2005 Crowley Award Winner
James Reynolds,
Detroit Martin Luther King Jr, HS Presented Jim Crowley Award
By Larry Sellers, Crowley Award Chair
James Reynolds accepted a teaching and coaching job at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in 1974. He has been there for the past 31 years and established a record of 220 wins and 101 losses. King has won seven PSL Championships at King and taken teams to the state finals twice, in 1989 and 1990. King HS has been the only PSL team to ever play in a state final game. Coach Reynolds has produced numerous All State players, 18 Dream Team All Staters, six high school All Americans and ten professional football players. 210 of Coach Reynolds players have been awarded athletic or academic scholarships to attend colleges and universities throughout the country.
Coach Reynolds has served as a member of the MHSFCA Board of Directors. He has been named Regional Coach of the Year several times and was Class A State Coach of the Year in 1989. James also coached in the MHSFCA All Star Game in 1989.
Coach Reynolds was born in Columbus, Georgia in 1945. He attended Mother Mary Mission Catholic High School just across the state line in Phenix, Alabama where he played football and basketball. When he graduated in 1963 he enrolled at the University of Dayton (Ohio) where he played freshman basketball. In 1964 James transferred to Tuskegee where he played football and was the quarterback of the 1967 unbeaten and untied champions of the South Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. At Tuskegee he met Joann Jones and, after graduation, he married her.
Coach Reynolds’ center during his senior season at Tuskegee was Dave Snead. Snead (who later became the head football coach at Detroit Central HS and then superintendant of Detroit Public Schools) was hired to coach and teach in Detroit in the fall of 1968 and recruited his buddy, James Reynolds to hire on in Detroit as well.
Coach Reynolds taught at Lessenger Middle School in Detroit from 1968-1974 while he coached at three different City League schools: Pershing under head coach Don Gorence, Central under Dave Snead, and Mackenzie under Bob Dozier.
James and Joann Reynolds have been married 36 years and have two daughters, Renae and Rhonda, and a son-in-law, Gaylon.
The MHSFCA is proud to name James Reynolds its 2005 Jim Crowley Award winner.