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OAK RIDGE — The three most prominent members of Oak Ridge Military Academy's coaching staff have at least one thing in common: They're working for free.

Girls basketball coach Delaney Rudd (who was introduced Monday), athletics director Otis Yelverton (who will re-launch the school's football program as head coach in the fall) and boys basketball coach Stan Kowalewski (who signed a 30-year contract Monday) are working pro bono while the school digs out of a financial hole.

"No coach here is getting a dime," Yelverton said. "It's personal."

Yelverton said the Cadets are hoping to add similarly qualified coaches for volleyball, softball and baseball in the coming weeks, but those will be paid positions. He said it currently takes 74 students for the school to break even; enrollment sits at 87 after starting the year at 53.

Yelverton, who is paid as a social studies teacher at the school, said he's been putting in about 70 hours a week there. He has seven football games scheduled for the fall and said he will easily have 40 players in time for the season. He said many will come from Guilford County, but he also expects national-caliber players from as far away as California and Texas.

Yelverton also said Nike is donating $40,000 of equipment a year to the school, including four sets of football uniforms. He said he negotiated that deal through his relationship with the University of Oregon athletics department, a multimillion-dollar benefactor of Nike through its founder, Oregon alumnus Phil Knight.

Rudd, a former Wake Forest and NBA player who runs the Lady Phoenix AAU program and the N.C. Basketball Academy at the Greensboro Sportsplex, said Oak Ridge intrigued him for the same reasons as ASVEL Lyon-Villeurbanne, the French team for which he played six seasons after leaving the NBA. Rudd passed on playing for the first-place team in France in favor of Lyon, which was 12th.

"I wanted to build something," Rudd said. "I wanted to be part of something that needed me."

The Lady Cadets only had one player with game experience this season, but Yelverton said 23 players have applied to the school in recent weeks as word of Rudd's hiring leaked.

"I'll only coach the kids who show up," Rudd said. "I'm not going to go into schools and say, 'Play for me.' That's a decision for parents and kids. If they're happy where they are, they're going to stay where they are."

Rudd, who also owns Action Promotions and Apparel in Reidsville and is president of Dreams In Motion Sports camp, said he had never been approached about a high school coaching job.

"I didn't have 10 other options," Rudd said. "Nobody else asked me."

The academy is changing to accommodate its new strategy. Female cadets will no longer be required to follow military rituals, and the school will not offer boarding as an option for female students after the 2010-11 year. Oak Ridge also is eliminating its sixth-grade program next school year and seventh grade the following year.

Kowalewski is a hedge fund manager by day whose reason for committing long-term was the exact opposite of Rudd's. Kowalewski has stayed less than three seasons at each of his last three coaching jobs.

"I'm tired of starting over again and rebuilding something from scratch," he said. "A lot of young kids are coming to our school to apply, and parents are saying, 'Are you going to be here to coach my kid in four years?' Now I can unequivocally say yes."

Contact Tom Keller at 373-7034 or tom.keller@news-record.com