Unrivaled

 

They were from rival schools and, truth be known, they probably didn’t like each other very much.

Jon Young went to William Blount High School where he played quarterback.  He was actually the last William Blount quarterback to beat Maryville High. He would want me to tell you that.

Nick Black attended Maryville High School where he was All-State in both football and track.  He went on to play football at Clemson University. He never lost to William Blount.  He would want me to tell you that.

Jon is now Instructional Supervisor for Blount County Schools.  Prior to that, he had served as a Principal, Assistant Principal, Teacher, and Football Coach.

Nick is now a local lawyer and member of the Maryville City School Board. He hopes to be a judge someday.

Jon and Nick played against each other in high school, with Nick’s MHS team coming out on top 65-7 his senior year. Jon remembers that loss vividly.  He didn’t really care for the Rebels. And Nick didn’t care much for the Govs either.

Such are high school rivalries.  Oh…Nick is my son. And I was there for that game.

Jump ahead several years and Jon is the freshman football coach at Heritage High School. I happened to be talking to Nick about Jon during that time. “This kid Jon Young is a heck of a coach and a really super young man.”

He was impressive, even as young as he was. You could tell then that he was a good one. Calm. Inspirational. The kind of coach you want your kid to play for.

I’m not going to throw Nick under the bus here—I’ll just say that he still had a little of that high school rivalry thing in him and doubted my appraisal.

Jump ahead a few more years and they both ended up on the football coaching staff at Maryville High School under George Quarles. And that’s where the magic started.

Coaches spend a lot of time together. Jon and Nick shared a desk in the coaching office. And they became great friends—a friendship that has lasted to this day.  As Maryville’s Athletic Trainer, I got to watch the friendship develop. It was a treat for this old dad.

Oh, they still tease each other, and I know my son—he probably brings up that game his senior year from time to time. But you can tell when they’re around each other that they really like each other.

Isn’t that what it’s all about? Kids grow up in this community.  They might play little league or pee-wee football or Parks & Rec basketball together. They might attend sleepovers with their friends. They could attend the same birthday parties, have the same friends.

Then they go to different schools and end up on rival teams. Where is it written that they have to dislike each other?

I’ve always admired the Alcoa/Maryville rivalry.  Kids have friends from the other school, maybe even date someone from the other school. That doesn’t lessen the rivalry—I think it adds to it. You definitely want to win that game, regardless of how many friends you have on the other team.

That wasn’t true where I grew up. Loudon and Lenoir City hated each other. Still do. I went to Loudon and we didn’t even like Halloween, since it featured orange and black (Lenoir City’s colors). There were always fights and various shenanigans.

It doesn’t have to be that way. (I even like some people from Lenoir City now.)

So here’s the good news: Jon’s dad Ricky and I got to sit back and watch these two young men grow up, have really great families, make a difference in the community that they grew up in, and become steadfast friends.

How cool is that!

Remember where you're from

 

“Remember where you’re from.” That was the closing line for a play that my wife and I saw recently.

It was from a Barter Theater production called “Go Tell It on The Mountain.” BTW, if you haven’t been to the Barter, you should make the trip. It isn’t really expensive and you can get there in less than two and a half hours. It’s worth the trip.

The play is about life in Appalachia, provided in a series of sketches. The good and the bad.

I’m well acquainted with life in Appalachia.  I’m from a small town in rural east Tennessee. It was a great place to grow up, but there wasn’t a lot of emphasis on higher education.  At times, it seems ambition was discouraged

Yet, summers were idyllic. I lived out “in the country,” about a mile from town and my nearest friends. A bicycle allowed me to join my buddies on a wide variety of ventures.

Pick-up basketball games wherever we could find a court and a ball. Swimming in the creeks or the Tennessee River. Tennis at one of the two privately owned courts (there were no public courts). Summer Rec, run by Coach Ratledge, where we might divide up and play full baseball games.

