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PAGOSA PAST: Coaching Junior High, Part One |
Jerry Driesens | 5/12/08
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My first year of teaching in Pagosa, in 1975, began with me coaching junior high football with Larry Lister. He was an experienced coach and was a fine mentor to me. He took the 9th grade team and gave me the 7th and 8th grade team. Some of my kids weighed as little as 60 pounds. I had played football, basketball and baseball in high school and pretty much remembered offenses and defenses we had run in high school. We played against two junior high schools in Durango, Cortez, Ignacio, Bayfield and Dulce. It was a great way to get to know some of my students a lot better and I taught my kids a couple trick plays that we used in scrimmages against the 9th graders with great success — at least the first time we used them!
Most of the schools were quite a bit bigger than us in both numbers and in the size of their kids it seemed, in those early years, with the exception of Dulce and perhaps Bayfield. So we had to play with more heart to hold our own. I remember that first year when we struggled to win football games. We also were committed to get every kid some meaningful playing time in every game.
 When basketball season came around , I had ten players, and some great core kids for my starting five, who would play their hearts out. I can still remember all of them from that first year: Russell Masco, Jeff Rivas, Ricky Shahan, Marvin Lord, Eric Hawkins, Clifford Lucero, David Gallegos, Mark Young, Marty Martinez and Ronnie Archuleta. We piled into Ol’ Blue” after school and I would drive them to the Circle K (now known as Everyday). I would drop them off and they would run through town, getting conditioning while displaying some Pirate Pride all the way up to the elementary school, where I would have the lights on , the floor cleaned with the dust mop and the basketballs out and waiting when they arrived.
The elementary all-purpose room had regulation baskets, but the court was much shorter and the floor was linoleum tile. It was pretty slippery but there was only one other gym, the one with the hardwood floor, which is now the intermediate school gym. Back then it was in the high school and all teams, girls and boys, varsity and JV used it and some of the kids came to school at 7:00am to be able to practice. Rather than compete with all those teams for a practice time, we went up to the elementary “gym”. But we got to play our games on the hardwood and it made the games even more special.
After practice it was mandatory to run wind sprints. How many minutes the team ran was determined by how many “half court” shots Coach Driesens made out of ten tries. There was no such thing as three-point shots back then, and the half court shot was longer than today’s three-point shots, but a far cry from a half-court shot in a regulation gym. It was, however, just far enough to be too long for a 7th grader, so it still impressed these boys. Usually I would make 3 or 4, at most, out of 10. They would be yelling for me to miss. One lucky day, remarkably — for me anyway — I started out making them all. I had swished the first four in a row and the boys were yelling more and more boisterously with each shot made. I had made 9 out of 9 and they were screaming and yelling and I was laughing so hard that I missed the last one.
Clifford Lucero was the best all around player; David Gallegos was everywhere on defense. He would leap out like a cat to steal passes and we called him El Gato. Mark Young and Marty Martinez were incredible shots even though they were pretty short in 7th grade. In games they would swish shots that would easily be 3 pointers today. Then they would run back up court to play defense with total serious looks of determination on their faces. I would yell from the bench as they ran past, “Mark, Mark, Mark Young!” Or Marty, Marty, Marty Martinez!”
Finally, they would hear me and look up and say, “What, Coach?”
I would yell, “It’s okay to smile!” This might evoke a quick smile from them before they went back to playing serious defense.
These kids and I became very tight. I would give some of them rides home after practice and sometimes be treated to some fresh hot homemade tortillas by their moms. The loyalty these kids showed to me was just incredible. One time in class a boy who was kind of a smart-aleck, but very cute and likeable — the kind you couldn’t stay mad at for long — said something to me that was verging on being disrespectful. Marty jumped up from his seat to his feet and with fire in his eyes, glared at the boy and said, “Don’t you talk like that about my Coach!” I turned to the blackboard to hide the tears that welled up in my eyes and knew then and there why I was teaching and coaching.
One cold night a high school boy, whom I did not know nor had ever met, slashed two of the tires on my car when it was parked out on the main street in front of the school. Mark Young and Ronnie Archuleta saw who did it and testified in juvenile court in Durango even though a high school buddy of the slasher threatened to knife Ronnie if he testified. The public defender grilled Ronnie in court in a such way that he should have been ashamed of himself. With great sarcasm and patronization he asked Ronnie if he actually saw that the shiny object in the slasher’s hand was a knife and if he actually witnessed it go into the tires in the dark under the street light. Ronnie admitted that he didn’t actually see that but that he saw the air coming out. This defender was totally sarcastic and absolutely obnoxious as he gave Ronnie a hard time.
“You saw the air coming out? You SAW the air coming out? You mean you heard the air coming out?”
Ronnie smiled and calmly replied, “ You know like how you see your breath when it’s cold outside? That’s what I saw coming out of Coach Driesens’ tires!” (The warmer air inside the tires, under pressure, must have contained enough moisture to condense when it was released into that cold November night air.) The judge looked pitifully at the attorney with a look that suggested that he was going to be there for a long time before he ever might be considered for a position in the DA’s office.
I got my tires paid for, at least for my deductible portion.
We didn’t put up with a lot of the stuff that teachers do today. Kids got a swat with a paddle for certain offenses back then after other punishment methods had been tried and failed. A note would then go home to the parents outlining what all had occurred that led up to the swat, who the other adult witness was, etc. Most kids would beg for a second swat rather than have the note go home, but to no avail. The parents had to be notified and the kids dreaded that even more than having the board of education applied to the seat of learning. I hated having to do it and would sometimes be in tears myself. Usually Mr. Alley would be the witness when he was the principal. When he became the new superintendent, Mr. Lister became the new principal and decided he would administer the swats and the teacher would be the witness. I loved him for that policy change, even though I didn’t get to coach with him anymore.
Part Two tomorrow...
Longtime Pagosa Springs resident Jerry Driesens is the broker owner of Jerry Driesens Real Estate. He has been sharing his memories of life in Pagosa Springs during the last quarter of the 20th century, in a series of Post articles. You can visit his website at pagosare.com. |
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