Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 13, 1994 TAG: 9411290012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DONNA ALVIS-BANKS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Ooooomph!
Bodies collide with a thud.
Brrrrring!
A whistle screeches.
G!%*#! What in the *!# was THAT?
"You might want to plug your ears up," Diane Elmassian says dryly to a reporter.
She is standing on the sidelines of Moseley Practice Field as she does every Thursday during football season. She's watching her husband, Phil, rant and rave.
Phil Elmassian, defensive coordinator for the Hokies, is doing what he does best. He's motivating.
"He's a good football coach," Diane Elmassian says. "He gets results."
"He loves his kids, too," she adds
His "kids" are players like Waverly Jackson, a 294-pound, 6-foot-3-inch defensive tackle, and Lawrence Lewis, a 6-foot-2-inch, 243-pound defensive end.
Phil Elmassian is boss of the big boys, and it's a job he doesn't take lightly.
"I come to practice because it's the only way I get to see him," his wife explains.
She's telling only half the truth. Diane Elmassian never misses a Thursday practice because she's a motivator, too - in a different kind of way.
She's the "Kick Butt" cookie lady.
Each week during football season, Elmassian makes 250 of her special cookies for the football players, coaches, trainers and assistants. With the help of her friend Shirley Tranquill, wife of offensive coordinator Gary Tranquill, she bags the cookies - two to a bag - and ties each bag with a maroon ribbon and a note that says, "Kick Butt!"
"I tried different messages, but it seemed they liked that one the best," she says.
After the Thursday drills, Diane Elmassian parks her red Toyota with its "MS COACH" license plates near the team's locker room, sets a big boom box on the trunk, hoists her heavy basket of cookies, and then waits. When she hears the clack of cleats on asphalt, she turns the music up full blast:
"We are the Hokies, fightin' and mean,
Big and bad, we are Virginia's team ...
As the big boys - bruised, bedraggled and dripping sweat - pass by, she hands each a bag of cookies. Most of them say "thank you."
Her husband trots up, gives her a quick kiss on the lips, pats her backside and murmurs, "I can't stop now. I'll see you later."
"Phil is so hard on them," his wife confides. "I try to baby them a little bit."
The cookies, she says, have become "a good-luck thing."
"Last year, Frank [Beamer] changed the practice time and forgot to tell me," she says. She arrived after practice was over and found the players pacing outside the locker room. "They were looking all over for me!"
Diane Elmassian's ties to Virginia Tech football go way back. Born and raised in Blacksburg, she's the daughter of Reid Arrington, the Hokies' equipment manager when Charlie Coffey was head coach in the early '70s.
When she was a small fry, she played football with her two brothers and spent more Saturday afternoons than she can count in Lane Stadium.
"My dad took us to all the Tech games since we were little bitty kids," she says.
But Diane Elmassian didn't become a football fanatic until she met her husband. Just how she met him is another story ... and not one she's itching to talk about.
"I can't tell you that!" she protests, her face glowing. But she leans closer and whispers, "I picked him up in a bar."
She was celebrating her brother's birthday with family at a Blacksburg nightspot when she spotted her future husband.
"I saw him standing in a corner, and I asked him to dance," she said. "I just wanted to dance!"
She credits Jeff Lageman with her marriage to Phil. Lageman, now a defensive end for the New York Jets, was at the University of Virginia when Phil coached the linebackers there in 1987.
"Jeff noticed that Phil always wore wrinkled pants and told him he needed to get married," Diane Elmassian says, smiling.
The couple tied the knot on June 11, 1988. It was a second marriage for both, and as weddings go, it was an unusual wing-ding.
"Phil calls it a coaches' reunion," his wife quips.
Their wedding album is filled with photos of coaches Phil Elmassian has worked with in his 20-year career at such schools as William and Mary, Ferrum College, East Carolina, Minnesota, UVa, Syracuse and, of course, Virginia Tech.
Today, the walls of their family room are covered with photographs and memorabilia of Phil Elmassian's football career. The refrigerator in their kitchen is covered with pictures of Virginia Tech football players. There's even a notepad beside their bed covered with a scribbled game plan.
"Here's Phil's x's and o's," she laughs. "That one play where they got around the end at Syracuse - he's been working on it since the loss."
Diane Elmassian, 46, says she loves her husband's die-hard spirit.
She knows that underneath his tough exterior, he's a lovable guy - even to those who have sweated blood for him.
"Sandra Welsh [wife of UVa's head coach George Welsh] once told me Phil was the only coach she had ever seen who could scream and holler at 'em one minute and be hugging 'em the next."
The coach isn't the only one who takes his duties to heart.
Earlier this year, one of the players on the Hokies' football squad asked Diane Elmassian why she didn't have any kids.
"I told him God didn't give me kids," she answered. "He gave me you guys!"
by CNB