In That Great Italian Restaurant in the Sky,The Fat Man is Smiling.

What an ass kicking by SLU tonight. New Mexico comes in ranked 20th in the nation, fresh off a victory over #8 Cincinnati. SLU up by 20 at the half, wins by 14. The Bills tied Steve Alford’s team into knots, owning every loose ball and contested rebound. The ref’s ran Alford half way through the second half. I would love to see a better defensive team in the nation than SLU. NM had 13 points in the first half. 

When Cody Ellis stepped off the plane from Australia four years ago he was a spot up jump shooter that couldn’t guard the Easter Bunny. Now, he is a defensive maniac. Somewhere tonight in that great Italian Restaurant in the sky, the Fat Man is smiling.

Happy New Year everyone!

A No-Brainer: Dan Imdieke Inducted into N. Dakota HOF

A No-Brainer: Dan Imdieke Inducted into N. Dakota HOF

I have received word that my friend Dan Imdieke of Linton, ND has been selected for induction into the North Dakota High School Athletic Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony will take place next July.



Linton Head Coach Dan Imdieke

Imdieke has spent his entire career of 37 years teaching and coaching at Linton High School, the last 36 as the head football coach. His football teams have won 303 games for an incredible winning percentage of over 82%. Under Imdieke’s steady hand the Lions have won 19 regional championships and placed second 10 times. Linton has advanced to the state championship game 12 times under Imdieke, winning five. Imdieke has been named state coach of the year four times. He has endured only one losing season.

In a day and age when coaches seem to swap schools as often as the rent is due, Imdeike is a throwback, accomplishing what today is almost the impossible, coaching longevity. By facing the fire on the football field every fall Friday night while coaching three generations of the best this small town has to offer, Imdieke has earned the town’s trust. Year after year he has willingly accepted the knee shaking responsibility of leading the community’s most treasured jewel, the Linton Lions, onto the Friday night battlefields of small town North Dakota.

Residents of North Dakota, I have found, are slow in acceptance of outsiders. Reserved would be a polite and accurate descriptor. Open public displays of affection are not part of the pioneering spirit that runs deeply embedded in the blood line of those who live on the High Plains. A retired farmer, once the mayor of Linton, told me over breakfast one morning that “married folks around here will not even hold hands in public until they have had at least a couple of kids.”

Against such a backdrop of reservation, the old coaches’ greatest achievement may well be his earning the acceptance of this small and tight knit community, the once stranger now labeled as “one of us”.  Over time, Imdieke has seen the mercenary tag of an ‘outsider” removed, settling into an accepting community where he has raised his own family.

In Lion Land, Imdieke is the head football coach, head wrestling coach, athletic director, drives the bus to all away games, stocks and supervises the concessions stands at all games and is in charge of field maintenance, which includes the summer “vacation” months. He also sets up the gym for volleyball and basketball games. I looked up his salary one time - it is public record - but out of respect for the privacy of a private man, I will not reveal it here, but let me say, Linton; you are getting one hell of a deal. In what I took as an incredible clueless act by a school board member (I have seen many over the years), this fall one of the Linton School Board members publically (I read it in the Linton newspaper) questioned why Imdieke was paid extra to take care of the field. Lady, you don’t have a clue.

In the fashion begetting of a second hand lion; an aging warrior not quite yet ready to bid the glory of the battlefield good bye, Dan Imdieke, in the twilight of a storied career, is still very much on top of his game. I spent the 2011 season following his team. The Lions were not all that talented and each Friday night seemed to be on the verge of collapse, but somehow Imdieke’s team always found a way to win. Despite all the logic I attempted to apply, I could never quite figure out how. When the final gun was fired, week after week, Linton was on the winning side of the scoreboard, often when late in the game their cause appeared to be lost, their chance for victory hopeless. The Lions finished the season with a 10-2 record and a second place state trophy. They trailed in the second half on the scoreboard in seven of the ten games they won.

Coach Imdieke passed a seldom reached mile stone this past fall, winning his 300 game. I was fortunate to be in attendance at the game. In a state that only allows for 8 games in the regular season, that is quite an accomplishment. Is this a good time to step aside? I hope not, because trust me on this one, after 37 years, the man can  with out a doubt still coach.

