I once had the opportunity to attend the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas in its production of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. It is one of my favorite pieces of music, dating from the time that I was in the Harding University chorus that participated with the premier of the Arkansas Symphony's 1976-1977 concert season in presenting the Ninth.
This particular piece of music is considerably complicated being a symphony anyway and it has with it a large choral segment with the whole thing taking close to a couple of hours to run through. Watching the conductor at the concert in Fayetteville go through his gyrations, facial expressions, and jumps around the podium, it made me think of some athletic coaches I have witnessed in their attempts to get the best from those in their charge.
The author of the Ninth symphony, Ludwig von Beethoven, was no ordinary soul. He was a world renowned composer before he wrote the Ninth, what some say (what I say) was his greatest achievement. The most interesting thing to me was that he composed it all after he was stricken with deafness. Deaf as in he couldn't hear the music he wrote and was writing.
Beethoven so thoroughly knew and understood every aspect, no matter how small, of everything musical, that he was able to "know" what it would sound like. To put it another way, he was one with his music. I have read some biographies of Beethoven who lamented the fact that the poor man never got to hear the greatest of his works. As for me, I think he did hear it, so complex was his brain and manner of thought.
So why the headline about Beethoven, the coach? I got to thinking about how anyone dealing with other people has to be a master of a lot of things in order to be successful. An NFL head coach who doesn't possess at least a little of the mastery and determination that Beethoven had would often become one of those NFL coaches as in "Not For Long" coaches.
For that matter, football coaches of any level have to be aware of a lot of things in a lot of ways. One of the reasons I grew to really like football was its complexity as well as its simplicity. I didn't play football myself as my doctor would not sign the form, so ended up on the sidelines as a supporter. The more I knew about the game, the more I liked it. Having a Hall of Fame coach at our school to look up to, and to be coached by him in other sports (for me, track) was an experience that has a lot to do with the direction of my life.
Had Beethoven been a football coach, he would have been one of those who would not only demand the best from his players, he would have expected it. From every player on every level, to each and everyone that would have had an effect or bearing on the outcome of their efforts, he would have been so "in their face."
Demanding and expecting the best from their players is a trait that not all coaches share. Being able to show their charges what their best could be, and then showing them how to get there is the hallmark of a successful coach and not all men/women can do that.
This fall, we will have new leadership in the football program with a new head coach, and new defensive coaches with the resignation of Stephen Neal and Asa Poteete. They were not only good coaches, they were good men. They had an excellent run these past few years with a won/loss record the envy of the 4A-1 district as well as nearly all other 4A leagues in the state, a league Pea Ridge has now grown out of.
New Blackhawk football coaches are taking the reins with the daunting task of beginning competition in 5A level football. The coaching hires for the past several years have been uniformly good and there is every reason to believe that the best men available to head the program have been located and secured. Going from the biggest school in the conference to the smallest will be tough, as it was when the Hawks first ventured into 4A.
The nick of time
This was something I wrote eight years ago when the indoor athletics facility was first opened. A lot of things have transpired since that day, most of them great things. I wrote in anticipation of the 2012 football season when training started in August of that year.
I don't know if something that happened 11 months ago could be considered to be in "the nick of time" but the multi-purpose athletic building on the Pea Ridge campus has turned out to be more of a blessing with each month that passes.
This week is the first official time for high school football to begin in earnest. Lots of athletes, both boys and girls, have been putting in considerable time with off season drills, camps and weight lifting sessions. Football boys have been engaged in Monday night 7 on 7 passing competitions for the past three weeks.
As long as I have been a fan of football, (since the seventh grade in 1966), I am aware that there is perhaps no sport as physically demanding as the initial weeks of a football season. It comes in the hottest time of the year, with long practices usually twice a day until the beginning of the academic school year.
Back in the day, when high schoolers had those first few days of practice, I really don't recall that the heat was all that much of a problem. The players were thirsty most of the time but got water during breaks. Perhaps the biggest "advantage" that my generation had was that almost none of us lived in air conditioned houses. When it was 95 degrees outside, it was close to that in my room in the back of the house although I did have a nice fan that moved back and forth to move the air around.
Since we were always warm or hot in the summer, we drank lots and lots of water. Not because it was our favorite but that it was free. My mom kept a garden hose out in the yard but it wasn't to water the lawn, it was to water the kids. Drinking sodas cost money, like 10 cents for a 6 oz. bottle, and not that many of my friends drank that much. With lots of colas having a direct effect on people, kids that drank few cola drinks were better hydrated than kids who chugged a lot of them.
Fast forward to the 2000s, and the great majority of folks live in air conditioned houses. Instead of the little 6 oz. bottles that I drank as a kid, 20 oz. bottles are available everywhere and most restaurants have an "all-you-can-drink" policy. With kids having little exposure to heat and humidity combined with the small amount of water most kids consume these days, there are a great many youths who are on a risky path to be involved in demanding outdoor sports in August.
Most folks know of the late Kendrick Fincher, a Rogers eighth-grade football player who died in his first week of football practice. Having just moved here from the northwestern part of the United States, Fincher had developed no tolerance for the heat and humidity associated with the early days of junior high football in Arkansas. In those days, coaches were big on saying "suck it up!" "man up!" when players were feeling some distress. As a result in this case, Fincher had a fatal heat stroke.
Since I have suffered a heat stroke myself, I know exactly what they feel like. I ran an 8-mile practice run in August on a hilly course north of Searcy where I ran for Harding University's cross country team. For whatever reason, I was pumped that day to be the first one in and I got there first in 48 minutes. It was 97 degrees that day with 95% humidity and I lost 7 pounds of sweat that afternoon. The last mile I was weaving all over the road (though I didn't know it), and when I finished and stopped, it felt like millions if bugs were crawling all over my skin and I could not talk. I was in a fog for a couple of hours and I couldn't eat for a couple of days. I did take some mineral and salt tablets and drank a prodigious amount of water. I wasn't the same for a long time following that event. I didn't know until I was in a coaches clinic years later that I was most likely on the edge of buying the farm.
Like I intimated in my introduction, with the worst heat wave and drought in several decades bearing down on Benton County and most of Arkansas, our Pea Ridge Blackhawks are toiling away in the shade. The new facility, while not bringing down the temperature much, it does prevent direct sunlight from boring through our players. With plenty of water available and a capable trainer available to watch the boys, our Hawks are the best taken care of 4A boys team in the state. I really feel for the other coaches in the 4A-1 who have to deal with this record heat wave. There are lot of things that have to get done this week and the heat wave will prevent a lot of those things to take place.
Having the nice pro-turf indoors will prevent a lot injuries that other teams players will be getting while practicing on sun-hardened ground. I'm sure the less dirty laundry generated by the clean indoor turf has made many a mom happy about that.
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Editor's note: This column was first published in 2016. John McGee, an award-winning columnist, sports writer and art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, writes a regular sports column for The Times. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].
Sports on 05/27/2020