McCook Redux

Mc Cook is a town defined by the remote prairie that engulfs it, a contrasting landscape that is at once barren but subsistent, harsh but forgiving. To appreciate the simplistic beauty of the “high lonesome” surrounding the southwestern Nebraska town of 8,000 residents is a taste that takes time to acquire. At first sight, the far off horizon is one of unnerving wilderness; empty and devoid of any anchoring structure to give the eye a perspective of distance. No shapes or shadows, only the blinding sun in a clear blue sky stretching onward for as far as a traveler can squint; a grand statement of nature’s beauty and awe, of God’s simplistic intent.

When I gush to friends of my love affair with the isolated High Plains, they are confused, “There is nothing to see?", they say in exasperation.  In time, I explain, the answer will become spiritually obvious to the soul as a clear eternal and timeless masterpiece of light, sky and land emerges.

Weiland Field

I like small towns and since my first visit in 2011, Mc Cook has become one of my favorites. In a small town everyone has a role to play; King or pauper, young or old, socially popular or placidly ignored; you settle into a niche - your own personal cog in the overall big wheel of civic purpose. It brings a contentment of caste balance, no pressure to try and be someone you are not: for every saint, a sinner; for every savior, a lost soul. 

Secrets are shared and the resulting soap opera like drama (in a somewhat perverse way) is part of the allure that will hold many to their native homeland roots from cradle to grave.  There are no secrets in a small rural town, but there are no strangers, either.   

A childhood spent in a small town can be like living in a large family of somewhat contentious relations. Growing up in a large city is more like being an only child with lots of secrets.  A small town has as many eyes as a fly.  

Often, the pact to forget is as important as the promise to remember, binding neighbors to a lifetime of unspoken support. Small towns can, in a head spinning speed, both suffocate the soul or nurture inter-ambition - and the flip can be as sudden as a western Nebraska weather change.

Climate dominates life in Mc Cook. The past has made the locals respectful of the awesome power nature is capable of unleashing, often without warning. Locals know to always keep a wary eye upon the horizon. 

In 1935, on Mc Cook High School’s graduation weekend, the community was hit with a double barrel attack of nature’s deadly wrath.  After an already heavy spring of rains had saturated the ground, on Friday, May 30 and Saturday, May 31, 12 ½ inches of additional rain fell on Mc Cook in a 24 hours span. The Republican River that runs through the town’s center was forced from its banks. The resulting high waters caused 14 deaths. The crest of the flood reached Mc Cook around 1 PM on May 31.  At approximately 4:30 PM that afternoon, with  rescuers desperately already locked in a fever pitch of lifesaving activity, an F4 tornado hit the city. The killer storm added five more citizens to the weekend’s list of fatalities and seriously injured another 35. To co-exsist with a fickle and deadly force like mother nature, sometimes all you can do is grab a root and growl.

I am in Mc Cook to attend a Friday night high school football game. The Mc Cook Bison are the long time pride of a town totally smitten with its high school football team. This will be my wife’s first pilgrimage to Mc Cook, my fifteenth . Tonight, I promise her, will be a throwback to a slower and more naive time, when winning a high school football game in a small town really meant something, where little boys dreamed of future gridiron glories, where old men reminisced of past battles now encased in honor memories and where teenage boys are bestowed a hero’s status they will all too soon find short and fleeting.

Tonight, the locals will entertain the team from Waverly in a quarterfinal round bracket match-up in the 2018 Nebraska Class B State playoffs. Mc Cook enters play with a record of 9-1 and a state #3 ranking. They have earlier this fall defeated York, the owner of the past two years’ state championship trophies.

 Coach Jeff Gross

Jeff Gross is in his 21st season as the head coach of the Bison. He is the conductor of a Mc Cook grid-iron symphony that for two decades has made him the face of the community. If ever a man has been in the right place, at the right time for the right job, it is Gross. The gods of football fate were in a good mood on a day late in the last millennium when they steered the unknown Hays, KS High School assistant coach to a job that had already been turned down by two more experienced coaches.

As an untried rookie  head coach, Gross’ first two teams, in 1998 and 1999, were at best, mediocre, finishing 4-6 and 4-5, respectfully. Since then, Gross has known nothing but football success in Mc Cook.  

