Sad, yet inspiring

A link to an ESPN video and story on the late Coach Ed Thomas. Here's an excerpt:

PARKERSBURG, Iowa -- They fell to the ground and did gut-busters together, 69 bellies thumping against the hard Midwestern earth. The drill was the most dreaded in Ed Thomas' arsenal -- up and down, no knees on the grass, and everybody quickly back on their feet. Did he know then, how scared they were? How perfect they could be? The world was changing, the Twin Towers had just fallen in New York City, and rumors were floating around Aplington-Parkersburg High that the draft was coming, and soon they'd all be 7,000 miles away hunting terrorists. Thomas gathered that 2001 team together, said a prayer, said everything would be all right.

The old coach was tough, but he choked up a couple of times that year. He loved those boys who looked so bad in their first game, and so confident when they lugged that state championship trophy back to Parkersburg. He told his wife, Jan, that he never wanted practice to end. The final pep rally of the year, he looked into their eyes and said the same thing he did after every game. "Remember to do what is right. Don't ever tarnish what we've done here today."


Their youthful past is buried in a stack of yearbooks at an elementary school library. The answers are somewhere else. They're not on page 48, in a black-and-white 2001 team photo with a 16-year-old boy named Mark Becker wearing an expressionless gaze in row 5. Ask why Becker did this -- why he allegedly shot his former coach on a summer morning two months ago, allegedly killed a man whose greatest satisfaction came from watching his boys come back and visit him as accomplished men -- and nobody really knows. Ask how a clean-cut kid who was one of them could fade to a dishevelled police mug shot, and townsfolk just shake their heads and try not to cry.

There is no time for answers now. A week before Aplington-Parkersburg's football team takes the field for the first time in 35 seasons without Thomas, Al Kerns walks briskly past the old yearbooks and into a cluttered office. He is the new co-coach of the Falcons, and there are a thousand things to do. He has to go over his practice plan -- Thomas' old plan -- which is preserved in a three-ring binder. Tonight, they scrimmage. Tomorrow, they'll do gut-busters and grimace in pain. Whatever happens, Kerns can't let up. That's when they'll know that things are really different, and it will hit once again that Thomas is gone. More.