Tag: Central High School

Setting Goals

COMING SOON…

Iceman and I completed our hike of the John Muir Trail [Aug. 6-22]  and returned home on Saturday.  Oh, yes! We lost the permit lottery earlier this year but we took a chance and got what they call “walk-up permits.”   I’m going to write about that 200-mile hike soon, just as soon as I recover from reentry to the real world.  When I got home we had no Internet service; our home phone didn’t work; the garage door wouldn’t stay down; the grass needed cutting; the bills needing paying; Donna’s RV at Topsail Beach was leaking; you know, all the usual problems. But soon.  It was a memorable hike.

*  *  *

I was in the 9th grade, playing football at Hawthorne Junior High School in Charlotte, the first time I saw the Central High School Wildcats play the rich boys from across town, the Myers Park Mustangs.

wildcat emblemThe game was played at Memorial Stadium, then the largest stadium in Charlotte, and when the players jogged on to the field fans on both sides –about 10,000 — were on their feet, yelling. Screaming!

I wasn’t all that good at football –too small, too slow– but I vowed that by the time I was a senior I’d be out there. I’d be lining up beside my teammates, facing the ball, hands on my knees pads, ready for the signal to race down the field.

And I was.

I aimed too low.
I aimed too low.

When I was a senior I made the Wildcats’ first team kickoff and receiving teams.  [We had been moved to a new school called Garinger.]  It was a magical year — we won the North Carolina AAAA championship. When we kicked off to Myers Park I was on the field, just as I had vowed. And when the play was over I jogged to the sideline, to our bench, and sat down.

I realized right then, not years and years later — right then — that I had aimed too low.

Coming Friday: Rat Remorse, Part 1 of 3

Making Boys Into Men

When I started playing football my helmet didn’t have a face mask. I was 13 years old and I played for the Optimist Club, a club run by policemen to try to keep boys from North Charlotte off the streets and out of trouble.  Didn’t have one the next year either, when I played for Hawthorne Junior High School.

Sort of dates me, doesn’t it.

Garinger Wildcat
Garinger Wildcat

By the time I got to Central High School we had face masks but there were other differences between then and now. [I played my sophomore and junior years at Central and, when it closed, my senior year at Garinger.] When a star player was injured my senior year he was given a pain killer by the team doctor, one shot before the game and one shot at halftime, to tamp down the pain so he could play. That same thing had happened at Central, too.

I was a mediocre player, a halfback on offense, a linebacker on defense, on a really good team. Charlotte Garinger won the North Carolina high school AAAA state football championship in 1959, my senior year.

Not allowed.
Not allowed.

Back then coaches thought they could make their players tougher, make boys into men, by not letting us have water during practice no matter how hot it was or how long we’d been on the field.

In high school, two-a-day practices started on Aug. 15, a couple of weeks or so before school opened. Most days, it was so hot, especially the afternoon practice.  

Every once in a while coach would ease up a little.  He would tell the team manager to soak a towel in water and give to the players on the first team, to the starters. When they had sucked it damp and used it to wipe their faces the towel was passed down to the rest of us.

Maybe coach did it to motivate us bench warmers, to make us try harder to move up to the first team, to earn the right to a mouthful of water.

If that was his goal, he succeeded — everybody on that team wanted to be a starter.

Coming Friday: [A surprise!]