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.
I sat on a little white plastic bench next to the Riverton Raiders dugout on a perfect summer afternoon six years ago.
The Raiders were hosting the Green River Knights that day, and it turned out to be a fabulous game, one of the best I’ve seen at Roy Peck Field.
That little white bench became my seat at games while I recovered from my first knee replacement surgery. I tested a new lens on my Nikon camera, and the words of Herman Boone in “Remember the Titans” came to mind.
“Yeah, this is my sanctuary right here,” head coach of the T.C. Williams Titans Herman Boone says, “All this hatred and turmoil swirling around us, but this, this is always right. Struggling, survival, victory, and defeat. It’s just a game, Doc, but I love it.”
That short scene speaks volumes to me.
The field, the gym, the track, they’ve all become my sanctuary. They are a place where I feel at home, where everything is familiar, a place where the past, the present, and the future swirl in a maelstrom of thought that is hard to sometimes understand.
Speaking to the players, joking with the umpires, and conversing with the coaches, it’s all in a day’s work at a baseball, football, or basketball game.
My very first practice as a coach in August of 1980 was on a hot summer morning in Niobrara County. I’d only been to Lusk once, during my on-site job interview back in April of that year, but it already felt like home that first day.
It was my wife Sue’s hometown, but when we returned, it seemed like mine as well.
The first away game I coached in was in Hemingford, Nebraska, against the home-standing Bobcats.
We beat those guys 13-0 on a pair of field goals and an 80-yard tight-end screen, but it was the setting sun that remains the prominent image in my mind.
Most football fields are arranged north to south. In our little corner of paradise, only Lovell and Rock Springs have east/west fields.
Hemmingford was distinctly east / west in orientation. Add the treeless expanse of wheat fields stretching to the horizon west of the stadium, and there was little to block that huge, blazing orb as it dropped from the sky.
In many stadiums, good coaches know that having the wind at your back in the fourth quarter can be the difference between victory and defeat.
In Hemmingford, the sun itself was the deciding factor in field position. We scored all three times with the sun at our back.
Jump ahead a few years, and the practices at Shoshoni were memorable sensory experiences. As the sun set, and darkness began to settle on the field, the distinct sound of other coaches’ whistles became a musical backdrop. The smell of dinner cooking in the homes near the field and the west wind that always came up in mid-October just added to it.
While football and its visceral connection to the outdoors create a sanctuary, the gym can have the same effect.
There is magic in watching a clumsy freshman finally learn how to make a left-handed layup, how to block out on a rebound, or shoot a free throw the correct way.
It’s a minor step to most people, but a coach who is dedicated to seeing his or her kids improve knows how wonderful moments like that can be.
Football and basketball practice can be fun at times, but at other times, they’re simply hard work as a good coach breaks down the session into fundamental drills. The kids may not like it, but it separates good from bad, and always pays off in the final days of the season.
Track practice isn’t quite as fun. The work never ends for the middle and long-distance runners. The technique drills never end for the hurdlers, throwers, and jumpers.
It’s always fun for the sprinters. These kids, blessed with raw talent, fast-twitch muscle, and quick turnover, don’t ever work hard. They just line up, run fast, then go home.
It’s still a sanctuary for a track coach as they watch a youngster finally three-step a full flight of hurdles. Maybe it’s watching a sophomore finally understand how lengthening the middle step in the triple jump is the difference between good and great.
Whatever practice holds, even if you have a team that can’t score in an empty gym, it’s a rewarding experience, hopefully for player and coach alike.
Sanctuaries come in many guises. To some people, it has to be inside a church, to others, only nature provides that kind of solace.
To me, after almost a half-century as a player, coach, official, and now a writer, my sanctuary has a sound, a smell, and a texture that is often hard to portray to someone else.
The smell of an old locker room that hasn’t been used for years is distinct. The squeaking sound of shoes on a properly finished gym floor is a symphony by itself.
Those squeaking shoes are the result of work the previous summer by school district maintenance staff. Most people never see it, but stripping, sanding, and refinishing a gym floor is an art. The late Cliff Stickney was a master at the old gym in Pavillion. Cliff taught me the basics as a 16-year-old summer worker. He had a good laugh the first time I pulled the lever on the orbital buffer to shine the newly cured floor and spun in circles. I was wearing just socks. There was no grip, and I wound around the buffer twice before realizing I could let the handle go and the circus would stop. Cliff patiently showed me how to tilt the buffer slightly and to let it do all the work.
The smell of a new gym finish is a promise unto itself.
There are always unexpected magic moments for a coach. Seeing the sophomore discovering his or her strength down the backstretch of the 300 hurdles is a spiritual experience.
Herman Boone had it right. When it’s played impartially, winning, losing, triumph, and tragedy are all spokes on the same wheel of the athletic world.
It’s funny where a hot, sunny day can send your thoughts, transcending the ordinary and creating a link with the immortal.