'He lost the locker room': New Taylor County football coach Belser quits after players protest

The Bulldogs' players had several issues with Maurice Belser that they voiced in a one-on-one meeting before it ultimately boiled over Sunday night

Brian Miller
Tallahassee Democrat

Hot and tense.

That was the description provided about the atmosphere at Sunday night’s emergency meeting called for Taylor County’s football team.

What happened at the end left the Bulldogs without a head coach heading into their Week 1 regular-season home game against Dixie County.

Maurice Belser, who had only been head coach and athletic director for a matter of seven weeks, quit after players publicly protested his coaching methodology and treatment of players over summer workouts and in the first weeks of organized practice.

“He said, ‘You want me to leave? If you want me to leave, I’m gone,’” said Taylor County’s long-time de facto team mom and sideline photographer Amy Kallschmidt-Sadler, who was in attendance. “It was not good.”

New Taylor County coach Maurice Belser talks to his team as Chiles beat Taylor County 28-0 during a one-half scrimmage, part of a referee clinic, on Aug. 10, 2019 at Chiles

Anatomy of a break-up

Belser, who was a 1992 national-champion offensive lineman at Alabama and coached by the great Gene Stallings, has had several coaching stints in his home state of Alabama as well as in Florida. All of them have been short.

In 2002 and 2003, Belser was in Aliceville, Ala. From 2004 to 2005, he went 7-13 as the coach of Rickards, but he left to return to Alabama as Hillcrest-Evergreen High’s football coach and athletic director.

Former Rickards athletic director Ricky Ardley told AL.com at the time of Belser’s hire that he saw him as “a young, energetic coach. We thought he would be good for the players, a good role model.”

After going 1-8 with the Raiders in 2005, Belser left and Ardley said, “He kind of left us hanging. That was not good form.”

Belser lasted four years at Hillcrest-Evergreen, producing a record of 8-32. At the end of his last season there, parents and fans of Hillcrest’s program went before the local school board to express their concerns about Belser and he was subsequently removed from his position.

Belser then resurfaced in Florida at Moore Haven (2010-11), and in 2016 he was hired in Naples by Lely High, which had just fired a popular coach. Belser quit in spring 2017, telling the Naples Daily News at the time that he had never been accepted and “it was time to move out of the way and let those guys find a better fit for them.”

New Lely football head coach Maurice Belser looks on as players do stretches in the gym during the first day of fall football practice on Monday, August 1, 2016.

He returned to Alabama to coach Tanner High but lasted just one season – a 3-8 record which was the school’s first losing season in 15 years. Belser was subsequently hired by Taylor County in July after five-year Bulldogs head coach Tanner Jones left for Cairo High in Georgia.

Taylor County football booster club president Joseph Proenza has seen his share of coaching changes during his time growing up in Perry.

Proenza is a 2007 alumnus who played under three coaches in four years, and he coached afterward with the Bulldogs for five years under the likes of Shane Boggs and Steve Price. He currently works in Perry as a salesman and general manager with industrial supply company Fastenal and this is his sixth year as Taylor County football’s booster club president.

“We have always had an issue with keeping coaches, and a lot of the people that have left would tell you a major factor is lack of administrative support,” Proenza said. “I’ve wanted to make this a job people want to be a part of and stay in, not just a stepping stone.”

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Proenza blasted the Belser hire as a “backdoor” move, aided by administration that pushed out Jones and brought in a coach they knew from previous stints in Leon County.

“I saw the writing on the wall from Day 1, but in the booster club you do it for the kids and put your feelings aside to do what's right,” Proenza said. “But the way it unfolded, it started from the beginning with the principal (Charles Finley) and Belser working together. The hiring committee was hand-picked. It wasn’t diverse. He didn’t use any locals or have booster representation. It was a one-sided vote and he hired who he wanted.”

Said Kallschmidt-Sadler: “I don’t feel (everyone) really gave him a chance, but with all the background he has, why give him the job?”

New Taylor County coach Maurice Belser watches his team as Chiles beat Taylor County 28-0 during a one-half scrimmage, part of a referee clinic, on Aug. 10, 2019 at Chiles

Player protest

At the beginning of the summer, both parents and players signed a contract Belser presented that listed certain things that would be expected of them: Held to a certain GPA, to be accountable to practice, and so on.

“Coming into a new environment, people need to understand the different policies, and I’m a guy that wants to do things right,” Belser told the Democrat two weeks ago. “It’s things like having rules so you know where your kids are after a game. It’s on the field, lining up and running a certain play the way we want so it doesn’t lead to a bad play.

“Moving into the job isn’t a big deal, the big deal is getting kids, parents, and community bought into the things we’re trying to do.”

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But the issue took a turn when, during the third week of summer workouts, players say Belser kicked three senior players off the team who missed a camp in Steinhatchee because they had jobs.

At Sunday night’s emergency meeting, senior Robert Glanton spoke up. Glanton is a star player who was a first-team All-Big Bend performer last season at quarterback, receiver and defensive back.

Taylor County senior defensive back Robert Glanton (14) takes a breather as Chiles beat Taylor County 28-0 during a one-half scrimmage, part of a referee clinic, on Aug. 10, 2019 at Chiles

He holds a 4.4 GPA, scored 22 on his ACT, and has college offers from Yale, Columbia, Harvard, and Wake Forest, among others. Glanton reclassified this summer as a senior because he has all his academics in order to graduate.

