BY STEVEN RAY BOWEN
Body
Christianity isn’t something that you live inside a church building – maybe in a basketball gymnasium or out on a muddy football field, but not at church.
The real living begins when you walk out of those Sunday-morning doors.
I think every story I've ever told or written reminds us of that.
The apostle reminds us of it, too, just in a little different way: “If we live in the Spirit,” he says, “let us also walk in the Spirit,” which, translated, means we can’t just claim to be a Christian, we have to show it or at least try our dead level best to show it every day.
It takes walking in the Spirit.
That is not an easy thing, no, not even a little bit. And it gets especially hard when you wake up in a little town like Hickory, Indiana. Or, Robinson, Texas.
Welcome to Robinson, Texas, 1992.
As it turned out, it wouldn’t exactly be the welcome I expected, that I can tell you.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if I hadn’t learned it before, I learned it in ’92,” I said one day when my students and I came to what we called “Creek Book” time. “If you’re going to get through it all in one piece, you’d better buckle your chinstrap, dig in your heels, set your jaw, fix your mind, focus on the goal ahead, and “GTW.”
“GTW?” they said.
“Go To Work, ladies and gentlemen. Go to work just like Coach Dale did in 1952, and a little like your own favorite teacher and coach did back in 1992.”
I looked to see whether the young men and women approved, and I saw a smile or two, which I interpreted as absolute, unmitigated approval. That, alone, was a small victory.
They merely sat back and listened contentedly to Story Number 1101, or so it seemed to them. Regardless, they wouldn't be allowed to doze a little, no sir. I always could – and would! – find a pivotal moment in the story where I could slap one of my favorites (or sleepiest) students’ desks and holler “Boom!” loud enough to shake the rafters and jar the slumberers like they were Jonah himself. They all liked the “Boom,” except the slumberers.
With the stage set better than a Shakespearean drama, the story began …
40 years after Coach Dale’s true story, in 1992, my family and I left the first and best job I ever had in both English teaching and basketball coaching at North Shore High School in Houston.
We worked side by side with my good friend, head coach Randy Weisinger. But, alas, as we all understand, an assistant coach thinks he needs to be a head coach. So, when the job offer arrived on eagles’ wings from Robinson, Texas, we immediately picked up everything, bid a somber “Auld Lang Syne” to friends and loved ones, and were off to central Texas on a team of white horses to save the world and make our mark. So much for “best laid plans of mice and men ...”
“Ah, that little school won’t know what hit it when we roll into town,” I said to my captivated students.
And it was true, somebody didn’t know what hit him, that’s for sure, but it wasn't who I thought it was going to be.
Football was king over at our new school. Before we could pull the basketballs out, except for one day a week with the off-season players, we had to make it through football season. It was one of the first blizzards that flew in the face of the young coach, stinging like thousands of little bees.
In the group of football coaches was a 20-something youngster, a big fella who was as confident and cocky as Walker Texas Ranger. Not a bad guy, just a victim of being 20-something and surrounded by a clique that was not as receptive of this new basketball coach who thought he was Don Quixote setting out to save the world.
“Sometimes the coach standing before you lived in a land where inns were castles and windmills were giants,” I said.
It is easy, all right, to pose the question of the day in a newspaper column, but what are you actually going to do when you wake up in Hickory, Indiana – or in this case, Robinson, Texas? I had to answer that question long before we put the pen to paper and tell the story.
It was a long, hard three months to get to the first jump ball. I had to endure my first year of coaching eighth-grade football, which was actually quite a success because, as I learned, “coaching is coaching” – and the varsity team went deep into the playoffs into November.
One of our best players was a future Dallas Cowboy named Jason Tucker, who was also the star of our basketball team. We had to cancel game after game as we waited patiently for football to end, but we did play our junior high schedule.
My eighth-grade junior high coach was my friend and nemesis Kevin Hoffman.
At Coach Hoffman’s first game, I sat nearby and watched him coach. In the first half, our opponent ran a little 2-3 zone defense that stifled his young team and frustrated Coach. One thing about Hoffman, though: He was highly competitive, regardless of the sport.
At halftime, I made my way to the old dusty dressing room and listened as he gave a pep talk to his dismayed team. After a minute, I asked Coach for the piece of chalk, and we drew up a simple play to answer the zone-defense problem he was facing.
His team went out in the second half and forged a great comeback. At the final buzzer, I slipped out, looking back over my shoulder with a little satisfaction as Hoffman and his team celebrated.
Coach and I did not talk the next few days as we were immediately back to varsity football.
That Friday night, our football team went down to Coldspring, Texas and fought a losing battle in a muddy deluge, kind of the way Don Quixote is battered when he decides to fight that windmill.
In the locker room after the game, I sat dejectedly with those bloodied, muddied soldiers. There are no words that will help in a time like that, so you sit together quietly as the sad stillness falls over the locker room.
Hoffman came over, too, and sat beside me, surprising me. For once, it was as though we were a team, joined together by bitter defeat. After a few moments, he said, “Coach, do you think you can win in basketball here?”
I didn’t hesitate.
“Sure, Coach,” I said, exuding the same confidence Kevin had, “we have all the pieces. Yes, I’m sure we can win.”
Nothing more. He thought it through for a few moments, then he shocked me.
“Well, Coach, if anybody can do it, I believe you can.”
It has been 34 years since that stormy Coldspring night, but in my mind, I often sit with our bloodied warriors and beside my newfound coaching friend and think of all we learned.
I haven’t talked to Coach Kevin Hoffman in three decades, but I’ve followed his career from afar. He has gone on to win three state championships as a head football coach in Texas and also won the Texas Coach of the Year once.
“But, ladies and gentlemen,” I said, “still, I’ve wondered. How many times during some hard years has he woken up in Hickory himself? Plenty, I’m sure. I sure hope on those dark mornings he thought back to his Robinson days and to that young basketball coach who fought tooth and toenails for two hard years and drew some perspective that helped him along the way, too.”
I paused to let it sink in, then added wistfully.
“I hope so, anyway.”
Another pause, and a sigh, followed by the usual.
“Hands, please.”
Coach Steven Ray Bowen served as a teacher and basketball coach at Red Oak High from 1998-2012 and recently came out of retirement twice for teaching tours at Ferris and Waxahachie High Schools. He and his wife Marilyn (the “amazin’ blonde”) have slowed down some of their travels and reconvened in their evangelistic work with the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl/Ovilla Roads, in addition to Coach’s work as a writer and author, including the working to publish “Crossing The Georgia Line” that ran in the Ellis County Press. Call or text (972) 824-5197, email coachbowen1984@gmail.com, and see frontporchgospel.com.