 

Official Ruling: "A Good Read"

Found this article on the net by an offical in Minnesota who read my second book. I hate to thank an official, but this time I will make an exception!   Here is the link. http://www.mshsca.org/officialscorner.htm

Friday Night Heroes

The following statement will reverberate on the political correctness seismograph somewhere in the range of 8.5. So be it, for I don’t care. You can quote me on this one: The popularity of high school football is rooted in chauvinistic tenants. The sign on the door still says “no girls allowed.” It is a guy thing, the last bastion of our society we can call our own. The doors at Augusta National have swung open, the job market is (supposedly) gender blind; and even in a war zone today, the front line fox holes are coed. But football – we still can give that smug shrug of insolence that so annoys our better halves - “honey, you wouldn’t understand.” Football binds males of all ages with a common legacy; one we tend to embrace more (and perhaps embellish) as our years pass from youth to old age.

Tonight I attended a high school football game in Herculaneum, MO. The host Blackcats took on the visiting Pirates from Perryville. The first football game I can every remember attending was on this same field, almost fifty years ago to the date. I was five years old. There were no state playoffs in those days. It was the last game of the season and both teams were undefeated. My dad was a huge fan of the Crystal City Hornets. I remember it was very cold. Crystal City won on the last play of the game and I remember fans storming the field. Herculaneum’s head coach was Bill Holmes, who would later be my coach in college. One of his young assistants was Dick Cook, who would be my high school coach. Twelve years later, during my senior high school season, I scored a couple of touchdowns on this field, both in the west end zone. As I have traveled the back roads of small town high school football, I have come to appreciate that no matter what we as a male accomplish in adult life - no matter how grand the reaches of our triumphs and joys, nor the depths of our failures and sorrows - we can still throw the switch and revert back Peter Pan style to those glory Fall days of long ago. It is always with you. Like a puff of smoke from an unseen fire, the memories come flooding back at the most unlikely of times- the high anxiety and discomfort so familiar to high school swimming to the surface, our self-worth once again measured by the brutal honesty of the Friday night scoreboard.

Herculaneum is a River town dominated for over a century by the St. Joe Lead Company, the biggest iron ore smelter west of the Mississippi River. The large factory and its intimidating smoke stacks, just beyond the east end zone, tower (or loom) over the entire town. Herculaneum has made national news on a regular basis the past decade, infamous for the federal government’s declaration that the unsafe lead rates from the smelter have made much of the original town uninhabitable. Most of the homes around the football field have been purchased in a federal bailout and torn down. The smelter itself, and its full three shifts of jobs, are set to disappear in less than two years. But for at least five Fall Friday nights a year, the pride of this dying hamlet raises its head in defiant support of the Blackcats. This evening, the north side stands were full with Black and Red clad hometown supporters.

The local grid iron heroes over the last 75 years have gained the reputation of a hard hitting troop, the gritty realty of a childhood spent in a community so dominated by a lead smelter. Akin to the tough brand of high school football played in the steel mill towns of Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River Valley, for generations, Herculaneum has prided itself as a hard nosed football team, reflecting the values passed down by tough men to each succeeding generation of sons.  Much of the current roster of players no longer live within the old boundaries of the original company town, nor do their fathers labor at the soon to be shuttered factory, but the legacy is there; the coaches making sure that the current players respect and appreciate the standards the town expects them to live up to.  On Friday night, they did not disappoint as the Black Cats bested the Pirates by a final score of 40-12. More importantly, they pounded away on both sides of the line of scrimmage, with a fierceness for 48 minutes that would have left Mike Ditka pleased.

On the last play of the third quarter, with the outcome of the game safely on the side of the home team, a Blackcat Senior lineman, London Lowe, was in the right place the right time, resulting in 15 seconds that will change his life forever. I doubt the young man at this moment appreciates the profound effect his fortuitous spot on the field will have on him as he grows over the years into an old man. As the Perryville ball carrier was being tackled, with Lowe a mere bystander 10 yards away from the point of contact, the ball awkwardly squirted from the hands of the offensive player and right into the unsuspecting Lowe’s midsection. Almost out of self-defense, Lowe caught the fumble in mid-air and rambled unimpeded 40 yards to the end zone. His coaches said it was his first touchdown. Watching him run, I would say it is a safe bet to add “and only” to the description of “first.”

A little over a year ago, I was in South Dakota standing in the end zone of perhaps the worst kept high school football field I have ever seen. The small town the field was located in was itself in a decrepit state. A gentleman approached me that if we had been in an urban setting, from his appearance, I would have speculated was homeless. In small towns, I have learned, they take care of their own; no one is allowed to be homeless. The man readily admitted to me that his life had been a complete failure, with one shining exception. “One night, much like this night, 40 years ago” he told me, “right here on this spot, I scored a touchdown, and the whole town stood and cheered for me.” I will not attempt to put a societal spin on his statement, dissecting the folly of a wasted life buoyed only by a mere touchdown four decades prior. It was a moving and poignant moment and I choose to leave it at that.