There was no little league, no swimming pool, no outlets for all that youthful energy. We were mostly on our own. There was youth football but it was mostly just a league for anyone not yet in high school. As a 3^rd grader, I was on a team with 8^th graders. We did play a lot of backyard football games.

I’ll not belabor the point, but I was not encouraged to attend college.

But I did. And I discovered a world out there that I never even knew existed. A world of music and arts and education that I somehow figured out a way to take advantage of.

And here’s the confession—I believe I’ve been running from where I grew up ever since. I’m proud of my little hometown, but I never wanted to go back there. I wanted more for my family. I found that here.

Yet, I can’t deny that the person that I am today is due to those growing up years…due to that hometown.

I wrote recently about leadership learned in Boy Scouts. My faith is based on a foundation earned at that little Baptist church I grew up in.

High school football and Coach Ratledge changed my life forever, giving me the courage to step out of my comfort zone, teaching me the value of hard work. He taught me more about life than about football.

My first best friend Ricky Alexander and I shared many adventures. He’s still the most extraordinary outdoorsman that I’ve even known. My life-long best friend Ronnie McNabb and I were as close as brothers and are still that close.

I loved hanging out with Jimmy Greenway and Daniel Johnson on the Simpson Farm. I hauled hay, hung tobacco, hunted, fished, and did some crazy stuff.

Because of that life, that place, I grew up to be well rounded, accepting of people from all walks of life, appreciative of the outdoors, able to take care of myself. I became resourceful, creative, and curious.

“Remember where you’re from.” I think I sort of forgot that. I forgot about a world where if I did something wrong, somebody was going to call my momma.  I forgot about a world that allowed me to leave the house in the morning and go anywhere I wanted, do anything I wanted to do, as long as I was home for supper.

I forgot that this level of freedom also led to a strong sense of accountability and responsibility. I’ve since realized that the work ethic gained from working on farms, delivering newspapers, playing football, and mowing yards has served me well as an adult.

It was a great way to grow up. It was a great place to grow up.

The Little Things

 

As we get older, our world gets smaller. I stole that basic premise from another columnist but these thoughts are my own.  It’s true. Our priorities change, our aspirations shrink; we just want to live in peace. With a few good friends. And a safe place to live.

Don’t get me wrong—I still want to change the world. But maybe the part of the world that I want to change isn’t as vast as it once was. Addressing a huge audience is somehow less important than addressing the person sitting in front of me now. Maybe it’s the realization that I can impact that one person more effectively than a room full of people.

Since my college days, my personal mantra has been drawn from Robert Browning’s The Grammarian’s Funeral. One line says (sort of) “the low man aims for a hundred, his mark is soon hit. This high man aims for a million, and misses by a unit.”

Aim high and miss by just a bit and you’ve still accomplished a lot. Aim low and hit it and suddenly you’re satisfied. Even when you were capable of so much more. I’ve aimed high and it’s taken me to amazing places. Yet, my world shrinks.

As they say in sports and in love, I’ve “out-punted my coverage” in several arenas. I was never supposed to go to college but here I sit with multiple college degrees. My mother-in-law didn’t think my marriage would last but here we sit, 48+ years later.

No English teacher I ever had (except for Dr. Barrett at UT) thought I had even a hint of talent but this column puts me in the neighborhood of 2 million words published. My artistic side was limited to sketches of classroom monitors done  out of boredom but in recent years, I’ve produced several hundred paintings that some people seem to like (betcha didn’t know about that one!).

I still want to travel more, but my bucket list trip is now down to just Machu Picchu. Maybe Cinque Terre. Now that I’m in my 8^th decade, little things have become more important to me.

Like my routines. Every weekday, my routine is the same. I eat the same things for breakfast. I eat the same things for lunch (Olivia’s Old South from Chicken Salad Chick).  Same workout routine. For 25+ years, Steve Bright and I led an intrepid group of bicycle riders around Blount County every Saturday morning. The roads have gotten too crazy for that now.

