ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Monday, June 17, 1996                  TAG: 9606180043
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1    EDITION: METRO 
COLUMN: Ben Beagle 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE 

IT WAS A DAY OLD NO. 36 CAN'T FORGET

I hate to admit that most of the things that happen remind me of things that happened before.

Take the remodeling at Roanoke's Breckinridge Middle School - once known as William Fleming High School.

It was there the Radford Bobcats played the William Fleming Colonels on what Grantland Rice probably would have called a blue-gray October day. What happened to me on the old football field out back was big-time trauma. I was 16, but the next morning I noticed some gray in my hair.

By the time that dreadful afternoon passed into darkness, the Bobcats had disgraced themselves by losing 26-0.

We had run onto that field unbeaten at mid-season - the boys of autumn, bright-cheeked, confident lads who thought they would live forever, full of arrogant hope and sure of the future.

The cheerleaders were lovely. The players were magnificent in orange and black - odd colors, perhaps, for heroes. If we had had a band, it would have marched flawlessly.

Our entire playbook failed us on that terrible afternoon - Friday, Oct. 8. The book consisted of 23 to the right, 23 to the left, a couple of pass plays and a strange play that involved a lot of shifting and left the center in an end position.

The Bobcats fumbled on Fleming's 40-yard line, and the Colonels began to pound us badly. Most of this was occurring over their right side and over, around, under and through Radford's left tackle - who was yours truly here. Old No. 36.

I found myself pondering the reasons for our existence and the True Meaning of Life. I also was wishing they would run to their left once in a while.

They continued to blow me away with blocking and execution we wouldn't see again until Vince Lombardi started running to daylight.

I was benched. This made me so despondent I didn't ask for my spectacles, which were stored in the first-aid box.

I didn't want to see what was going on. I did notice the cheerleaders looking down at their saddle shoes.

It was over at last, and some of us would have joined the Army if we had known where you did that.

Listen. Even their shower room was better than ours.

I learned something that day: If they're running hard and driving you back into Botetourt County, fake a knee injury.

That's better than the disgrace of being benched for playing lousy, and cheerleaders are very nice to injured persons.

LENGTH: Medium:   53 lines