Friday, September 22, 2006
Reading Coach Huhta’s story reminded me of a similar situation. It was during the football season of my senior year, 1973 and we were leading South Kitsap at halftime on their home field 42-0.
Like Huhta said, Chuck used to always tell us when we were ahead at the half to play the rest of the game like it was 0-0. How in the hell do you motivate a team to play with great intensity when they have destroyed their opponent in half number one? Well, Chuck resorted to his traditionally, intense personality and used me as the fall-guy.
It was a very sloppy field that night and as my teammates came in for the break, I used a tongue depressor to clean the mud from their cleats. Chuck must have spent five minutes chewing me out, because I was not doing it the right way…the Chuck way.
Finally, he grabbed the wooden stick from me and almost wrenched O’Brien’s knee as he pulled his foot up to show me how to properly clean the mud from a football shoe. I never did learn the proper procedure. I swear to god that his technique was no different than mine.
As funny as this may seem decades later, we grew dead silent knowing not to break Chuck’s desired atmosphere as he went about the task of freeing the SK muck from Mike’s shoes. It wasn’t so much the cleaning of the cleats that mattered as it was re-establishing the intensity to play well the second half.
Bruce Fingarson…West High Class of 1974
