (13-2). After a 3-7 mark in his first season, Perry’s teams won three conference championships and finished runner-up twice in the next six years.
He put CAC football on the map.
“They have a saying in coaching that you don’t ever want to follow the guy; you want to be the guy to follow [the next] guy,” Shoemaker said. “Probably in my arrogance, I thought that didn’t apply to me. I was a new guy doing things a different way.”
Perry, now coaching at Wetumpka (Alabama) High School, said he is “extremely proud” of his former player.
“I knew coming in it was a little rocky for him in the beginning,” Perry said, referring to CAC’s move to the 5A-West for a cycle early in Shoemaker’s tenure. “No one could foresee what an uphill battle that was and all the changes he went through, and to be able to persevere and have this breakout year really validates him.”
Shoemaker agreed that his early years at Mustang Mountain were tough.
“As much as anything, I think part of it was bad timing,” he said. “Part of what I was looking forward to was moving up to [Class] 5A, and at that time, our enrollment would’ve been OK for us to be in 5A. But then we had the 2008 economic crisis, and we went through a period where our enrollment wasn’t as strong, but we were still in 5A.
“There were times when I wondered if I had done the right thing.”
He said that following his first season, which he called “really tough,” he told the CAC president, Carter Lambert, “If you need to make a change, I understand.”
“If it wasn’t going to be a good fit, I didn’t want to be somewhere,” Shoemaker said. “But he was very supportive and encouraging and has been so the entire time. I’ve always been appreciative of his support, and I’ve got great coaches I work with, quality people who also are very good at what they do. It’s a huge blessing for me because it just wouldn’t get done without having men like that on my staff.”
Shoemaker said those difficult early years made the accomplishments of the 2015 Mustangs even sweeter.
“You really appreciate it when you know everything the kids have been through and the work they and the coaches have done,” he said. “We’d had some tough times and times we’d been close and couldn’t get over the hump, and we were able to do that this year. It does make you a lot more grateful when you’re able to have that kind of success.”
Looking back on his move to CAC from Harding Academy, where his 2003 squad had gone 15-0 and won a state title, Shoemaker said he thought he took some things for granted.
“I probably didn’t give much thought to winning a conference championship,” he said. “It was more like we need to win a state championship or compete for that. But we have to win conference to be able to win state championships. Now we’ve gotten over that hurdle, so it drives our kids to want to do more.”
The Mustangs opened 2015 with a 34-6 dusting of Baptist Prep and fell to Pulaski Robinson in Week 2, 55-35. From there, they reeled off 10 straight wins (including a 7-0 run through the 4A-2), most in a convincing manner: 50-14 over Valley View, 27-14 over Riverview, 17-15 at Helena-West Helena, 48-12 at Heber Springs, 42-12 against Southside Batesville, 35-8 at Lonoke, 35-7 over Newport and 47-14 at Stuttgart to end the regular season. In the playoffs, CAC beat Malvern, 42-39, and Gosnell, 41-14, before falling to Pea Ridge in the state quarterfinals, 3-0 in overtime, in a quagmire following heavy Thanksgiving-weekend rains.
Shoemaker said the turning point of the season came in the second half of the Robinson game.
“I knew then we had a chance to be good,” he said. “I was nervous every week, but these guys would just come out and play, and really, it shocked me as much as anybody how we were winning. They just kept getting more and more confidence, and then they expected to win, and win convincingly.”
He said he has many great memories of the season, including big plays when the Mustangs had to have them.
“We won a tough game at Helena,” he said. “We didn’t play well at all, but we fought through it and got a win. Another big thing was how well we played on defense. We always thought we could stop anybody we were playing, and for the most part, we were able to do that.”
Perry left Mustang Mountain following the 2007 season to join his and Shoemaker’s alma mater, Harding University. As things worked out, Perry’s protege was hired to replace him.
“That’s one of the special things about the coaching profession,” Perry said. “How in the world would we have ever known in 1985 when I met this young man, who was a junior in high school, that as everything unfolded, he would end up becoming such a tremendous coach and our paths would cross so much and what he would be able to achieve.
“I’m not just proud of him for what he’s done as a football coach. I’m prouder of the Christian man he is and the Christian husband and father and how involved he is with the church, and the type of Christian influence he is on the young men of CAC and the impact he’s having there. I’m extremely proud of him in all those areas.”
Eight years in at Mustang Mountain, Shoemaker said that looking back, he would do some things differently.
“I am a lot better coach now than I was when I got here,” he said. “When you’re in 5A and you’re outmatched and trying to figure out ways for your guys to be competitive, you have to look for everything you can. Your margin of error is so small.
“Even though our record has not been as good as what I was used to, I’m still proud of those guys who played for me and what they were able to accomplish. I know many times they overachieved, and at the end of the day, that’s what you want.
“I think this group overachieved. That also is rewarding in itself.”
Although the Mustangs graduated 13 seniors, 2016 won’t be a rebuilding year.
“We have a really good core group of juniors coming back — we’ll have 18 seniors,” Shoemaker said. “We lost a real good group of seniors who helped us get going in the right direction, but this group behind them will pick up where they left off.
“We know we’ve got to work. Nothing is given to us, but we’re real excited about it.”