I grew up in a town called El Segundo, in the Los Angeles basin of southern California, population about 12,000 at the time. It was and remains a sports-minded town, with numerous organizations providing opportunities for children and teens to develop athletic skills. As long as I can remember, we always had dedicated, generous adults to coach and teach youngsters. Consequently, we have produced several distinguished professional and amateur athletes: swimmers, baseball players, football players, basketball players, etc.
Back in the 50s and 60s, we had a very dedicated, generous, and colorful high school football coach named Clyde "Ike" Dougherty, who had enjoyed a distinguished football career at Arizona State University as a quarterback in the early 1940s. He was good enough that he might have had some pro prospects had he not answered his country's call to arms during WWII, disrupting his progression through college, to which he could only return after he saw action in Europe with the U.S. Army and the War concluded. He returned to Arizona State University in Tempe, and in his senior year met and married Mary Irene Curry, another student there. He was the husband of Mary Irene Curry Dougherty and remained in some capacity as a coach for the rest of his life.
While at El Segundo High School as the head football coach, he became respected enough in his chosen profession to earn some extra money as a scout for the L.A. Chargers, before their move to San Diego, and the L.A. Rams. Football and he were made for each other. He loved the strategy and philosophy of it the way grand masters love chess. He taught it with passion and zeal. He had wide ranging intellectual curiosity about history and philosophy, and seemingly, anything about which he chose to converse. But football and how to teach it to youngsters occupied his time most outside of family.
I remember a particular day in late August when I had run a pass pattern sloppily and slowly, which was my top speed. I had turned back to complete the button hook and was surprised to find the football in flight hitting me on my unprepared hands:
"Oh My God, Molinaro, what do you think we sent you out in that zone to do . . . stand around? Do you dislike catching footballs thrown right at you?"The trot back to the huddle was a dismal, dreadful few seconds. I had displeased the last man on Earth I would want to displease in the autumn of the year 1961 during two-a-day drills.
"We are going to do that again to see if Mr. Molinaro might decide that catching footballs is not nearly as odious an assignment as he previously thought," he said pushing his black, horn-rimmed spectacles back up to their proper spot on the bridge of his nose; a function he performed numerous times daily.
Among players and students, money changed hands within pools established to predict how many times in a particular meeting, lecture, or practice session we could observe Coach doing that.
In the huddle this time, while he called the play that our quarterback would repeat, he lightly rested his hand on the back of my shoulder pad as though he needed to support himself thus while he leaned over to make sure we all heard the play he called. I took it as a message. It seemed to say something like, "It's O. K., Son. Just get your mind on what you are supposed to do. Concentrate now. We'll run it again, and you will catch it this time. You'll see."
Of course, I caught this one. Everyone knew I was going to catch this one. No one could imagine my blowing something like that twice in a row after a Coach Dougherty, verbal ass whupping. Clearly, he was calling for that pass pattern again so that I would succeed, and thereby, convince myself that I was worthy of being on the same field with him and my team mates. It worked. He knew it would. I was back in the huddle more quickly and with greater confidence, as he knew I would be.
He was taking this much time to instruct and encourage a player who had no potential whatever to play offense, and whose prospects for staying on the varsity squad were by no means certain. I was the runt of the litter, the skinniest kid in uniform and one of the slowest. My only hope of staying on this squad rested with the defense, where there was a chance I might stick. However, he wanted to demonstrate to me and everyone else that this pass play was workable and that even a slow-moving, bespectacled string bean such as I could execute it as he had designed it. It was an object lesson for a kid with no potential to get playing time as an offensive back and for everyone else on the team. Coach calculated everything he did on the football field, leaving nothing to chance. He knew the odds for achieving the effect he wanted, and no result was surprising or accidental.
That is how he did it: Call you out, give you an opportunity for redemption, and privately, by gesture or word, tell you it will be all right.
"Whoa, why is that football bouncing around on the ground and not tucked securely in those manly arms of yours? That football is like your family treasure; you do not drop it," he said with voice rising. "Better that you should lose an eye than that treasure."
"Twenty yard line. Wind Sprints. Everyone. NOW."As the youngster who had fumbled was about to pass nearby, Coach reached out his arm and grabbed the boy by his shoulder pads, pulling him close by, but not violently, more like "C' mere, Son". Nose to nose with the boy, I heard him say in a controlled voice, "That is not a loaf of bread, do not try to carry it like one. Once you catch it, secure it like this and nothing will dislodge it, nothing, not getting hit, not hitting the ground, nothing." He gave this instruction while tucking the ball into his own chest with his broad forearm. "Think you can do that from now on?" he asked. The boy nodded his understanding. "Better that you were born dead than fumble that ball one more time on my field," he said and gave the contrite boy a gentle shove toward the twenty yard line to complete the object lesson.
It was not an angry, malicious push. I am certain that it was another message projecting displeasure, but stating that it was going to be all right. He did not have a Bobby Knight or Woody Hayes fire breath approach to discipline; he was more like Lou Holtz, gently but firmly paternalistic. However, he did devise several other tortures to inflict on the entire team when someone fumbled the football. He had zero tolerance for fumbles. We did not fumble much, but when it did happen, the entire team girded for something bad.