I hope that someday, forty years from now, a middle aged London Lowe can reflect back to October 19, 2012, and have such fond memories of the night the whole town “stood and cheered” for him. High School Football binds men together, from generation to generation and across every demographic line that so often creates the societal separation and disparity that today challenges our great nation. This bond is what makes high school football so special to so many of us.

Football Evolution

The McCook, NE Bison pride themselves as not only a long time dominant high school football program, but also a team that stresses academics. Want proof?  Overheard on the sidelines during the second half of the Bison’s 40-0 whitewash of Holdrege was one of the stranger conversations you will ever hear during a football game. Assistant Coach Tim Garcia approached a Bison player to attend to a hand injury. The lineman was visible upset that he could not move his sprained thumb. Garcia told the athlete to relax. “It’s a thumb,” the Coach said. “We can tape it to your index finger. You are a Lineman, you don’t need a thumb anyway.” The lineman’s agitation only rose over his coach’s lack of empathy for the injured appendage. “I have got to have a thumb,” the lineman said. “It is what makes us human. Without a thumb I am just another primate.” 

Highway 83 Updates

 


Coach Carr will have the Canadian D
purring in Pampa tonight

Highway 83 Updates:  Tonight the Canadian, TX  Wildcats put their 4-1 record on the line when they travel to Class 3 neighbor Pampa for the last non-district game of the season. The Wildcats are young but really coming on strong. The move up this year to Class 2 does not seem to have slowed this Lone Star state juggernaut. They are a blocked extra point from being undefeated.

The McCook Bison have won five in a row after a 0-2 start to the year. They have two big guns on offense, a 6’3 wideout and a tailback with 4.4 speed, big time ability not found often on the high plains. Tonight they travel to Hastings for a second straight week on the road. Last week’s 45-17 pasting of a strong Alliance team signals that Coach Gross’ crew are a serious post season threat. I will be in McCook next week to see the Holdridge game.


The Linton, ND Lions are still lurking on the outside looking in. Last week’s win evened their record at 3-3 and they look to finish with a playoff berth and a winning record. Coach Imdieke’s teams have had only one losing season in his 36 year tenure. Tonight they travel to North Cass for a district contest.

THE ST. LOUIS PUBLIC HIGH LEAGUE, AN ABYSS OF INCOMPENTENCE

THE ST. LOUIS PUBLIC HIGH LEAGUE, AN ABYSS OF INCOMPENTENCE

I might have missed a couple, but has anyone noticed that the only high school football games around the state of Missouri that got canceled and will not be made up from this weekend were those involving St. Louis Public High League (PHL) schools? The district administration started canceling Friday and Saturday games on Wednesday because of the FORCAST of heavy rains! I spent a year at Roosevelt High School and I will tell any coach that is not satisfied with the support and dedication of the administration in your district, go and spend a year in the PHL. What a joke! Say what you want about Floyd Irons, but I tip my cap to anyone who could build a national power within the landscape of this waste land. Whatever is the easiest way to do something, with the least amount of effort from the boy’s downtown, is how it will be done. Guaranteed. Every time.  

What about the kids on the PHL teams? What about the kids on the opposing non-PHL teams that are also affected by this? What does this do to the new playoffs system? There are some excellent coaches in the PHL. On the grass roots level, I encountered many that care about the kids on their team. However, the upper levels in the St. Louis Public Schools are a deep abyss of incompetence; a farce and a total waste of tax payer money.

On a side note: The district admitted this week they “won” a law suit against former Board President Veronica O’Bryan that cost the district over $320,000 in lawyer’s fees and could have been settled for $20,000 out of court and without the lawyers. Forgive the rhetorical questions, but who won in this case? As always, the lawyers. Who got screwed? As always, the kids of the PHL. How many uniforms could $300,000 have bought? Maybe even a few rain ponchos, as well.

Below is what I wrote back in 2008 in the book Riding the Storm Out: A Year of Inner City High School Football (www.davealmany.com, to purchase a copy.)

The only way to rebuild the PHL is to blow it up, completely wipe out the status quo and start anew. I would, as (Demetrious) Johnson first suggested to me, fire everyone, coaches and athletic directors alike. I would open up every position in the PHL and those employed in the past would be welcome to reapply. I would hire back maybe 5% of the current staff. The others can find some other form of employment. That may sound harsh, but the lost student opportunities, under the current PHL regime, is almost criminal for the damage it is inflicting upon the students under its auspices, and thus pleadingly calls for such drastic, but justifiable, measures.

