“…we also glory in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance;  and perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

Romans 5:3-4

Last Play

Our backs were to the goal line. It would be the last play of the game. Behind us, the scoreboard clock was ticking down. Under 10 seconds now, the other team hurriedly broke their huddle and rushed to the line. It was goal to go from the five yard line. They got the snap off just in time. From my defensive end position, I noted the quarterback immediately turn in my direction. It would be the same triple option play they had run all night – this time to my side. My primary responsibility was the quarterback and from my position I had the best angle for stopping him. I closed on him as he pulled the ball from the running back and continued down the line. Our defensive back was responsible for the pitch man, but that was a tougher assignment. I had decided that as soon as I had forced the quarterback to make the pitch, I would turn and run hard down the line to help out on the pitch man. The quarterback faked a pitch and I turned, falling for the fake – uh-oh, but then I recovered. As the quarterback tucked the ball and cut for the goal line I tackled him hard from behind, coming down around the three yard line. It stopped a touchdown. It was then that I heard the horn going off. The game was over. A game-saving tackle?  Uhhh…. No.  Final score: Marshall 27, Carthage 0. If I had not made that tackle, we would have lost 34-0 instead of 27-0.

Such was life when you played football for Carthage High School in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. We did not have the best team around. We did not have any winning seasons, not since the early 1960’s, though our varsity always did seem to win a few games each year.

You might think, then, that football was no big deal in our little town during that era. If that is what you think, then you must not understand Texas high school football, especially in East Texas. High school football is a big deal in every little town in East Texas – especially in that era. The Friday night football game is the biggest thing around. The whole town keeps up with and supports the team, while most high school students are involved in one way or another. Besides the team itself, there is the band, the cheerleaders, and the pep squad or drill team. So people cared. There were fewer other sports and activities to take up your time and attention, as well, when compared to more recent times. The game would be the talk of the town each week until the next game.

On the other hand, after you had been losing for a lot of years in a row, you did start to take a lot of ribbing and unkind jokes. The usual, like “It would help if you boys learned how to block and tackle.” Or, “well, at least we have a good band.” Which in our school’s case, was true. We did have a good band. There were others who even seemed to enjoy our lack of success – like older boys or mean-spirited people, or boys that had chosen not to play and thus felt somehow vindicated that we were so bad.

Dreams

I remember as a small boy going to the high school football game on Friday night. It was the biggest and most exciting thing. Those players were like heroes to me. The crowds seemed very large. It was impressive. I watched closely the Carthage team, with a little boy’s mind. The 11 boys on offense and the 11 boys on defense – if you were one of those boys, then you were somebody. You mattered. Everyone knew your name and had respect for you. You had arrived. It was a dream of mine to maybe someday actually get to be a starter and play for the varsity high school football team myself.

All the Football He Wanted

I was in third grade when my cousin Tommy was a senior on the team and a starter. I always thought he was so cool and tough.

I remember the day after his last high school football game. We were at the deer camp, late morning after the morning hunt, when Tommy drove up. He was Mr. Cool in his sunglasses and aloof demeanor. Carthage had lost their last game the night before to Nacogdoches, ending another mediocre season. A few of us young boys were playing football next to the camp, and we had the audacity to walk over where he was sitting and ask if he wanted to play.

Tommy looked off into the distance as if we were not even there, and for a few seconds I wasn’t sure he had heard us or even knew we had walked up. Then, without adjusting his gaze, and as if he were talking to the clouds instead of us, he stated, “I got all the football I wanted last night.” We walked away trying to understand those words of wisdom.

“All the football he wanted”? What did that even mean? Was there such a thing? I did not think so. Occasions to play were always too brief, and I looked forward to the day when I could have “all the football I wanted”.

Hope

When my brothers were in high school, there was great hope that winning ways would be back, as their class had great success in junior high football. The town had high expectations for their class. With all the hope, though, came disappointment. A few wins, but more losing seasons for the varsity team.

Both of my brothers were stars on the team. Sam played defensive end while Joe played both ways – fullback on offense and defensive back on defense. My brothers and the other boys their age were somewhat like role models and heroes to me and my classmates.

Sam had a bad knee injury in a rodeo before their senior year and did not get to play that year, but in his junior year, Sam intercepted a pass against our archrival Center, and ran it all the way back for a touchdown. I remember it well. I was so proud that I turned to an older boy I did not know who was sitting near me in the stands and said, “That’s my brother!” The boy looked me up and down, then said, “No he’s not. You’re a liar.”

