Theron Hopkins - The 80-Yard Run. A Twenty-Week, Coast-to-Coast Quest for the Heart of High School Football

ITS SUNDAY, AUGUST 3 , 2003, and Danny Rogers, the head varsity coach of the Blanco Football Panthers, sits in his Ford truck and watches the evening settle over his teams new practice field. In less than twelve hours, his coaching staff and players will arrive for the first day of practice. From the drivers seat of his airconditioned pickup, Coach Rogers surveys the summer grass that he mowed himself only a few hours before, the new goalpost that his 310-pound offensive tackle welded and planted behind the north end zone, and the neat row of plastic blue fertilizer barrels that a local rancher donated to simulate a skeleton defense during two-a-day offensive practice drills. The stage is set and waiting for his players.

This quiet scene is a pleasant one for Coach Rogers, and the picture in his mind of what will take place here tomorrow is enticing for a man who has devoted much of his life to playing and teaching football and for whom the calendar is marked by the University Interscholastic Leagues designation of the first Monday in August as the first official day of football practice in the state of Texas. For Coach, for eighteen thousand or so of his colleagues, and for a hundred thousand Texas schoolboy football players, tomorrow is New Years Day.

But its not all celebration and reverie for Coach. Even though the Panthers boast a healthy stable of offensive backs, and even though those backs will have a seasoned quarterback to get them the ball and a massive offensive line to clear wide swaths of ground for them to advance it, and even though their defensive front seven can be deemed formidable, Coach is nervous about the defensive backfield. As he sits here, just hours before the first practice, he is unsure about who hell put back there, or even who might show up tomorrow to help him stabilize this potentially tender area in the Panthers hope for a return to the 2A state title game that they won only two seasons ago.

Not that theres no hope. Yesterday he was on the phone with a kid who hurt his knee last season, and who plans to sit out football this year in order to stay healthy for basketball season. If theres some way that he might change his mind, hell be an instantaneous fit at strong safety, the position he competently held down last year until he was hobbled by the knee injury. There is also the rumor of a movein, a sophomore who claims he started at varsity defensive back for a big Austin school last year as a freshman. But Coach shakes his head at the prospect of some flashy blue-chip-type player magically appearing in the locker room tomorrow morning ready to save the day. He might be a tenth-grader, and he might be from Austin, and he might be a 150-pound defensive back, and he might even show up in the morning wanting to play football. But if this kid really does exist, theres usually a reason that his folks are moving out this way, and its not because hes a big-time starter at a big-time school, and he wants to come give little old Blanco a hand.

Then there is the kid who is milling around in the fieldhouse weight room right now, a young man who has waited for the last couple of hours with the intent, Coach is certain, of talking about his future with the team. He has played for the Panthers the past three years, hes a defensive back, and hes really good. The kid could help us, Coach says. But he spent the last two months of school last spring sittin in the gymnasium bleachers during athletic period, mockin his friends who were down there workin hard to get ready for football this year, because he decided he didnt want to play. And now he wants me to let him back on the team. Coach reaches to flick the air-conditioning knob to Maximum, shifts his truck into Drive, and says, He was supposed to meet with me a couple days ago, but he didnt show up. He can wait a while longer.

As he makes a meandering loop around Blanco, Coach thinks hard about this young man, this ex-player who says he wants to be a player once again. And he reflects on what he is prepared to say upon his own return to the fieldhouse, and it is this: This meeting will be for me to tell him, Dont show up tomorrow. How can I let him back on after last spring? What would that show the rest of the kids? That you can just sit around and do what you want and still play? Of course, his family will hate me for the year, and Ill have to talk with them, probably tomorrow. But this is the right thing to do for the kid and the program. Consistency for the program, and show the boy that hes accountable for his actions.

By the time Coach swings his truck up the long school driveway, the orange halogen parking lot lights have blinked on and a bigwheeled black Dodge pickup sits idling in front of the fieldhouse like an army tank. In the drivers seat is Davey Behrends, the massive offensive tackle who built the practice goalpost, and beside him on the bench seat is A. J. Mann, the teams fullback and middle linebacker. They have come by the schoolhouse at this late Sunday evening hour just to check in and see whats goin on.

Coach says to them, How you boys feelin? You feelin ready?

And they reply, Yessir.

Well thats good, Coach says. Well see you boys in the mornin.

Yessir, they reply, and as Coach steps up onto the sidewalk, they give him a nod, and the big Dodge rumbles off into the dusk.

Waiting for Coach inside the fieldhouse is the would-be returnee, and he is flanked by two of his non-football-playing friends. Coach nods to them all and shakes hands all around, and then motions for his ex-player to join him in his office. When he closes the door and turns to start his speech, this kid, who looks every bit a football player and every bit a guy youd want standing poised seven or so yards off the ball staring down a wide receiver, says, Coach, I come by to check out my helmet. So Coach motions for him to have a seat and then sits down across from him and says, Son, youre not going to be needing a helmet, and then, over the course of the next ten minutes, he explains to this seventeen-year-old boy why. Then the coach and the kid stand up from their chairs to shake hands, and the kid leaves to find his friends for the walk back into town, and Coach stands there for a few moments in the stillness of his office, just stands there, and then he makes his final rounds of the night, to shut off the lights and lock the doors before he climbs into the cab of his truck to head off through the darkness to his house on the hill to try and get some rest for tomorrow morning.

And tomorrow morning comes early. Coach is back at the fieldhouse at 5:30 a.m., and hes not the first one in. That honor belongs to Tesch, the teams offensive coordinator, who showed up at five to get his weight room workout in before his responsibilities for the day begin. Tesch is from Nebraska, but hes been down here in Texas for several years now, on the move from coaching job to coaching job, always in search of the right fit, and he seems to have found it here. Two years ago, when Coach took over the program, his first order of business was to call his buddy Tesch and say, Man, I need your help. And Tesch responded by immediately moving his family to Blanco and buying his first house ever. It was scary, he says. But it was time, and this is the place for us.