 If you are to coach in my PHL, then you must put kids first. I want boat rockers. I want advocates for kids. I want professional educators who have a driving passion for their athletes; willing to invest their emotional blood, sweat, and tears for the betterment of their players. I want a whole staff full of Coach Campbell’s. I would demand that every coach set high expectations, willing to lead the athletes they coach to the commitment and the self-discipline needed to be a champion.

My coaches and athletic directors will not take “no” for an answer. The athletes in my PHL deserve the best and it is their coaches and athletic directors’ responsibility to see that the athletes receive nothing less, and raise hell until they get their just due. I want coaches who will demand better equipment, better uniforms, safe and adequate practice and game venues. (Where will I get this money, I am sure I will be asked? Let’s go one year without hiring a “consultant” to do a “facilities study”, would be my recommendation. The cool million or so we save will nicely revamp my PHL). I want coaches who will promote their athletes. That starts with the simple task of reporting scores to the media. In my PHL, you can bet that scores will be called in to the media.

In my PHL, coaches would bring pride into their player’s lives. I want coaches who will work tirelessly to help those children under their leadership visualize that athletics can be a means to an end. My coaches will be expected to network with college coaches to get their students the exposure they need to attract a college scholarship. I was told the story of one varsity basketball coach in the PHL, who had held his position for 13 years and had sent a grand total of three athletes to college basketball programs. If true, then this is totally unacceptable in my PHL. 

And yes, winning does play into the evaluation equation.

Wins and losses should never be the final and only evaluation tool for validating a high school athletic program, but it is important. In my PHL, coaches will be evaluated on the performance of their teams. It happens all the time in high school sports around this nation, coaches are dismissed because of losing performances by their teams. In the 2008-2009 season, from the best data I could find since few scores were ever reported to the media, the Roosevelt girls basketball team played only 13 games – county schools played up to 32 - losing all 13, several  where they scored, as a team, under 10 points. One game they lost 66-5. Why even have a program? Who is benefiting from such a travesty?

My message: we can do better - and we must do better.

 

 

No Investment, No Return

Saggers:

When Terry Houston took over as Principal at Roosevelt, he put an immediate emphasis on appearance. “It is not an issue of trying to dress and look ‘white’”, says Houston. “It is a matter of making it in this world. I want every one of our graduates to go to college, join the military or go to trade school. We have too many (of our students) ending up working at McDonalds.”



Roosevelt Principal Terry Houston

Houston’s view on student dress code issues is grounded in a pragmatic view. “I want our kids to dress with pride and with an eye on success. How you look matters. Nobody is going to hire a gang banger if they have any other choice. No investment, no return. Our job is to prepare these kids for life. Prepare them to take care of their families. Live up to their responsibilities as a father or a mother, a husband or a wife, a son or a daughter. You are not going get the good jobs or get into the good colleges with your pants down showing your rear end.”

 

Read more about Houston and the rebirth of a city school, go to www.davealmany.com  and click on Riding the Storm Out.

Football Lessons Taught to a Science Geek

John Malpert lives in Toledo, OH. He holds a Ph. D in Organic Chemistry and is decades removed from the rock hard high school football practice field at Seeman Park in Linton, ND; but he has not forgotten the important life lessons he learned there, or the man who taught them. From 1983-1986 Malpert was a mediocre end for the Linton Lions. In his own words, “I was never a great athlete, just a skinny science geek who loved to play sports.  All through junior high and junior varsity, I was never in the starting lineup, but I was always running and lifting weights during the offseason, which eventually caught Coach Imdieke's eye, even though I wasn't that talented.”

Dan Imdieke

I had deduced long before I heard from Malpert that Imdieke was loyal to his seniors. Pay your dues and you will get your chance. Malpert’s experience validates my assumption. “I remember thinking that he (Imdieke) was nuts when he told me during the summer after my junior year to keep working hard because he planned on starting me at right end on offense,” Malpert remembered. “I kept working hard, and he kept his word.  Not only did I start on offense my senior year, but Imdieke made sure that I had my ‘moment in the sun’.  (About) two-thirds of the way through the season in a game that Linton had well in hand, he called for a pass play to me on the one yard line so I could score a touchdown.  He never specifically said ‘this is for all your hard work,’ but I knew the minute that the play came into the huddle why Imdieke was calling it.”

