Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
He leaned over my shoulder as I hastily finished the “Louisianna Wrap” on the triple stirrups of white athletic tape I already had fashioned to the ankle. “Don’t hurry here, it’s important that you don’t get any wrinkles, or it could cause a blister.”
It occurred to me, that if Jack was looking over my shoulder, he was already finished with his ankle wrap.
It was the final exam, in my final class as an undergraduate student at the University of Wyoming. The title, “Care and Prevention of Athletic Injuries” was mundane, but the class was far from it.
I learned tremendously from mentor coaches I’ve worked with in my career, Harold Bailey, Chuck Wells, Mike Harris, Jim Kennedy, Tim Ervin, Dick Cotton, and Jerry Fullmer quickly come to mind, but Jack Aggers paved the way.
Jack was a Hot Springs County High School graduate. After graduating from the University of Wyoming in 1950, Jack spent eight years as a basketball coach at Worland and Cody High Schools.
He returned to UW in 1958, as an athletic trainer, moving quickly to head trainer. He retired in 1984, four years after I took his class.
His resume was fantastic, though he never told us about it, just made subtle comments that intrigued his students.
Jack was there for the glory years of the Wyoming football team, the Sugar Bowl, and the Fiasco Bowl (Fiesta Bowl of 1976), and was on staff for seven different football coaches.
He worked through the infamous Black 14 Incident that crippled Cowboy football for almost a decade and was a shining example of what a man, a coach, and a person who worked with young people could be.
Jacked worked the corner at Madison Square Garden in championship boxing matches. He served as a trainer on the 1979 U.S. Olympic Basketball Development Team and was a trainer at the 1965 NCAA Wrestling Championships held in Laramie on the UW Campus.
Jack dispensed knowledge, competence, and class as if it came from a firehose. He was a fascinating man.
He had opinions, strong opinions, and shared them with his athletes and with the students in his classes.
One day as we practiced the two dozen different taping jobs he required in his course we began talking about other conferences.
Arizona and Arizona State had just left the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) two years before for the greener (financially) pastures of the Pacific Athletic Conference (PAC 10.)
“I’ve been to UCLA, USC, and Stanford,” Jack said. “They don’t have any class. There were ants crawling in the visiting locker rooms, the showers didn’t work, and they were dumps. Always treat your opponents like you’d like to be treated.”
It was the Golden Rule, only applied to athletic facilities.
“Always leave a locker room cleaner than you found it,” he finished.
It was a lesson I took to heart. Throughout my 30+ year career coaching high school and middle school level teams, we always left the locker room, both home and away in spotless condition.
I once had a couple of gals who were custodians stop me during junior high football season and say, “We wish junior high football was year-round. We don’t even have to clean the locker room when you’re coaching.”
My question is why should they have to? As the boys quickly learned, I wasn’t their mom, and if it was anything less than surgical clean, they had a few sprints, laps, and additional punishment coming at the next practice.
We carried that practice to restaurants and motels we took teams to as well. I still have a few dozen thank you notes in my archives from motel managers, restaurant owners and even people who maintain highway rest stops. There’s no excuse to be a clown when representing your school and hometown.
Jack spoke often of taking care of the lowest freshman with equal care as the soon-to-be professional athlete who was the star of the team.
“You’re here to get them better, to move them to the next level,” Jack said. “Treat them all equally, and all fairly. They’re not superstars, they’re just kids.”
Procedurally, he preached speed, but quality at the same time.
Jack was the first guy I ever heard use UCLA Head Basketball Coach John Wooden’s famous quote in a casual conversation. “Be quick, but don’t hurry.”
Being quick and not hurrying is how he ended up looking over my shoulder on that ankle taping job.
We had a class of about 30 prospective men and women who were going to become high school coaches.
Jack knew the value of competition, especially with 20-somethings who were about to become varsity coaches.
He set up a bracket. Head-to-head competition, taping ankles, with Jack judging the quality on a 10-point scale. You could win the timed event, but still lose if you did a lousy taping.
I won the student competition, getting beat on time only once, but getting a 9/10 while the other guy did a sloppy job, getting just a five.
The winner had the chance to go against the great man himself.
You had to be able to complete all 24 wraps in less than a minute to pass the course.
“A timeout lasts 60 seconds,” Jack often said. “If you can’t tape an ankle, knee, hand, or anything else in a minute, that player won’t be back on the floor in time.”
I remember my winning time for an ankle at 43 seconds. Sure, I was cocky, I was 23 years old and had just won a bracket.
Another student counted down from five and Jack and I were off. My fingers blazed away on the ankle, laying out strips of tape horizontally and vertically on a guy’s foot. The ankle lock or “Louisianna Wrap” as Jack called it was next. That’s when he leaned over my shoulder to give me advice.
He’d finished in 28 seconds, and I still had the figure eight wrap remaining.
It was a learning moment.
I met Jack many years later when I attended the Big Horn Basin Coaches Bash in Thermopolis. He was an old man, confined to a wheelchair, but he was the same energetic Jack Aggers of my youth.
I was thrilled when he recognized me, and with a grin, said. “Pull it tight, you can’t have wrinkles.”
Jack passed away in 2006 from a stroke, but his influence will transcend generations.