I cannot express how glad I felt that I was not the one who fumbled the football. Because someone did fumble, we were about to do the kind of Coach Dougherty wind sprints that make you think you are taking in razor blades with each gasp for air, and that was a gruesome prospect. However, this time I was not the one Coach observed dropping the damn ball, and that was justification for some relief mixed with guilt at being glad it was my friend who fumbled and not me.
Chalk Talk
Coach Dougherty talked often from a chalk board on wheels that he rolled out to the practice field for diagramming plays. The chalk board was green. His "x"s and "o"s and arrows and lines created our maps and assignments. His right hand held chalk during the entire demonstration and became an extended finger that he alternately tapped on the board, held in the air skyward, and used to single out a player for instruction. He was a master at this. I would guess maybe what about 10,000 plays on chalk boards in his lifetime? He assumed a particular persona at the chalk board that was master strategist at the rank of general. No one projected more certainty, depth of knowledge, or animated joy during a lecture than he did at the chalk board. Those sessions were always riveting and effective, and he clearly loved this part of coaching. This was when he demonstrated his command of football theory and this was where we learned much of his football philosophy, which seemed to us always forward looking.
He had a highly developed, cerebral sense of humor. He would pull real life experiences from his playing days or earlier coaching days and create visual object lessons for his students and players, always framing them with word pictures that became visual scenes. Standing in the locker room one day in front of his chalk board, he mentioned his rather rotund physical build for some reason, I think just to lighten things up for us after a grueling and hot September practice session on the field. I believe he sensed the fatigue and perhaps lack of full attention on the issue at hand.
"Now, I learned this from Duffy Daugherty at Michigan State," he stated after diagramming a defensive alignment and explaining how it differed from the standard approach. "No doubt, you've seen Duffy on television. You think I have a protruding belly? I was at Michigan State one year attending a coaching seminar conducted by Duffy. We were in the field all day in the hot, humid Michigan weather and showered daily in an old locker room to get cleaned up for the evening meal. Duffy's belly protruded out so far, his genitals were completely concealed under the folds of flesh from his abdomen. Really, except for the hairy back, you didn't know if you were showering with a man or a woman."He returned to his "x"s and "o"s to finish the point he had been making as the laughter rose, peaked, and then subsided. He was obviously pleased with the reaction, obviously enjoying himself.
The chalk tapped, tapped, tapped on the board as he emphasized the importance of executing this play precisely. He had regained our attention, as he knew he would. He was preparing us for what we would cover the next day. He wanted us to think about it overnight before trying to execute it the next day, after he reviewed it for us on the chalk board so that we would have two exposures to the theory behind the formation.
He was introducing us to a 4-3-4 defensive alignment with a 3-4-4 variation employed on obvious passing situations on defense. This scheme must have been quite innovative for high school football at the time. I did not observe many of our opponents employing it, a fact that made them vulnerable to some of Coach Dougherty's defensive strategies, a fact which kept us more competitive than our thin talent would have accomplished alone.
Our football program had produced no league champions for decades before Coach Dougherty had arrived. He had winning seasons every year he coached and more that one league championship. Our community produced great baseball players and baseball teams through years of development with Little League, Babe Ruth League, and American Legion league. We were internationally known for our championship swimming and water polo teams because our town had invested in a state of the art aquatorium, we called it the Plunge, which our grammar schools used for swimming lessons once a week for every child in the school district.
However, parents and community had no such commitment to football development then, and this was not west Texas. Consequently, many of our best athletes did not play football, and we had squads that were very thin in talent, as a result. I think we had something like twenty-three players in each of the '61 and '62 seasons. Even with such lack of depth and player talent, Coach Dougherty was innovative and determined enough to mold us into respectability as a minimum, a fete few others could have accomplished, I think.
An Exit Way Too Soon
Just recently, I reconnected with several old friends from my hometown. We had been communicating via email. A friend and former teammate included a memory of the Coach's inclusion of torturous wind sprints in the conditioning regimen of his players--the kind that would inspire players to quit, although none did. He asked me if I had forgotten the 50 50-yard sprints he ordered about once per week. No, Pal, no one forgets those, ever. My friend also surprised me with the knowledge that Coach Dougherty attended his wedding not long after our graduation from high school. I think it ironic that a man who put you through 50/50s can inspire such regard that you invite him to your wedding, and he attends. I wonder if Coach contemplated wedding ceremony theory and diagrammed it on a chalk board the night before. I'll bet it came off much as he expected. I'll bet that he was pleased. Had I been married in El Segundo, would I have left him off the list? I think not. I might have asked his advice about how it should go.
Coach died way too young in 1983 of congestive heart failure. I missed his funeral because, living far away and traveling during my corporate insanity, I did not hear about his death for some time after. I know that several former players and students attended. He left behind his wife, Mary Irene Curry Dougherty. He left behind four daughters and one son, all of whom grew up in the town he never left once he arrived.
In my lifetime, the presence of a few leaders, like Coach Dougherty, has mattered greatly: a teacher, a coach, a drill sergeant, a non-commissioned officer, a commissioned officer, a boss. Those that did matter had certain qualities of leadership: they spoke with the certainty that subject mastery brings; they framed lessons in easy to grasp images, for they were all teachers in some way; they sought effective ways to guide me, because they wanted to. Like several other young men who encountered my old coach, I was not going to be an outstanding football player, but a lucky one who got to perform beyond my apparent ability because I made the squad of talent-thin teams coached by a great presence.