Spring 2003 - tssaa

RONNIE CARTER
A Blast from the Past...
Recently I had the very distinct privilege of meeting with five
people in my office who were there to discuss the merits of a
particular individual for nomination to the TSSAA Hall of
Fame Selection Committee. The individual we were discussing passed
away over 30 years ago and all of these people could easily be retired,
even though I don’t think any of them are even close to thinking about
retirement (well, they might be thinking about it). You have to then get
a feel of the individual that they were talking about and realize where
we were historically. The individual was born in 1895 and after
finishing college he began teaching and coaching. He coached for a
little over 30 years. His coaching career was cut short by the
following: He took time out to serve in World War I; he then took time
to serve in World War II; and finally he had to retire early because of
going blind. The last year he coached he was going blind, so he would
have a player sitting beside him on the sideline in games telling him
what was happening so he could give instructions to the player to give
to the people on the field or floor.
Now you have the setting; however, this is just the beginning. At a
time when most schools didn’t have a lot of sports, this coach had
teams in football, basketball, golf, track, baseball, girls’ basketball...
the list just keeps going on and on. He was the only coach and he
coached all of the sports. In addition, he taught physical education to
every student in the school. He started an intramural program that was
held during a one-hour lunch period each day at the school. Most of
the students who were not on athletic teams participated on intramural
teams for their class or different clubs. Every club had an intramural
team. The high school athletes were the coaches and officials. The
intramural league that occurred every day in all of the different sports
was a vicious and competitive league.
In the spring, he would go to all of the elementary schools and create
enough interest in track and field that there would be a field day with
all the students at the elementary schools participating in the different
events. I bet you can guess who did the coaching of the elementary
school students... high school student-athletes again.
There were many, many philosophical things that I learned in the
couple of hours about this particular coach. He felt very strongly that
the only way you got better in any sport was to play people better than
you were. With an enrollment of 400, he played one of the largest
schools in the state at that time for over 25 years. He won only one
game against this team, but he continued to play them every year for
one very simple reason... he thought that’s what it took to get better.
These five individuals told me about many trips the students got to
take over their high school career with the high school coach to many
different towns to see either college games, museums, etc. Some other
10
things he just did on the side with the students was that they built a
swimming pool, a nine-hole golf course, a bowling alley, and a
miniature golf course so the students had something to do in their spare
time.
As I have driven down the road a couple of times since then and
thought about the meeting with these five outstanding people, there are
a lot of things that have crossed my mind. I wonder how many
students would never have gotten to go to any of those places had it not
been for this particular high school coach. All five of the people are
successful professionals of the highest caliber. You could not have
gotten a more impressive group together. There was something said to
me in the meeting by more than one of them a couple of times. This
particular individual passed away over 30 years ago, but these
tremendously successful people, and many others just like them, won’t
let him die. You have to feel the passion felt by these people for an
individual who was a high school teacher and coach. As I thought
about it, two things have continued to cross my mind.
The first is I can’t imagine that they were inventing nearly as many
ways to solve all of our educational problems, as we seem to do today.
We go from six period schedules to block schedule, which will solve
all the world’s problems, only to go back to the conventional schedule.
We talk about year round school, all students meeting a certain
standard and passing the standardized test and now, “No Child Left
Behind.” We brag about having everyone on the same track and being
college preparatory. I really wonder if they even used the term college
preparatory back in those days at that particular school and yet I sat
talking with an optometrist, principal of a large school in another state,
etc. The reality is that no matter what we do in education and no
matter what we invent and no matter what quick fix we try to make, it
is still about people impacting people. My guess is that there was not
nearly as much available to this particular individual at that time as
there is today to our teachers and coaches. However, there was a deep,
deep caring and commitment to the task at hand. I didn’t know him,
but I can feel it through these people 30 years after he has passed away.
The other important thing that kept coming home was the impact that
coaches can make on people. They are in a very unique position and
the impact can be so strong, either for good or bad. I have left the name
of the coach out on purpose because this is really not an article dealing
specifically with this individual. I think he represents an era and a time
that we can only talk about now. Tom Brokaw would have loved this
guy. He takes time from all he did in this particular town for students
to serve in two world wars and yet, I think he represents what a lot of
coaches would have been like at that particular time. It is a model that
still needs to be held up for all of us.