I got that a lot. When someone was told I was the little brother of the Allison twins, many times they did not believe it. Did I really look that pathetic or what? Yes, I had really thick glasses and I’m sure I looked pretty nerdy in elementary school and early junior high. Someone might say, “No, those Allison boys don’t have another brother – it’s just the two of them.” Really? I am standing right here and telling you that, yes, I am their brother and we have a sister, also. Evidently they thought that I was just pulling their leg or something. 

The whole idea that I was too nerdy or pathetic was a sore point with me, and I guess it is with a lot of young boys. I truly did love sports though – especially football, but also baseball and basketball. The first little league baseball team I played on, at age five, was not very good. We lost every game.  There was a fair amount of teasing – that I was Charlie Brown. The Peanuts cartoon was very popular then, my name was Charlie, and we did lose every game, so there you go.

Junior High Football

While my brothers were the big men on campus in high school, I was four years behind them in junior high. Seventh grade was much anticipated because that was the first year we got to have a football team. I loved it and lived for it. It was in my thoughts most of the time during football season. However, our team was not very good, and I was not very good. In fact, we were pretty terrible. We lost every game. Eighth grade was worse, as our reputation as a poor team compounded itself. The coaches did not want to coach us, and did not have any faith in us. Why should we expect anything? They kept working us and running us harder, thinking maybe we just weren’t working hard enough. Matters got worse.  We lost every game again, except for one tie. Charlie Brown all over again.

In ninth grade, our reputation terrible, we caught a break. We had a coach named Reggie Day.  Now Reggie Day stood about 5 feet tall, maybe weighed 140 pounds, and it was all muscle. He had been a track star in school, including in college, and supposedly held Louisiana state records in the 220 yard dash and perhaps other distances. He was the toughest man around, and you did not mess with Reggie Day. I saw him break up several fights, sometimes boys much bigger than he was, and he had no fear.  He also built kids up. For instance, if he passed a kid in the gym, he might say, “There goes Frankie T. Smith, T for terrific!” when actually, of course, he had no idea what Frankie’s middle name or initial really was.

Coach Day was aware of our poor reputation, but he let us know that he did not buy it. That ninth grade season, we played against one of the best teams in our district the first game. We found a way to lose, as usual, 21-7. Strangely, though, Coach Day saw a lot of positives. He pointed out that if not for one or two key plays and breaks, the game was pretty even, and if that was the best team in our district, then we were going to do okay. It was a new perspective – he actually thought we were okay.

I distinctly remember one day in ninth grade practice when Coach Day was showing my good friend Bill Spurgeon and me, the two defensive ends, how to defend against a double-team block. We were stand-up defensive ends, also known as “9” techniques. He got into the crouched, standing position that we used, favoring the outside shoulder of the tight end. He showed us how to get low, meet the block of the tight end with our inside shoulder, weight inside, then brace as the wingback or other player came at us from the outside, shifting hard and even lower, without going to the ground,  to meet that blow. If absolutely necessary, you might let that outside knee go to the ground, if that’s what you had to do to keep them from pushing you back.

He said, “It’s a tough situation.  I don’t know what else to tell you. You have to meet it and not let them move you. That’s all there is to it.” Then pausing like he was debating whether to say something else, he composed himself with a tough, grim look, stared hard at us, and half-snarling he slowly said, “Look, this may sound cornball, but sometimes you get in tough situations, and you have to reach deep down inside yourself and you find the reddest, rawest gut you can. And you grab it with everything you have, and you just hold on to it… You just hold on.” The intensity of his stare made me too afraid to look away or blink until he did. It was cornball maybe, but the words alone don’t do justice to the impression he made and feelings that he inspired that day.

By the middle of the ninth grade season, we had actually won two games and began to think we were pretty good. The season did not end well, however, and two wins does not make a great season. So our junior high years ended with our poor reputation intact and perhaps deservedly so, with only two total wins across three years. Coach Day gave us hope, though.

Support

My family supported me, though there were times when I wondered if they were ashamed of me. Obviously, I would never be as cool as my siblings.

I distinctly remember one night during my ninth grade year. My brothers were still at home, going to Panola Junior College, the local school. It was after another humiliating football loss, when my brother Sam came into my bedroom and sat on the bed opposite me. He had attended my game.

He commented on how well he thought we had done. When I pointed out that the opposing running back usually drug me along for another five yards after I hit him before I could get him to the ground, Sam pointed out that he was an especially big, strong running back, and sometimes that’s just the best that can be expected. My old 8-track cassette player was going in the background. It was playing “The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel. I related to that song a little bit, because the “boxer” in the song was beaten down but wouldn’t give up. Some of my music was not the same as what my brothers listened to. I don’t believe they were Simon and Garfunkel fans.

Now you have to understand that expressions of emotion just never happened in our family, nor did we typically ever sing out loud. That was for other families that were better singers, I guess.