 Malpert is still touched to this day by Imdieke’s gracious act. “In all my years of football, I only scored that one touchdown. To this day, some twenty-five years later, I can remember clearly  every detail of that play.  That one touchdown was very special to me in more ways than one because my father was in the stands that night.  My folks were divorced, and my father lived in another town, four or five hours away.  In all my years of junior high, JV and varsity football, I am certain that my dad was only able to come to three or four games at the most.  And yet he was there on the night that I scored my only touchdown.  I am positive that Imdieke didn't know that my dad was going to be there that night, as I had only found out myself a few hours before game time.  It was just a case of Imdieke being Imdieke.  He was going to do the right thing and give one of his least talented players a moment in the sun. In the end, his small payback of recognition turned out to be an extra special moment that I never will forget. That's just typical Imdieke, taking something good and turning it into something great.”

 Malpert remembers few details about winning and losing in high school. He says he would be hard pressed to remember a season’s final win/loss record; let alone a score to a particular game. “What I do remember,” the scientist says, “are the life lessons I learned just watching how Imdieke lived his life.”

 Malpert readily concedes that he was a pretty unremarkable player and that his old coach, having coached so many players over the last 35 years, might have a hard time even recalling his face. But the coaches’ influence on this former “science geek” end was indelible.  Malpert remembers one specific demand Imdieke made.  “He always insisted that the players on the left side of the line block just as hard when a sweep was being run around the right side because ‘you just never know when our running back might break one, and the blocking on the back side might be the difference between a touchdown and the pursuit catching up,’ he would say.  Do the right thing, do it all the time and more often than not, good things will happen - that was one of the many lessons I still use today that I learned from Imdieke. I think that one of the reasons that Imdieke is such a success is that he lives his life very much like the lessons that he teaches on the football field.”

Donnel Lee Almany

Donnell Lee Almany

1931 – 2012

Teach your children well, so says the Bible.

If our Dad had been asked to write his own epitaph - to succinctly sum up his 80 year body of work on this earth - he would simply say, “Look at my boys.”

We learned from Dad to enjoy life’s little pleasures, to live a simple life. He detested name droppers and phonies. Dad liked the smell at dusk of a freshly cut hay field, frosty fall mornings in the Green Mountains of Vermont, Big Band era music and the History Channel. He liked his beer cold and cheering for his St. Louis Cardinals (when they were winning).

 

We were taught fiscal responsibility. Dad’s pay scale tapped out some time in 1952. He had a special knack for picking the hottest days of the summer to bail hay, preferably the small bales. When you buck 70 pound hay bales all day in the hot August sun for $5, you learn to value each and every dollar you earn. Dad threw around nickels like he did compliments; not often, but when you got one, it meant something.

We learned early in life that there are consequences for your actions. In his family court, there were no appeals and justice was dispensed quickly. Dad had the amazing ability to drive down the highway at 70 miles an hour, never take his eyes off the road, reach into the back seat and slap the right one every time. We learned respect.

In the race of life we choose neither where we start nor where we finish, only how we run. Dad ran hard; but he ran fair and he ran with a purpose. With Dad, many things went unmentioned; actions always trumped words. It was just his way. He gave out little verbal advice. But one statement he did make often has stuck with us all: “Always do what is right,” he would say,  “because in the end, the good guys always win.” And for Dad, it was very important to be one of “the good guys.” He was not afraid to tilt at windmills, and although he would never admit to it, we knew he savored the role of the underdog, slaying the dragons of injustice.  He would not set foot in a Wal-Mart. “Ruining the country and destroying the small towns,” he would say. Did he think his personal boycott  was hurting Wal-Mart? “No, but I am doing what is right and that is all any one man can do.”

Dad was an enigma. To some, he was a hero, the guy who stood up for the little man, who was not afraid to take on “City Hall,” no matter what the personal risks. To others, he was that mule-headed old man who stood in the way of progress. He could not have cared less what his critics thought. If it was right, it was right. He would fight what he perceived as injustice until Hell froze over, then he would lace up his ice skates and fight some more. Only half- jokingly, it was said that we needed to be cautious at Dad’s Wake that no one mention the word “airport” too loud or he might pop right up out of his casket spitting nails and breathing fire. He would have enjoyed one last fight.

To the very end, just when you would think you had Dad figured out, he would throw you a curve. It was noticeable to us over the last few years that Dad was suffering from progressive dementia. A week or so before his April, 2011 stroke, we took both he and Mom out to dinner. On this day he was clear and focused, just like his old self. We went to Cracker Barrel, one of his favorite eating spots. We were told at the door that the wait would be one hour. God did not bless Dad with much patience. Normally, he would not have waited an hour to get seated at the table with the 12 Apostles for the Last Supper, let alone Cracker Barrel. But this day he said, “Let’s just sit and wait, what else do we have to do?” We sat in rocking chairs out front and had what would prove to be our last coherent conversation. Maybe he knew.

Tom, David, Bill, Jim, Tim