Over the last 19 years, his Bison have compiled a gaudy record of 185 wins and 25 losses, an incredible winning percentage of .881. Along the way, the Bison have won two state titles (2002 and 2003), just missing a third consecutive title in 2004, when they, in heartbreaking fashion, lost the title game on a last second play. A third straight state championship would have been a Nebraska state record, a huge accomplishment in a state that ranks success on the high school football field right behind God and family. His teams have finished state runner-up twice. From 2001 to 2008, Gross led the Bison to a state record  72 game regular season winning streak. His teams have made the state playoffs for the last 19 consecutive years.

Long time Mc Cook businessman and Bison Booster Bob Elder tells me that Gross’ strength goes beyond X’s and O’s. “He just seems to have a way of getting kids to play above their level. You see a group in Junior High some years that looks pretty thin, but then by the time they are seniors, they are a solid bunch.” I ask about next year’s prognosis as the Bison will be graduating a deep and talented senior class. “I am telling you, Jeff will find a way.”

Elder is also a long time area high school football official. In the past, he has had limited opportunities to see the Bison play as he will be working a local game. He tells me that this year, although he has registered with the state association, he has only called one game. This evening he will serve as the host for the assigned officiating crew. "I have really enjoyed watching this group play," he says.

As we do every Friday afternoon when I am in Mc Cook  to attend a Bison home game, Coach Gross and I have lunch on the town’s quaint courthouse square at the Citta' Deli. Today, we are joined by our wives. Coach orders his traditional game day meal of Runza, a popular ethnic German sandwich stuffed with ground beef, onions and cabbage.

 Diana and Jeff Gross

Gross is a tailor-made fit for coaching football in Mc Cook, NE. After my first afternoon spent observing the Bison program back in 2011, it was obvious to me that he had earned the high rank and esteem of the locals, a task not easy for an outsider to accomplish as a football coach in a small town. He is engagingly glib, thoughtful and considerate. Gross is in many ways a re-creation of everyone’s favorite uncle - a huggable  personality that makes the day better and lightens the mood for all around. But, his moods swings are of lore among former players and assistant coaches and he can reverse  roles between bites of a Runza sandwich. Gross has mastered the balance between a control freak and a warm and caring people person - and make no mistake, he is both.

Jeff Gross is supremely confident in his own ability to build and maintain a championship level high school football program. He wears his belief in himself in a comfortable and transparent way. Setbacks, he once told me, he has learned over the years, are not an occurrence necessitating self-doubt, but an opportunity for self-improvement. Gross is simply a master teacher of the game of football. As well as any coach I have ever been around, Gross has a philosophy of what it takes to win football games that he clearly understands and believes in, thus he does not, and will not, vary the prescribed course.

If you want something done right assign it to someone who is already busy. There is a reason they are busy. Two years ago, Gross accepted the additional duties to his already substantial work day by agreeing to become the high school’s Principal. He says it has been a smooth addition to his day, that multi-tasking is something he enjoys.

At 50 years of age and with 20 years of head coaching experience under his belt, Gross is today at the apex of his coaching abilities. Not yet a worn and burned out second hand lion hanging on too long to the glory days of old, but, instead, an aged but energetic  fox, poised to pounce. What could possibly happen in tonight's game that he has not already seen?

Pressure, it has been said, is something you feel when you don’t know what you’re doing. Jeff Gross enjoys our playoff game day lunch, not a nervous twitch of uncertainty to be seen, as cool as a nun’s libido.

Gross is, at this juncture in his career, locked into his craft with razor sharp focus. Our discussion of tonight’s upcoming game is tactical and unemotional. Gross is hot-wired to live for just such moments as these, the hours of intense buildup before the big game. He thrives on the anticipation. It is in his eyes - he can never get enough of it, there's no grind to it, but instead, an intoxicating sense of empowerment permeates our conversation.

We talk of the whereabouts of former Mc Cook players and coaches. The four of us discuss our kids and their developing lives. Several locals stopped by our table to give their best wishes and support for the Bison. It is a state of nirvana for a man such as Gross – one who was put on this earth to be a football coach, to mentor young men. 

 State Quarterfinal Action

I, as any coach would, envy Gross’ current universe.  It is surreal rhythm. Time slows and before he knows it, practice is over. And then it is game day. And before he knows it, the game is over. And then the season is over. And now the calendar says it is time to get ready for next year. It is a success-inspired Zen state of confidence for a coach in charge of a program that has hammered out over the past two decades wins over the teams’ of its Prairie neighbors at a ratio of 9 for every 10 played.

