ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 29, 1996 TAG: 9611290019
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
TYPE: COMMENTARY
SOURCE: RAY COX
A downside to surviving to play football in the semifinal round of the state high school playoffs is hard to find, but here's one:
November and December weather occasionally can be inconvenient.
Yet should you be among the lucky ones who are still playing, you aren't likely to complain if climatic conditions take a sudden turn for the worse. Nobody was crying and moaning one afternoon earlier this week when temperatures were sinking faster than the Titanic on the practice field of the Group A, Division 2, Region C champion Giles Spartans.
No, it is unbecoming to complain about the weather when everybody knows you earned your rightful way out into it to begin with because you're a member of one of the state's four best teams.
So stoicism was the rule among those Spartans who weren't full-fledged participants in a particular drill on a wind-flogged and frigid practice day this week. They hopped from foot to foot, their breath coming in cotton-ball puffs in the chill.
On a field that was hardening with the frost but still goopy and puddled from an overnight deluge, the first-stringers worked out against a practice squad deployed in formations known to be used by Powell Valley, the upcoming opponent. Everybody got a good hoot when Phillip Hilton, who has been sidelined for weeks with an injury, landed in some icy standing water after one play.
``Welcome back to practice, Phillip,'' somebody yelled.
The throng cheered and broke running for the locker room when Giles coach Steve Ragsdale announced an early halt to practice.
``Since we play on Saturday this week, we have an extra day to prepare,'' assistant coach Rusty Kelley explained to a visitor who had been momentarily stunned by the unfamiliar concept of an abbreviated Spartans practice.
Soon after, as players were dressing to go home for the evening, the topic of conversation turned to a favorite subject: Ragsdale's pregame and halftime oratory.
By all accounts, the veteran coach warms to the postseason with some of his most inspirational and incendiary remarks. Many players have a favorite speech they like to recall.
Two of those most frequently mentioned can be called the board and the million bucks speech and the swimming coon dogs speech.
Ragsdale borrowed the board and bucks speech from a somebody else, he said. It goes something like this:
Lay a board on the ground and put a million dollars at the other end, and people would be fighting to be the first to cross that board and get the money. But put that board over a great chasm and those who are willing to cross it are very few indeed regardless of the prize on the other side. Of those brave enough to try it, fewer still are capable of reaching the goal. They are the ones who do not consider the possibility that they may fail and fall. Those who do think they might fall will surely do so just as those who think they might lose a football game will.
The other story is about coon dog races that Ragsdale has been a witness to in his travels. In these races, the dogs are sent swimming across a pond in pursuit of a fake critter being pulled by rope over their heads.
Presumably, some of these dogs have a natural fear of water. Perhaps they may not be good swimmers. But they don't think about that.
``All they're thinking about is getting after it,'' said defensive lineman Timmy Sutphin, quoting his coach.
As for some of the halftime talks, ``Most of those, you can't print,'' lineman Chris Ruth said.
One of them makes it past the arbiters of family newspaper taste. Blocking back Chris Bales did his best Ragsdale, infuriated at what he deemed a lackluster first half of a certain game.
``What's the matter with you boys tonight? Don't you want to play football? If you don't, Coach, I have something for you to do. We're going to take this piece of paper and write [the other team] a note and I want you to deliver it for us. We're going to write, `Dear [opponent]: We're scared to death. We don't want to play anymore. In fact, we're too sorry to come out for the second half. We quit. Signed, the Giles football team.'''
That's enough to send any true Spartan into a flat frothing frenzy on his way to the third quarter.
SETTING HISTORY STRAIGHT: Following the retelling here last week of one of Pulaski County's most dreadful postseason setbacks, the 8-7 loss to Courtland in the 1986 playoffs, a phone call was received from Richie Hurst, a much-decorated member of that Cougars team and now a Dublin insurance man.
Hurst called to say that the person who'd scored the Cougars' lone touchdown in that game had been misidentified in the column that ran almost 10 years to the day later. Hurst said he'd scored the TD.
The red-faced reporter (me) told him that the mistake was made because that was the name that appeared in the following day's account of the game. It was that clip that provided the research material for last week's column.
The mistake had been repeated because nobody, not one soul, had ever said anything when it ran 10 years earlier.
``I know why that was,'' Hurst said. ``All of us were so sick about that game that we didn't even want to read the paper.''
LENGTH: Medium: 93 linesby CNB