“I would classify myself as a leader, but I was speaking on our behalf,” Glanton told the Democrat. “It wasn’t an issue I had personally but one we had collectively.

“We went to him as players and as a team before it even got to this. We addressed him by ourselves and he still didn’t respect where we were coming from and wasn’t going to change what he was doing. If we’d have continued with how things were going, there would have been even more problems. We felt we had to do something.”

Taylor County's Robert Glanton prepares to receive a snap near the goal line during the Bulldogs' 35-6 win over Williston.

After the three senior players were not allowed to rejoin the team despite having been in the program since sixth grade, it caused a fracture between coach and players.

Glanton and his team said they tried to resolve the situation by meeting with Belser and asking him to let them play. Also at issue was mandatory workouts at 6:30 a.m. before school, followed by practice after both school and study hall. According to Glanton, players were on campus for over 12 hours.

They asked for a reduction in morning workouts to simply Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday while guaranteeing 100-percent participation. Belser declined on all requests.

“From a football perspective, he did a good job getting in a college-readiness program,” Glanton said. “But there were things he did that were not good.

“He kicked off three potential starting seniors because they were working. These are kids that come from single-parent households and need to work to provide for themselves. They didn’t have the luxury not to work. We were hot about that. We begged him to let them back on, but he was unsympathetic.”

New Lely coach Maurice Belser looks on as the Trojans took on Cape Coral-Island Coast in the team's preseason Kickoff Classic game at Trojan Stadium on Friday, August 19, 2016.

The final straw came just hours before Taylor County was supposed to play Chiefland on Friday in a preseason game.

During the pregame meal in the cafeteria, kicker Irving Arzate had forgotten his cleats and his mother was in the parking lot with them. He got up to get them but was, according to players, yelled at by Belser and then kicked off the team publicly.

“He said, ‘We don’t need you, get out of here.’ He went over the line,” Glanton said. “Taylor County, we’re a small community and everyone has stuck together since we were kids. We didn’t want a dictator, but he was a dictator.”

Taylor County Bulldog wide receiver Robert Glanton (14) as the Taylor County Bulldogs play the Florida High Seminoles in a Region 1-3A final on Friday, Nov. 23, 2018.

The fallout

Sunday afternoon, the players met and were considering boycotting the week leading up to the Bulldogs’ first game.

Proenza was part of a group of parents that talked that action down, and instead opted for attending Sunday night’s meeting. Then two assistant coaches were reportedly fired.

“He lost the locker room,” Proenza said. “The players played Friday for the school and the community, but they said they weren’t coming back if things didn’t change.

“They called the meeting, they voiced their opinions and how they felt. They didn’t like how he was treating the team, how he talked down to them, degraded and cursed them. But he would never meet them in the middle on anything.”

Taylor County's Robert Glanton (14) and  Zoe Roberts (6) celebrate a Bulldogs touchdown with one of their coaches during a Region 1-3A final at Florida High on Friday, Nov. 23, 2018.

When Belser announced he was out, the players reportedly celebrated. They also said they were speaking for assistant coaches that didn’t feel they could voice their own displeasure for fear of losing their jobs.

“I think the players will rally around each other and the assistants,” Proenza said. “I won’t say it will be a great year, but it will be better than what people think it could be. I think it will be a better season than if Belser had stayed. He lost the locker room, so it was going to get progressively worse every week.”

In tears, Kallschmidt-Sadler expressed concern over what this might do to Taylor County and the future of its athletics programs as it looks for coaches.

But Glanton felt the issue had been resolved.

“I don’t feel like it’s a big problem,” Glanton said. “Our assistants are all from Taylor County, they know us personally, they know our personnel and they know their football. Now that we have this behind us, I feel we have a better chance to have a successful season.”

Maurice Belser reached out to the Democrat on Monday afternoon after taking the time to gather his thoughts and make sure he wasn't speaking from pure emotion. We will have more on follow-up with Belser about his side of this story. Here's part of what he said:

“In every job, I truly believe coaching is a ministry for me. I can help to change lives,” Belser told the Democrat. “I tell you, the kids that receive it and are open to do it the way I ask, learn to work hard and become disciplined, they have all benefited. They are the ones that give me a chance long enough to teach them the difference between right and wrong. I don’t care about records and that stuff. In my past, I haven’t lit it up. I take jobs many other coaches don’t take. There wasn’t a long line of guys that wanted to work at Taylor County or Lely.

“I want to find somewhere to change lives where people want to receive it. I feel like I’ve been called to the high school environment. It’s frustrating, but I don’t feel like I’ve failed at it. I just haven’t done a very good job of finding the place where they’re willing to accept it.”

In a statement to the Taylor County community on Facebook, principal Charles Finley said: “This is an extremely emotional time for all those involved. We understand the concern that students, parents, and community members may share. While this is still a very new event, members of TCHS leadership are available to guide those with sincere inquiries . . . Moving forward, there is nothing more important than upholding the high expectations that we have set for our students and our school community.”

Local broadcast station WTXL has reported the two fired assistant coaches have been reinstated. Superintendent Danny Glover told WTXL, “It's been tough on the entire district. The timing is not good. But these kids are resilient, they rally, they want to play football. At (Monday) morning workouts, they had 55 (players), the most they had all year. So that's a good sign for us moving into today.”

An interim head coach for the Bulldogs' football team has not yet been named. There is no word yet as to what will happen with Taylor County's athletic director position.

Please check back with Tallahassee.com on this developing story.