(First Memories Book)

Most of my "Memories" are from when I was littler. But with brutal summer football practices approaching, now's the time to share this one...

SURVIVING TWO-A-DAYS WAS AN ABSOLUTE MIRACLE

Other than war, there is nothing more traumatic, more hellish for a young man, than Two-A-Day football practices.

Especially in Oklahoma's brutal August heat, like when I played at Norman High School from 1971-1973.

Back then, as a tiny Tiger, my two-a-day breakfast consisted of a big glass of Gatorade, a piece of dry toast, and two Allerest tablets.

Anything more and it would have come up during wind sprints. Anything less and I would have died of heat stroke or hay fever.

I can still remember every practice starting with calisthenics, coaches screaming and whistles blasting, followed by position drills.

Dean Blevins and our other quarterbacks would put on their pink dresses and go throw to the ends, before focusing their efforts on flirting with cheerleaders.

The rest of us backs, linebackers and linemen would run drill after drill, smashing into each other, jumping over tackling dummies, slamming into the steel sled and driving it back, back, back until, finally, the coach sitting on the sled would blow his whistle.

The drills were repeated over and over, usually until somebody puked, which signalled that the coaches had succeeded, and they should start running plays.

If you were as "scrub" like me (I wasn't a starter until my senior year), you were on defense for an hour, facing wave after wave of first-, second- and third-team offenses.

It was like Normandy.

Then the scrubs would switch sides and try to run offensive plays against the first-team defense, which consisted of enormous mutant werewolves who could eat a small running back like me in one gulp.

After about an hour of this, another couple of scrubs would have died of heat stroke or after being hit "right in the jewel box". Defensive coaches loved it when guys got hit in the jewel box.

When players started dropping like flies because of dehydration and heat stroke, coaches would begrudgingly scream "water break".

Dean and the cheerleaders would be whisked off to the "Tiger Lounge" grandstand. The rest of us would fight for the awful water flowing out of the irrigation hoses. Seniors first. Juniors second. Any surviving sophomores last.

Hose water was hot and tasted like a dead lizard, but you gulped down as much as you could in maybe five seconds, before being pushed away by a smiling coach.

Coaches did this to make you tough. Or because some of them were sadists. It sure was a different era.

When you finally started to feel like a human, the whistle would sound and the cheerleaders would blow kisses to Dean.

The second half of most practices was when coaches really started having fun, "separating the men from the boys", determining who "had to squat to pee".

We’d scrimmage until vultures were circling overhead. It was brutal.

Then, after two hours of murderous heat and pain, would come wind sprints. Up and down Harve Collins Field. For what seemed like an eternity.

Your lungs would burn as you fought for fresh air, which did not exist, because in August, there is no fresh air in Oklahoma.

Even though I was little, I was very quick. So I made it a point to try and outrun the stars, especially Blevins.

But Dean would always beat me. When coaches timed us in the 40, if I ran a 4.65, Dean would run a 4.6. All I'd see was his pink skirt flapping in the wind.

After most two-a-day practices, the NHS locker room looked like a bomb had gone off. Bodies were sprawled everywhere in the darkness.

Some were naked and lying motionless on the cool cement floor. They were the lucky ones.

Others, like me, were crumpled on the benches, so dehydrated and concussed they couldn't even remove their gear.

We’d sit there, steam rising from our shoulder pads, as we tried to suck the sweat from undershirts that smelled of ammonia and hadn't been washed in weeks.

Slowly, over maybe half an hour, everyone would drag themselves into the shower, then put on a filthy, dry T-shirt and shorts, and limp to their cars, which were hot as blast ovens inside.

Dean and his cheerleaders would be whisked away in a limo. The rest of us would go home, collapse for a few hours, then come back to do it all over again.

THIS is how you were moulded into 4-A Boomer Conference Norman Tigers in the early Seventies.

Looking back, I have no idea how we survived. Or whatever happened to Dean's pink dress.

(Editor's note: Dean didn't really wear a pink dress ─ just a colored jersey so defensive players like me wouldn’t smash him. I hated that, but I knew it made sense. With Dean as our QB, we thought we had a chance to win State. He was that good. )

(Editor's note: Excerpt from Book 1--Memories of an Okie Boomer; Growing up in Norman in the 60s and 70s. Available on Amazon)

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