Water Damage Restoration in River Rough, MI

The two-year suspension of former Belleville football coach Jermain Crowell has expired, and he has been hired as the football coach at River Rouge, the Free Press confirmed with the school.

Crowell had been suspended by the Michigan High School Athletic Association for various violations of the undue influence rule.

Among the violations was permitting at least two players to live in his home.

Mark Uyl, director of the MHSAA, said Thursday that in his 20 years with the organization, “less than a handful’’ of coaches have been suspended for a season, much less two.

At the River Rouge school board meeting Jan. 8, the motion to hire Crowell as head coach was voted down, 5-1.

However, the motion was approved at the latest meeting.

Rouge superintendent Derrick Coleman was a strong proponent of hiring Crowell despite his past transgressions.

“Even as a district with students who we recruit, we’ve always been a place of second chances,” Coleman told the Free Press on Thursday. “I thought that in speaking with him there was a high level of contrition. He owned those things that he had done wrong. He talked about lessons learned from it.”

Crowell replaces Eric Pettway, who was in his third year as River Rouge head coach, but had been an assistant to former River Rouge coach Corey Parker for 13 years. Parker is the defensive backs coach at the University of Illinois.

Pettway has become a beloved member of the Rouge community and was highly respected in the coaching community.

Under his guidance, Rouge compiled an 18-15 record, making the state playoffs all three seasons. The Panthers won district titles the past two seasons, before losing to powerhouse Detroit King each time.

When contacted Thursday evening, Crowell hung up on a Free Press reporter seeking comment and did not return subsequent calls Thursday and Friday.

In addition to head football coach, Crowell has been hired as the district’s Trauma Informed Practitioner.

Crowell, a former defensive coordinator at Detroit Cass Tech, had tremendous success at Belleville. He compiled an 84-10 record in eight seasons, and won the Division 1 state championship with freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood in 2021. The Tigers also won the 2022 D-1 state title after Crowell was fired. Underwood enrolled at Michigan in December, and was ranked the No. 1 player in the country for the 2025 class.

Crowell attended Belleville's early December signing day ceremony for its football players, which included Underwood.

Crowell’s suspension began during the 2022 state playoffs. Assistant coach DeJuan Rogers was named interim head coach and guided the Tigers to the title that year.

Rogers, who was out of coaching last season, was added to the Belleville staff as assistant head coach and offensive coordinator prior to the 2024 state playoffs. The Tigers lost to Novi Detroit Catholic Central in the regional final, and Rogers is expected to join Crowell’s staff at Rouge.

River Rouge contacted the MHSAA in December to inform it of its interest in hiring Crowell. Since Crowell was coming off a suspension, the MHSAA put in place conditions that have to be met before the 2025 season, as it would with any coach in a similar position.

“There will be a meeting with our staff, two levels of the Coaches Advancement Program,” Uyl told the Free Press. “There will also be a tracking system for all incoming transfers that were not River Rouge students.”

That includes incoming freshmen who did not attend Rouge’s middle school.

Throughout Crowell's time at Belleville, the Tigers had a number of high-profile transfer students.

Crowell is also deeply involved with Sound Mind Sound Body Football Academy in Detroit, which involves hundreds of athletes from across the state each year, and is rumored to be a vehicle high school coaches use to meet athletes and entice them to transfer schools.

Crowell has a poor reputation in the coaching community. He was known for running up scores and rubbing opposing coaches' noses in the lopsided losses.

“The issues that people may have with Crowell,” Coleman said, “I respect them, but I don’t feel that we’ve done, as a district, anything wrong in hiring the gentleman.”

Mick McCabe is a former longtime columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at mick.mccabe11@gmail.com. Follow him on X @mickmccabe1.

Save 30% on his book, “Mick McCabe’s Golden Yearbook: 50 Great Years of Michigan’s Best High School Players, Teams & Memories,” by ordering right now at McCabe.PictorialBook.com.

The Detroit News

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is removing soil contaminated with lead and cadmium from Belanger Park, a waterfront park with a playground, picnic areas and a boat launch in the city of River Rouge.

The agency will replace the contaminated soil with clean soil and replant in the park along the Detroit River. The work started April 1 and will continue through mid-June, the EPA said in a press release.

The city of River Rouge requested environmental officials take soil samples at Belanger Park, the Great Lakes Athletic Field and John Jakubowski Park after identifying elevated lead levels, an EPA spokesperson said.

The Belanger Park soil contained lead levels higher than the EPA's safe direct contact limit. The grassy areas with elevated levels were "closed off by the city with temporary fencing until a cleanup could take place," the EPA said.

Results of soil samples taken within the first six inches of soil from the Great Lakes Athletic Field and John Jakubowski Park were within those federal safety limits, but samples collected deeper in the soil contained higher levels. The city of River Rouge and EGLE are working on "next steps" at those parks, an EPA spokesperson said.

Lead and cadmium both are heavy metals. They are more likely to be found in soil in urban areas, particularly near roadways because cars once used leaded gasoline, near buildings that used lead paint, near industrial sites and waste sites, or where contaminated fill was used to develop land.

Over time, exposure to low levels of cadmium can cause kidney disease, fragile bones and cancer. Exposure to lead can cause a host of health issues, including brain and nervous system damage and slow growth and development in children.

To reduce the risk of exposure to heavy metals, the EPA recommends washing hands and faces after encountering dirt, not allowing children to chew items that may have touched the ground and cleaning dirt from the home.

The source of the contaminants at Belanger Park is unclear, the EPA said, but may have been caused by contaminated fill material used to develop the shoreline during the early 20th century, the spokesperson said. The park is on the Detroit River.

The park is in an industrialized area. It is across the Rouge River from Zug Island, between DTE's retired coal-fired River Rouge Power Plant to the north and US Steel Corp.'s Great Lakes Works hot strip mill rolling facility to the south, which has been idle for about four years.

ckthompson@detroitnews.com