Date night is the same. Chesepeake’s or Big Ed’s. Movies are mostly at home now. Even my mowing is the same. Front yard, side yard, big field, upper pasture. In that order. Squares one time, diagonals the next.

A simple ride in my truck with a grandson to play tennis is treasured. Same thing for that time with my 11 year old—he asks the most profound questions when it’s just the two of us.

One-on-one with my college girl is really special. She sat down beside me at her brother’s soccer game recently and we just talked about things. College. Life. What made her happy. It wasn’t much—just a few minutes, really, but it was more precious than gold.

I love the sameness of putting up our Christmas tree by myself, listening to the same Christmas music while doing so (Pentatonix). I love putting the colored lights on the Blue Spruce outside my bedroom door. I’ve been doing that for years.

Embrace the little things. Love the tiny episodes. Sure, we remember the big events—major accomplishments and huge milestones. We can remember when and where on those. But life is made up of precious, often brief bits of time when we can truly live in the moment. It’s taken me a lifetime to figure that one out.

Coach/Leader

 

I’ve told you several times that ideas for this space come from a lot of different places.

Matt Storm is an assistant baseball coach at MHS.  Prior to that, he had been at King’s Academy in Seymour as their Head Baseball Coach.  He’s coached at many levels and has sent a lot of baseball players on to bigger and better things.

He’s also spent a lot of time coaching youth league baseball, which led to a recent conversation he and I had.  We were both telling stories of youth coaches gone bad.  He related a couple of really horrific stories.

I’m not going to pick on baseball here. All youth sports have their stories. And I’m not going to pick on parents that coach their kid’s team.  It’s mostly dads, but both parents coach. And without them, very few sports teams could exist.

It takes a special person to coach other people’s kids. Fortunately, we’ve had quite a few of those around here. Don Sentell. Joey Winders. Rick Young. Ricky Maples.

Those were all youth football coaches. It seems like football has a bad reputation in youth sports ranks, but the vast majority of coaches that I know are genuinely interested in their players as individuals. They understand how important the role of Coach can be. They wouldn’t do it if they weren’t.

But this year, I watched a youth football coach (from another city) yell at his players, yell at the opposing players, yell at his assistant coaches, and, most of all, yell at the referees.  His tirade lasted from whistle to whistle.

Sometime in the second half, he incited several parents who then spent the rest of the game standing on the fence screaming and yelling for blood. Literally. It was awful. My son and I, along with a couple of others, escorted the referees to their vehicle, fearing for the safety. It was that bad.

But that wasn’t the worst episode I’ve ever witnessed. The worst youth sports coach I ever saw was a flag football coach.

This dad was a win-at-all-costs kind of coach.  He was all about building 9 and 10 year old “winners.” He sought to accomplish that by winning every game, preferably by a large margin.

When one of his players asked him if he could carry the ball just one time, in this, their final game (something his coach the year before had always done) this coach laughed in his face.

Laughed. Really. That youngster never considered playing football again.  I can only hope that the coach never coached again. Ever.

Sports are important. You’ll never hear me say anything else.  But when we reduce our definition of success in sports to wins and losses, we miss the point altogether.

Sports are intended to prepare young folks for adulthood.  The lessons we learn on the playing field should always lead to healthier, happier, better adjusted adults.

Don’t get me wrong—winning is good, but there is also value in adversity. For every team that wins that championship, there might be 50 that didn’t. If we ignore the true value of sport, then that championship becomes hollow.

The value of sport lies in the lessons learned. Teamwork. Discipline. Perseverance. Mental toughness. Diligence. How to lose and win with grace. The rewards of effort. Self-confidence. How to be coachable.

If your coach is not teaching the fundamentals of the game, whatever the game, you might want to look elsewhere.

Coaches, never forget the profound influence you have on your young charges. They often spend more time with you than they do their parents.  And often they will listen to you better than they will listen to their parents.