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Friday, Oct. 30, 2009

Mike Fields notebook: Oct. 30

Motivational hits, misses

A few decades ago a high school football coach in Western Kentucky feigned a heart attack just before halftime of a big game, and an ambulance whisked him off to a hospital. Just as the coach hoped, his players rallied in the second half to win for their fallen leader. (I can't remember whether the coach was fired for his reprehensible ploy.)

That's an extreme example of what football coaches might do to motivate their teams. Here are a few more palatable, and light-hearted, ways some Kentucky coaches have fired up and/or rewarded their players, or succumbed to their own superstitions:

■ When Tom Larkey was at Rockcastle County in the early 1990s and getting ready to face heavily favored Danville in the playoffs, he told his players that if they won, he would climb up the goal post and sing Wooly Bully to celebrate the upset. "I had sung the song at a karaoke contest at the Chicken Festival in London the year before," Larkey said. Alas, Danville won and Larkey didn't get to warble. "I was pretty sure I wouldn't have to," added Larkey, who now coaches Harlan County.

■ In one of his first seasons at Prestonsburg, Bill Letton was afraid his team would have a letdown against an overmatched opponent. To make the point that his Blackcats needed to "drop the hammer" on the other team, somebody painted a helmet to look like the opponent's helmet. In the locker room before the game, Prestonsburg assistant John DeRossett slammed the helmet with a sledge hammer. "None of us were aware of the physics behind what was about to happen," Letton wrote in an e-mail message. "The helmet compressed like a golf ball on impact, and recoiled violently." It struck Letton on the chin, and his teeth cut into his lower lip. "It was the middle of the second quarter before I could join the team on the field in my blood-stained white shirt," Letton remembered. "One official did comment that it must've been a heck of a speech." Letton, now at Lexington Catholic, said that was his "first and last foray into the world of motivational tactics."

■ Every time Lexington Christian has posted a shutout this season, the players have been treated to cookies or brownies baked by Patsy Graham, wife of Eagles assistant Ray Graham. One treat after the first shutout, two treats after the second, etc. LCA's players probably got a sugar rush after they blanked Fairview for their fourth goose egg in a row last week. Ray Graham wishes he had thought of that tasty technique when he was an assistant at Rowan County in 1981. Graham promised to use the same math in eating raw eggs for shutouts. But he didn't expect the Vikings to ring up seven of them, which added up to 28 eggs consumed overall. "I can still remember eating seven of them after the Lewis County game," he said. "The kids were going nuts, and I was not certain I was going to get them down."

■ Bell County Coach Dudley Hilton used to pass through the gym on game days and got in the habit of trying to kick a basketball through the hoop from mid-court. If he made one, he knew his Bobcats were going to win that night in football. He got pretty adept at it, but one time it took him a couple of hours to succeed. "My leg was so sore I could hardly walk," he said. "So I started not going through the gym."

■ Dale Mueller recalled that before Highlands played Covington Catholic in 1995, Bluebirds assistant Jim "Red" Dougherty had the players' moms write letters to their sons. He gave the players the letters to read in the locker room before the game. "Red Dog" then had the players stuff the letters inside their helmets as they went out the door. Highlands won, of course. Mueller said Dougherty was "the most motivating person I have ever known." (Dougherty died in 1996 at age 72.)

■ In a pre-game pep talk before a showdown with an undefeated opponent a few years ago, St. Xavier Coach Mike Glaser told his players he wanted them to "cut out the heart" of the other team by winning. As Glaser spoke, he pulled out a cow's heart from under his jacket. (A local butcher had supplied the organ.) "The kids went nuts when I held it up," Glaser said. "They left the locker room high-fiving the heart."