Oak Ridge Military Academy has gone from nearly closing its doors due to finnancial problems to a time of rebuilding. This military high school has designed new programs to attract new student, however those programs allow students to obtain additional academic credit they need for college. About 30 students, who are not in the 100-member corps of cadets, are enrolled in the “fifth-year senior” program.

The army school has also fielded a football team, something that’s been an off-and-on proposition for the last several years. Not in a conference, the team struggled to find opponents, and with several fifth-year seniors, many people think Oak Ridge Military Academy annihilated its competition; the first three games were won with combined scores of 118-13.

Even before the homecoming game, some teams that had agreed to play the Cadets were backing out. Games with Hargrave Military Academy for Oct. 15 and Woodberry Forest Academy for Nov. 5 have been canceled.

Clint Alexander, head coach of Woodberry Forest, says his team of 15- to 17-year-olds doesn’t play post-graduate players. “I don’t feel our philosophies are the same,” he says of Oak Ridge Military Academy. “It takes time to build a winning program”, Alexander says, “something it appears the academy is trying to do in one year by recruiting talented, post-graduate players”

Oak Ridge Military Academy’s headmaster Mebane says many schools have programs that allow “reclassifying,” which allows for post-graduate players, and that the academy has no plans to change its football program.

The school is also ramping up other athletic programs with the hiring of Yelverton and coaches such as Stan Kowalewski and Delaney Rudd as its head mens and womens basketball coaches. Kowalewski and Rudd have longstanding ties to AAU basketball.

Rumors that the academy will cease to exist as a military boarding school are unfounded, Mebane says. “I can dispel any concerns that there is any talk about losing the military focus of the school,” he says. Military programs excel at exposing students to leadership – “both being led and leading,” Mebane says. “You don’t get that in secondary education these days.”