Biff poggi wealth12/17/2023 ![]() It stunk at football before 2016 (which they play in a public park to this day), and wasn't even co-ed until 1974.Įnter the Gilman crew, who not only turned SFA into a football powerhouse, but also afforded them, after a yearlong delay, Biff Poggi himself, their former head coach and-perhaps more importantly-a multimillionaire. The one private high school in Baltimore that was founded in 1828 by Servant of God Mary Elizabeth Lange, OSP, the country's first Black Mother Superior, is, in fact, not so wealthy and was founded to ( illegally) teach Black kids to read the Bible. In lieu of race-related histories to which surely no readers need too much of an introduction, I will merely note that most of the private high schools of Baltimore not founded by a venerated Black Catholic during the first 50 or so years of the United States are, in fact, White and wealthy. I know I was.Īnd, for a year and a half, I did. I suspect he and I both were supposed to attend the city's inner-city high school, which was about 40% Black. The school was 10% Black at most-including one student who may or may not have lived in-district, but certainly stood at 6'7", dominated local competition, and was certainly nothing less than a recruit. I myself attended one of the higher-quality public high schools by using an address I did not in fact live at. Occasionally a student might use an aunt or uncle's address to go to a better school (and/or team), and some might just lie altogether and hope no one finds out. If your side of town happens to have have notable athletes, you might just have a squad on your hands.Īnd generally, there was no skirting the system: you play where you live.īut even then, there were exceptions. There, you attend the school in your district. In my years growing up in Evansville, Indiana, a relatively small town of 100,000, where there are but 5 public high schools and two that are private and Catholic. Having gone their first two centuries in the tradition of most historic Black Catholic schools-quietly, and with a healthy amount of struggle-in 2016, they received the call of a lifetime.įrancis Xavier "Biff" Poggi, a White ex-Catholic from across town (yes, quite literally across the railroad tracks) had, via his former assistant coaches, offered to take over the somewhat ramshackle SFA football program.īut this group of coaches was not from just any old school. Shortly before celebrating 200 years, Baltimore's Saint Frances Academy hit a dangerous jackpot.
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