The coaches’ wife, Diana, could write a “how to” book for coaches’ wives. When we first met in 2011, I knew immediately that she played a key role in facilitating a semblance of normal balance for her family. A native of nearby Phillipsburg, KS, the 53 year old is employed in an administrative role at the local hospital.

“I get the kids where they need to be. I am the facilitator,” she told me seven years ago.

The wife of a small town football coach is never an easy role to fill.  It is a path with many potential pitfalls, compounded by the drama that comes with the closeness of a small town – especially, when your spouse is arguably the most recognized and accountable person in the community.

“I enjoy my role as the coach’s wife,” Diana once told me. “The time demand for not only football, but all the other things Jeff is involved in is tough,” the coach’s wife admits, “but Jeff does a great job of keeping family involved. DJ has, since he was little, been very involved in helping his dad with coaching duties and we never fail to make Thursday night family night. We are all invested in the team, just in different ways.” For the Grosses, Bison football is not a hindrance to the family but an enrichment they have all grown with through the years.

 Second Half Kickoff

Mrs. Gross has evolved over her years in Mc Cook from a companion of the assistant coaches’ wives to today a mentor and a role model for the younger coaches’ wives. She is confident and friendly in a non-threatening, non-condescending way. The Grosses’ are viewed in Mc Cook as a couple in tune with the needs of the community. Her contribution to her husband’s success over the years cannot be overstated.

Twenty year old daughter Lexie Gross is attending nearby Fort Hays State University in her dad’s hometown of Hays, KS. “She is really doing well,” Diana informs me. “She is into video media, writing and production and just loves it. She did some work here in Mc Cook last summer between terms and she is really good at it.” Her dad concurred. “I still have a lot of family in Hays so we were very comfortable with sending her there. We are very proud of her.”

Seventeen year old son D.J. Gross is a senior at Mc Cook High School. He recently broke the school record for career tackles. He has been a nationally ranked discus thrower in track and field since his junior high years. He is today recognized as one of the best football players in the state. In addition to his football and track commitments, D.J. also plays on the basketball team and the town’s summer baseball team. He was a water boy for his dad’s team by age 6 . In Junior high, he was promoted to student manager.  DJ has been present at every Bison varsity practice since second-grade.

The younger Gross has already committed to play football next fall at the University of South Dakota in Vermilion. “He decided last summer,” Coach Gross says. “He wanted to get it out of the way and focus entirely on his senior season here. We have had several players in the recent past choose to go there (South Dakota) and have had good experiences. I am comfortable with his choice.”

Win or lose, tonight will be D.J.’s last game to be played at historic Weiland Field. “It is hard, kind of bittersweet,” his mom told me. “Football, Bison football, has been such a big part of our family’s life. It is going to be a big change for us. It is sad, but we are also very proud.”

 The Schlager's

It is heavily rumored around town that long time defensive coordinator Russ Shlager will be leaving the program at the completion of this fall’s season and returning to his native Colorado. All three of Schlager’s sons were standout Bison football players.  The eldest, Jake, has in 2017, completed a four year career at Colorado State University. The youngest, Zach, is a freshman defensive back for Colorado State. Middle brother, Joe, is a sophomore running back on the roster of South Dakota, spending the past fall as a red shirt rehabbing a serious leg injury.  He will be joined next season at the Vermilion school by former high school teammate D.J. Gross. 

Coach Gross says his longtime right hand man, Schlager, if and when he does retire, will be hard to replace. Gross embraces the many longtime relationships that run deep through the veins of the Bison football family. Coach Schlager’s longevity and service sit on the top rung of the Gross loyalty ladder. “We have some very good young assistants on staff now who played here for me,” the veteran coach states. “But the successful experience Russ had for so many years and the faith I have in him is not something you just switch over.” Eldest son Jake gave heart felt testimony to his father. “(He) no doubt will go down as one of the best (coaches) at this level. I’m lucky to have been able to call (him) my coach and my Dad and (I) couldn’t be more proud.”

