Owl 69/70/75
Just an old rugby coach
Posts: 80,765
Joined: Sep 2005
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I Root For: RiceBathChelsea
Location: Montgomery, TX
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RE: What grinds your gears?
(02-21-2022 08:27 AM)JRsec Wrote: (02-08-2022 08:42 AM)CliftonAve Wrote: (01-25-2022 11:52 AM)gdunn Wrote: I remember two a days when I got to high school on hot summer days... Guys would be dropping like flies. Coach would look at me and say why aren't you catching cramps or hurting. Told him I didn't know.
One of the guys said he's not putting out what I'm putting out. So the coach decided to play bull in the ring, and I was the bull the next day. After that we did all these other drills and he was on my tail making sure I was pushing hard. Again guys dropping like flies and I was still good.
He then said, son what did you do yesterday before and after practice. Well I got up and came here. Then I went to work where we built shade (I was old enough to have a real job, and I was working putting up awning at a high school) until 3. Then I went to the shop and unloaded the truck, and re-loaded for tomorrow. Left at 4 and got here so I could cool off, it's cooler here than at the shop. Practiced, then went home, cut grass and ran the weed eater for about 20 minutes. Showered, ate dinner, and went to bed.
He looked at the guy that said I hadn't been pushing.. You.. Coach I got up, came to practice, went home and played Playstation until afternoon.
Dunn, what did you eat and drink yesterday. Water, Gatorade, had a banana with a sandwich at lunch. Ate a snickers on the way to practice. We did chicken and rice last night with water and sweet tea.
You? Coach I had a burger from McDonald's. Drank cokes all day. For dinner we ordered pizza, why.
No reason.
I played football, wrestled and played baseball thru high school. Two a days was brutal, especially because I had an old school coach who believed drinking too much water and taking your helmet off would “soften you up” (the science has changed on that).
I am still Facebook friends with my high school FB coach (he is now in his 70s). The funny thing is the old guy has gotten soft in his twilight years. One of the things Coach used to harp on was scorning guys who sat out practice/games due to some ailment. As he used to say “amen, there is a big difference between playing when you hurt and being injured”. A couple years ago when that one gymnast sat out at the Olympics due to her complaints of her mental health he was on her side. He would have punished me severely and called me names you get fired for today back in the day if I told him I could not play a game due to mental health/anxiety issues.
When in High School we had a football game in a rain storm and by half time the temperature was low 20's. The puddles on the field turned to ice and our jerseys were miserable. On offense I was right tackle and on defense the nose guard. The mayor's son was left tackle and he had to block a guy who was 6'3" and maybe 300 lbs. He was slow but brutal. That was the night I learned that tears, which normally brought jeers only brought me a position change on offense when the mayor's son went crying to daddy on the sidelines about the beating the 6'3" Defensive Tackle was laying on him. Politics influenced football when the mayor called the coach over. I played Offensive Left Tackle the rest of that miserable night and I took a beating but that slow SOB never made a tackle because while I couldn't put him down he couldn't get me out of the way and the crab block was my friend all night, though the damned ground was miserable. The position change did help us, but I lost all respect for the coach!
Yes we were denied water, couldn't remove the helmet, had 2 a days in August in 100 degree heat, and were given dextrose and salt tablets as our only "relief". I was lucky I didn't get heat stroke. But all of us who endured it did build a team bond, in spite of the idiocy of it all.
That bond held on that miserable night and we won and learned a great lesson. We had each other in spite of miserable conditions, a sorry coach, politics, and frozen jerseys. We also learned afterwards just how slowly you must heat up the showers when your butt and balls are just about frozen blue. But it was my longest and most relieving post game shower ever. And it made the 3 hour ride on a school bus home bearable.
This brings back lots of memories. My first HS coach had been very successful at other places but was getting old and losing it. My second HS coach had played on Bryant's first national championship team at Alabama and we were really Baby Bama, did everything the way they did. We beat each other up in spring training, ran our butts off in two-a-days, and then when the season started we tapered way off. By mid-season we would be down to one day in pads, three days in sweats, sometimes all four days in sweats. Over 4 years we went from 3-6-1 to 8-2, and the 2 losses in the last year were both by field goals to the eventual state champion in our class (knocked us out of contention, since we were in the same district), and the #3 team in the state 2 levels up from us. He went back to Bama as an assistant, and moved into administration there when Bryant retired. The assistant to the second coach had also played for Bryant, and he and I were probably the closest. He married a girl who had recently graduated from our HS, and she ended up becoming the business manager for the country music group Alabama, so he retired from coaching to hunting and fishing. All three of those coaches have now passed, but I still stay in touch with the wives of the last two.
We never played a game in freezing rain, but we did have this one district opponent whose stadium sat in a low spot in a bend in a river, and it would get so foggy that you could barely see. We once sent in a sub, and he came back to the sideline, "Coach, I went to the wrong huddle. I can't find ours."
(This post was last modified: 02-21-2022 08:47 AM by Owl 69/70/75.)
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