Heath Burns: Big Fan of “American Idol”
Words by Atticus Brown | Images by Ryan McGill
Tensions were high. The 18th of March was, or had been up until this point, a particularly uneventful day. Spring break was right around the corner. The corner was, in fact, that Friday: the 18th, or, considering Mr. Burns’ perspective on our sit-down interview scheduled for that day, perhaps it was myself.
Had I become the corner? Was my interview the slab of concrete standing between the newly designated coach of the Jasper High School basketball team and a lovely nine-day break?
In a literal sense, yes. So, I began to worry.
At no fault of Mr. Burns, I waited and waited – anxiously and more anxiously – in the high school’s front office for his arrival. I say at no fault of Mr. Burns because we had scheduled for our meeting to take place that afternoon at around 3 o’clock, and I had arrived about an hour too early – some time near 2 p.m. This gave me just enough time to tighten up and get in my head – panic, essentially.
Was I prepared? Were my questions engaging? Substantive? What if he doesn’t like me?
This sort of overthinking would come to define the hour and continue relentlessly until I was notified of his advent. Now at peace with myself, God, and the prospect of inevitable failure, I swiveled around in my chair – now doubtlessly covered in a liberal coating of sweat – only to be greeted by the soft countenance of my interviewee. We briefly exchanged greetings and a noticeably dank handshake before entering the conference room, reclining in our respective seats, and commencing the interview.
“Last time I saw you, you were playing tennis at Musgrove,” Coach Burns remarked.
Audibly bewildered, a high-pitched “We’ve met before?” escapes my lips. Though never formally introduced, the coach and I have known each other (or, at the very least, he has known me) for quite some time. He’s attended my tennis matches, knows everybody on the team, has met my parents, etc, etc. As he continued to list the many ways in which he was involved in my personal life, I half-expected him to offhandedly mention that he was some distant relative or perhaps even my father, but I digress.
As the conversation developed, coach – prompted to do as such – began to detail his early life and experiences as a youth in Jasper in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “It was a lot of fun. We lived in a good neighborhood in Woodland Hills off Airport Road, so there were a lot of neighborhood basketball games, baseball – football games… so I grew up in a good time here in Jasper where you could ride your bike to Airport Grocery and get Jolly Ranchers and baseball cards and collect – trade them,” he says. “It was a lot of fun.”
Burns was a two-sport varsity athlete – playing baseball under Jerry Pitts (head coach for the Walker Viking baseball team from 1989 to 1991) and basketball under Phil Schumacher (head coach for the Walker Viking basketball team from 1972 to 1997) – and attended Northwest-Shoals Community College on a baseball scholarship. Burns, however, would not stay with the Patriots for long – transferring to Huntingdon College in Montgomery just over a year later to play for the Hawks before joining Nashville’s Trevecca Trojans for their ’94-95 and ’95-96 seasons.
With an early life defined by remarkable athletic ability and a manifest attraction to all things sports, it was obvious (and in some ways inevitable) that Heath Burns would seek and eventually find a career in competition. A talented JV, varsity, and collegiate athlete, Burns could have very well been a professional baseball player, but, in his own words, “the good Lord had other plans.”
Of all the people who Burns said influenced his decision to become a coach, one name in particular stood out to me as perhaps having the greatest impact: Greg Tinker. “I had a guy that coached me in middle school who actually became one of my favorite people – his name’s Greg Tinker,” Burns said. “I watched him do it… Coach Tinker became one of those guys I looked to for advice, and I always wanted to be a coach like him. He influenced my life and a lot of other lives in some positive ways, so I wanted to be like Coach Tinker.”
And like Coach Tinker he would become.
After a brief stint as Mrs. Alana Key’s “PE aid” at Memorial Park Elementary School in 1997, Burns would go on to spend what he now considers “five of the best years of [his] life” coaching both boys’ and girls’ basketball at Townley Junior High. Five years at Townley and four years at Maddox Intermediate would equate to a nearly decade-long career as a middle school basketball coach and physical education instructor, but Heath wanted more. “I always wanted to coach… at the high school level,” he says. “My first opportunity was at Dora.”
Burns has since won a total of eight area championships, made it to the “Final Four” on four separate occasions, and even gone all the way – winning the 4A State Championship with Cordova High School their 2017-18 season. All of this in just fifteen years as a high school basketball coach for four different schools in Alabama.
That’s about all of the relevant information I could get out of Coach Burns before the conversation spiraled out of control and became a discussion of… alternative matters. I learned, for instance, that Mr. Burns recently had to move back in with his mother after purchasing a new home for his family. I also learned that, prior to his stay, Heath had never eaten a grape. His claim is as follows: “I just recently bought a new house, and, during that period, we sold ours and spent a couple months living with our [respective] parents. She lived with her’s, and I lived with my mom. Well, my mom doesn’t eat anything but cereal and grapes, and I’d never had grapes before… but, at 49 years old, I started liking grapes… I’m big into grapes now.”
I had to know. “Do you just like grapes?”
Burns’ reply: “I’ve tried apples. I like apples with salt.”
He eventually admits to liking oranges but is unable to elaborate before I withdraw two lemons from the kangaroo pocket of my hoodie and bite into the right one like an apple – presumably salted, as per Burns’ preference. It’s not long before he is eating one as well and the interview is back underway. We talk about Go-Gurt, GoGo squeeZ, and my encounter with 78 Magazine owner Al Blanton before finding our way back in the realm of produce with Heath’s declaration that he “loves carrots.”
“I absolutely just love carrots, and my wife and I… we love okra and tomatoes.”
Bringing this up, however, would prove to be a fatal error as Burns attempted for the next five minutes to recall the name of a certain restaurant that he claimed sold such victuals. During this period, Burns revealed that he near-exclusively watches television programming based on or around Vikings.
“I’m a Viking guy – I love the Vikings. ‘The Last Kingdom’, you’ve seen that? You’re not into those kind of shows?”
I answered honestly, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Understandably curious, I asked: “Is that it?” Burns’ reply: “Y’know, we watch TV. My wife makes me watch American Idol, so I’ve gotten into American Idol… now I’m a big fan of American Idol. That’s not to be published anywhere.”
Noted.
Burns never once hesitated to answer any of my questions. We spoke for an uninterrupted forty minutes and fifty-six seconds – a duration over which I realized that Heath Burns was not only a great basketball coach and a fantastic hire on the school’s behalf but an all-around stand-up guy as well.
Since the interview, I’ve encountered Coach Burns on a number of occasions. At tennis matches, prom, the grocery store—you name it, and he has, at every one of these junctures, gone out of his way to speak to me and let it be known that he thoroughly enjoyed our time together. Well, I did too, Coach, and I wish you only the best of luck with this upcoming basketball season.
Not that I think you’ll need it, of course. 78
Writer’s note: The name of the restaurant is Victoria’s, by the way. I’ll have to try it some time.