The community of Mc Cook  proudly claims ownership of the Bison.  Mc Cook’s home football stadium, Weiland Field, has for close to 80 years served as a proving ground for many Mc Cook young man’s mettle.  There is tradition in the venerable WPA built stadium that hangs like the crisp smell of fall. Years of remembrances of unbridled joyful triumphs and heart crushing defeats linger, clinging to the Stadium like grit. This is to many a Mc Cook man, both young and old and many in between; hallowed ground.

 Standing Room Only at Weiland

The stadium lies in middle of the local community college’s campus. When the stadium was first built in the 1930’s, the local school board had jurisdiction over both the high school and the college. In the 1960’s, the high school and the college split, with the college now having its own elected board of directors. The high school moved west to a new campus while the college remained on the original campus. This makes for an awkward situation, in regard to Weiland Field today. Since the split, the local school district has maintained ownership and kept up the maintenance of Weiland Field which is located on the college campus. In the post-World War II years, Berlin was a city split in two with the American controlled section of the city, West Berlin, surrounded by the Russian puppet state of East Germany. This cold war standoff led to the building of the Berlin Wall and high tension levels between Russia and the United States that held for four decades.  

No wall was ever been built around Weiland Field, but, sporadically over the last 50 years, some controversy has arisen. The local school administration, a number of years ago, built a stadium with bleachers, lights and a track on its campus, as well as two football practice fields. Sub-varsity games are played there, but never a varsity encounter.

The late Max Broaderson was perhaps the most avid Bison supporter, and in this town, that is saying something. “I came to Mc Cook in 1970 to coach football at the college,” Broaderson said in a 2011 interview. “The next year, the college dropped the football program. But, we liked the town and decided to stay and raise our family (here). I went to work in the banking business and then real estate.”  Broaderson told me that at one time the local school board had floated a rumor in the community that the Bison varsity home games would be moved to the campus stadium and Weiland Field would to be torn down, the historic  gridiron  converted to a class room building and a parking lot for the college.

Weiliand Field lacks many modern amenities, true, most notably a lack of much off-street parking, poor and outdated locker room space and the logistics of getting the team and the band from the high school and over to the college on game nights. On paper, the move had merit. But tradition cannot be measured within the two dimension limitations of paper. Weiland Field has character. In the subterranean locker room before the game, as the Bison players and coaches endure the last minute twinge of nerves; they can hear and feel the energy of the crowd above them. With no running track surrounding the playing field, the closeness of the stands and the steep seats allows the crowd to be near the action and interact with the players.  The sounds are festive: cheering, the school fight song, the celebratory cannon blast after each Bison score - just reverberates, a priceless and unforgettable atmosphere for the unique experience of Friday Night Lights – Mc Cook style.

The leaking of the possible moth balling of the historic, old field created a hail storm of immediate protests and backlash. Threats of retaliation from well-connected civic leaders were made to local school officials. Broaderson said it was made crystal clear that if Weiland Field was abandon then the school could forget about any future support from the Mc Cook business community. You don’t tear down Fenway Park because of the lack of parking space, nor do you Mc Cook’s Weiland Field. The proposal died a fast and inglorious death.

 The Escort

The necessity of getting the team bus the 10 blocks from the high school to Weiland Field on game nights, while perhaps inconvenient, has spurn a unique Mc Cook tradition: the motorcycle escort. For the last decade the Mc Cook Bison football team’s bus on home game nights has had a woolly group of five to ten leather jacket dressed Harley riders to clear their path to the stadium.  

Just before the group started their duties on one game night, I spoke to a heavily tattooed member who seemed to be the gang’s leader. He would not give me his name - something to do with warrants or statute of limitations - something legal, he said. The group is not school sanctioned, "never heard of those guys" a school administrator tells me with a wink.

The number of bikes for the escort is normally between 6 and 10, "depending who is in jail already by 6 on Friday," the man in charge told me. In addition to riding shotgun for the team bus, they are also in charge of security for the game officials, in a way. "If we win, we protect them to get them out of town, if we lose, we are the ones who chase them out of town," he explains. I am sure he was just kidding. They seemed like nice boys just supporting their team. But, who in Mc Cook does not support the Bison?

Perhaps, no modern industry has changed as drastically over the last two decades as the traditional media, in particular, small market independent radio stations. The evolving of the internet and social media has turned our world of communications upside down. In some ways, it has brought isolated towns like Mc Cook more into the world, similar to 140 years ago when the Sears and Roebuck mail order catalog brought to the isolated small towns of the High Plains almost any modern good any rural person wanted, as long as they lived where a railroad could deliver. But, last week, Sears announced it was going into bankruptcy.