Yet as we sat there, Sam began to softly sing along with the refrain from “The Boxer”, and it struck me that he was going out of his way to let me know that he thought I was okay, that my music was okay, and he wasn’t ashamed of me. I will always remember Sam’s gesture.

High School Football

Then came sophomore year – high school. Usually there is a varsity and a junior varsity (or “B” team). The junior varsity is mostly sophomores. Except we had a shortage of players and a weak class, by reputation and numbers. Some of our junior high teammates were no longer playing, and we had no new sophomore players. So the coaches opted to have no junior varsity that year. We would all just suit up with the varsity. Practically that entire team was seniors, at least as far as who was going to actually play on game days. There were very few juniors on the team at all, as their class was weaker than ours, if that was possible. We had maybe a dozen to fifteen sophomores or so. None of us played much. We sat on the bench, the coaches probably hoping that they never had to put any of us into the game. Of the 22 starting positions (11 on offense and 11 on defense) all were seniors except for one junior. Some of us sophomores got to play on special teams, like I was center on the punt team, snapping the ball to the punter and then covering downfield. I was also on the kickoff receiving team. That was it. I did not play one single down on regular offense or defense the entire year. I think the coaches avoided putting me or some of the other sophomores into games, even late in games that were not close, when it wouldn’t have mattered much.

The senior class that year was very strong and very athletic – a group that won all the time in junior high. Ray Tiller was one of them. He played wide receiver. Yet it somehow did not come together for them in high school. We won only three games that year with that very talented group of seniors, not a great year.

Disaster

Although not getting to play sophomore year, there was that experience of playing those few downs each game on special teams. One game that stood out that year was against our archrival Center. Now it was fortunate for us that Center was the one team in our district that we could usually count on to be worse than us. Even with another bad season unfolding, we could at least beat Center, couldn’t we?

The game was close and exciting, and well into the second half, when disaster struck. The disaster started when I snapped the ball over the punter’s head. He retrieved it and tried to kick it on the run, but it was blocked. The ball scooted past the goal line back into the end zone. In horror, I ran as hard as I could to recover it. Just as I was falling on the ball and could almost feel it against my chest, I was knocked away hard by a big oaf of a lineman from Center. I looked up to see him holding the ball aloft, celebrating his touchdown. That touchdown tied the score. It was my worst nightmare. We might lose to Center, and it would be my fault. I wanted to dig a hole and crawl into it. There was nowhere to hide – it was hard to just trot off the field. My shame was overbearing. I looked up into the stands and saw some of my brothers’ friends laughing hard and teasing my brothers about the situation. My shame increased. Some of those same boys who, many years ago, had “picked me last”, were now having a good laugh at my expense.

Salvation

I will never forget the play that subordinated my shame and possible infamy to something much less serious, something that was thankfully more like an interesting but temporary plot twist. It was a pass play just a few minutes later. Ray Tiller had a couple of steps on his defender and was racing down the left middle of the field, looking back for the ball over his left shoulder. Our quarterback heaved a long pass that was plenty long enough, but it was a good 15 or 20 yards behind Ray’s back. Just when we thought there was no chance, Ray gracefully and effortlessly altered his route without breaking stride, now looking over his right shoulder and running right under the ball, just as if that was the way the play had been drawn up in the first place. It was a thing of beauty. Ray caught the ball at full speed and raced into the end zone. We won the game. It was the most beautiful pass reception I have ever seen in my life, though I fully admit my extreme bias due to the circumstances.

Ray Tiller, who had seemed like a Runaway Train in our backyard ball games when we were little kids, and who would later be my college roommate for one semester, had just saved me from infamy. Thank you, Ray.

Planning Ahead

Yes, we beat Center but only won three games total. It was disappointing for us and for the town. The coach was fired and we would have a new coach the next year. But what would he have to work with? Not much.

In the offseason, as some of the coaches were planning ahead, the rumor got to me that they had penciled me in to be the starting center on offense for the next year. I was thrilled, if it was true. These were the same coaches who hoped and prayed they didn’t have to put me in the game just a few months ago. What had changed? When I had the chance to talk to one of them (Coach Hoppers, a friend), I tried to determine if they really thought I was good enough. At some point, he had to just be blunt with me and say, “Allison, who else is there?” That’s when it occurred to me that, even though there were quite a few players on next year’s team that were better than me, they would be starting at other positions. We were going to run out of halfway good players before the starting lineup was filled in. I would be starting by default. It was kind of like when I was six years old and I was picked last. Still, it would be the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for me – to start on the varsity. I couldn’t help but see it as a personal accomplishment, even though a more unbiased and sober assessment would say otherwise.