Hometown Legend Read Online Free
straight losing seasons, and that had happened only once in the 1930s.
In Buster Schuler’s sixteen years as head coach at Athens City, he had never coached a losing team. This previous fall the
Crusaders, under their third hopeless coach since Schuler, had suffered through their twelfth straight losing season. The
county school board had even talked us into changing our colors to blue and white, as if that would erase memories of the
tragedy we’d seen on that field. The worst idea had been the Jack F. Schuler memorial scholarship, awarded every year to the
Most Valuable Player. It paid one kid’s way to Alabama every year, but choosing the best player on awful teams had become
almost impossible. None of em had ever been good enough to make Bama’s football team, but they got the free education anyway.
I finally figured out that the only reason anybody ever came out for football at Athens City High anymore was that long shot
chance at the Bama lottery. I guess it didn’t matter to them how the team did as long as one kid stood out enough to win the
prize. All I could do, Friday night after Friday night, was sit there and shake my head at the absence of team effort. Every
kid with half an ounce of talent was playing for himself.
Rachel didn’t drive yet, so she still rode with me to every game, but she had her own friends to sit with now. Usually she
wound up sitting with Josie, another FCA prayer warrior. Josie’d been going with Brian Schuler, Buster’s nephew, who was the
hot new quarterback. The kid had talent, but he was clearly not a team player. He threw three-fourths of the time and though
he had a strong arm and good speed, his stats were terrible. He was poorly coached, and the only hope I saw on the horizon
was that the head coach, believing what he was hearing around town, had already announced he would not be back.
The search was on for a new coach, but who would take the job for what would likely be just one season? Nobody I knew, and
that included me. I didn’t even have time for junior leagues anymore. It was all I could do to keep the tradition of showing
up for home games while trying to keep American Leather’s business from going overseas and trying to let my daughter go while
still hanging onto her for dear life.
Rachel said she was praying for a miracle for the school, the town, and my business. Well, she wasn’t the only one. I was
already getting signals from our biggest customer, The Dixie States Association of High Schools, that their long-term association
with American Leather might be starting to unravel. That would do us in for good, them accounting for right around 40 percent
of our business. I believed their president, Chucky Charles, was more than a client though. We’d been friendly over the years
if not exactly friends, but that was only because of the hundreds of miles between my office and his in Little Rock.
So the Athens City Crusaders’ 2000 season had been another cesspool in which they’d missed the play-offs for the twelfth straight
time. Even I didn’t know if I’d be able to stomach one more season, and I admit I sided with those on the county school board
who said it might not be worth the expense and the trouble to field one more team, especially if they couldn’t find a coach
anyway.
But Fred Kennedy, chairman of the county school board, had decided that since I ran American Leather I must know everybody
in the football world, so he’d asked if I’d try to find someone to take the final season. The board gave me till the end of
the school year. All I could think of was to ask the freshman and jayvee coaches of neighboring schools if anyone wanted to
get one varsity year under his belt before testing the waters elsewhere. I thought it was a decent idea, and I figured someone
might bite. The board loaded me down with the films of all the games of the last season, which I thought might be better to
burn
In Buster Schuler’s sixteen years as head coach at Athens City, he had never coached a losing team. This previous fall the
Crusaders, under their third hopeless coach since Schuler, had suffered through their twelfth straight losing season. The
county school board had even talked us into changing our colors to blue and white, as if that would erase memories of the
tragedy we’d seen on that field. The worst idea had been the Jack F. Schuler memorial scholarship, awarded every year to the
Most Valuable Player. It paid one kid’s way to Alabama every year, but choosing the best player on awful teams had become
almost impossible. None of em had ever been good enough to make Bama’s football team, but they got the free education anyway.
I finally figured out that the only reason anybody ever came out for football at Athens City High anymore was that long shot
chance at the Bama lottery. I guess it didn’t matter to them how the team did as long as one kid stood out enough to win the
prize. All I could do, Friday night after Friday night, was sit there and shake my head at the absence of team effort. Every
kid with half an ounce of talent was playing for himself.
Rachel didn’t drive yet, so she still rode with me to every game, but she had her own friends to sit with now. Usually she
wound up sitting with Josie, another FCA prayer warrior. Josie’d been going with Brian Schuler, Buster’s nephew, who was the
hot new quarterback. The kid had talent, but he was clearly not a team player. He threw three-fourths of the time and though
he had a strong arm and good speed, his stats were terrible. He was poorly coached, and the only hope I saw on the horizon
was that the head coach, believing what he was hearing around town, had already announced he would not be back.
The search was on for a new coach, but who would take the job for what would likely be just one season? Nobody I knew, and
that included me. I didn’t even have time for junior leagues anymore. It was all I could do to keep the tradition of showing
up for home games while trying to keep American Leather’s business from going overseas and trying to let my daughter go while
still hanging onto her for dear life.
Rachel said she was praying for a miracle for the school, the town, and my business. Well, she wasn’t the only one. I was
already getting signals from our biggest customer, The Dixie States Association of High Schools, that their long-term association
with American Leather might be starting to unravel. That would do us in for good, them accounting for right around 40 percent
of our business. I believed their president, Chucky Charles, was more than a client though. We’d been friendly over the years
if not exactly friends, but that was only because of the hundreds of miles between my office and his in Little Rock.
So the Athens City Crusaders’ 2000 season had been another cesspool in which they’d missed the play-offs for the twelfth straight
time. Even I didn’t know if I’d be able to stomach one more season, and I admit I sided with those on the county school board
who said it might not be worth the expense and the trouble to field one more team, especially if they couldn’t find a coach
anyway.
But Fred Kennedy, chairman of the county school board, had decided that since I ran American Leather I must know everybody
in the football world, so he’d asked if I’d try to find someone to take the final season. The board gave me till the end of
the school year. All I could think of was to ask the freshman and jayvee coaches of neighboring schools if anyone wanted to
get one varsity year under his belt before testing the waters elsewhere. I thought it was a decent idea, and I figured someone
might bite. The board loaded me down with the films of all the games of the last season, which I thought might be better to
burn
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