Technology gives us the ability to lessen the barriers of time and distance – and will continue to do so, but, at what price?

Small town radio is a social facilitator; one of the key cornerstones of a supportive community; in essence, the town’s bulletin board. It keeps locals informed at home and at work, and that will never be replaced by Web sites and blogs.

 KICX's Rich Barnett, right

Rich Barnett, since 1989, has manned the long hours’ jobs of sports director and morning news director for Mc Cook FM radio station KICX. Rich’s portfolio would be a fine template for anyone wanting to run a professional small town radio station.  I would bet when Rich was a kid he had hid under his bed a $10 transistor radio, a cheap pair of ear phones and a stash of AA batteries that magically carried through the wonders of the AM airwaves and into his darkened bedroom the magic of far off ball games. I would also bet he had a cheap tape recorder into which he broadcast imaginary games to an audience of none.

Every fall Friday night I put on my Bison sweatshirt and “dial” my laptop into Rich’s detailed call of that night’s game. Streaming brings Rich and the Bison to the world.

In 2013, two years after I had written the book Prairie Blitz, I was contacted by a man in New Jersey. He related to me that he had given my book to his dad as a Father’s Day present. Growing up in a small rural Minnesota town, he told me that attending the Friday night games of the local high school football team was a special father/son memory. He had been forced to move his aging and ailing dad to a retirement home in the town where the son now resided. He said the local high school football in his suburban New Jersey area was too painful to watch; played on Saturday mornings with no crowd and no passion. During the 2013 season, his dad wanted to know more about how the seasons of the three teams I had wrote about were progressing. They started streaming Rich’s live game broadcasts. It became a Friday night ritual father and son looked forward to, conjuring up nostalgic memories of small town Minnesota life of 40 years prior. Soon, several other gentlemen in the retirement home joined in each Friday night to listen to the Bison game. Think about that, a New Jersey retirement home hosting a senior citizen booster club for a Nebraska prairie high school football team of teenage boys. Good job, Rich.

It was a great game, but, it was not supposed to end like this.

The tears flowed freely in the Bison post-game mid-field huddle. A senior class who had bonded as brothers since that first day of 5^th grade football practice with one goal in mind – get to State – were no more. The Bison fell to Waverly by a final score of 36-30.

 Pre-Game

The visiting Vikings overcame a 20-7 first half deficit to roar back and claim the upset victory. Bison standout junior quarterback, Cameryn Berry, rallied his team from two scores down in the fourth quarter to set up a last play potential game winning pass into the Waverly end zone. Berry is a dual threat signal caller, who, incredibly, had not thrown an interception the entire season. His game ending pass was picked off. It was just one of those nights.

An estimated overflow crowd of 3,000 saw one heck of a high school football game. In the end, Waverly quarterback Rhett Jordon was just too much for the Bison: too fast, too strong and too smart. On the first play from scrimmage, he shocked the home team with a 69 yard run. One the last play of the game, he intercepted Berry’s pass in the end zone. In between, he rushed for 297 yards and two touchdowns and initiated the play that the game turned on, a 79-yard TD pass to Mason Nieman for the go-ahead score in the fourth quarter.

 First Family of Bison Football

Coaching high school football is like a poker game. No coach wants to quit when he's losing; the community never wants him to quit when he is ahead.

The overriding question on the mind of all in Mc Cook this November is an obvious one: will Coach Jeff Gross be back on the Bison sideline next fall for a 22^nd season?

When you are a high school football coach, everything in your life comes after your football responsibilities are met. Can Gross still make that commitment? With his plate now overloaded even more than before with his recently assigned principal duties, a son playing college football next fall four hours away from Mc Cook and the now seeming imminent loss of his defensive coordinator; is this not the most ripe of time for Gross to chart a new course?

Gross does his best imitation of the Muhammad Ali rope-a-dope, when asked about his future plans, bobbing and weaving. “I’ve coached way more games than I have in my future, I know that,” is his coy answer.

It has been my pleasure, over the years, to know several coaches like Gross - coaching lifers. They are a special breed. Most will someday retire from coaching - if they live that long.