Football Two-a-days-1956-The week from hell!

I got the bright idea to try out for my high school football team (Loraine Bulldogs)sometime in July 1956. Save for the occasional backyard tussles (balled up newspapers for shoulder pads)with fellow kitten-armed pre-pubescents during elementary school, I had little experience with real, organized football. I'd never worn real hip pads or helmets (mainly because nothing was made to fit my wee frame), and to me, cleats were something found on my father's Minneapolis Moline tractor tires.

The main reason to play football, to my 13-year-old mind, was because most of the other guys in my class (12 of them) were playing, or perhaps to get in shape for spring sports; like baseball. It was a dream of mine to star for the high school team as the scrappy, spunky catcher.(Ultimately, I would be known as the scrawny, puny second-string catcher/scorekeeper, but I was entering my freshman year in high school, and was still allowed to dream big.) But, for football, I felt like I might need to add some muscle. I was right. I bet I weighted maybe 90 pounds.

Something about being a football player appealed to me. Just the uniform was compelling. It was like wearing that coveted catcher's gear...all the time. And real men played football. I imagined it would be like big time football, caked in mud or snow, and blood, and sweat, smeared with grass stains...and pain. It was a brotherhood of men, and this was a time in life where I was eager to be considered a man. After all, I'd be driving in a couple of years.

My mother was not exactly pleased. She made me promise I would not "get yourself paralyzed." Also, she was none too eager to start carting my bruised carcass back and forth to two-a-day practices.

Speaking to that subject... back in my day, I wondered who was the weisenheimer that came up with the idea of two practices in a single day. Ask a football player, any football player, whether he loves the game - the hitting, the tackling and the touchdown making - and he'll likely say, "Oh, yeah."

Ask that same player whether he loves two-a-day practices, and he'll probably look at you like you've just grown a third eyeball in the middle of your forehead. As I remember, off season weight training was grueling enough. Two-a-day workouts had to be the worst, the scourge of the gridiron; more cruel than Vince Lombardi with a toothache.

Back to Mom. I made her a deal. We lived about 10 miles from the high school, so Daddy would drive me in for the 8 a.m. practice. I'd ride my bicycle to my uncle's house, not too far from the practice field, around 11 a.m., have lunch, pack myself in ice, then head back at 2 p.m., practice for two more hours before riding the bicycle back to Uncle John's to wait for Mom to pick me up. This seemed like a perfectly logical plan at the time.

I showed up for my first two-a-day practice to the shock of my former junior high classmates. I was not the type of guy expected to play high school football...much too small they would say. Also, I was in most of the smart classes, won the spelling bee, and recited Latin scientific names of insects...a real geek! I introduced myself to Coach Everett. He was the varsity head coach. He asked me what position I wanted to play. I had no idea. Hadn't really thought about that.

"I don't know. Quarterback, maybe?"

He looked at my tiny bones and non-existent deltoids. "Can you throw?"

I could not. But we were off.

Before we started learning plays, it was time to run. Sprints. Many, many sprints. The first lesson of high school two-a-day's raised its ugly head. Football two-a-days makes you, and all those around you, vomit. I think half the team left their innards on the sideline that day. We ran till our hair fell out, we ran till our pores bled. We ran for what must have been two straight hours, and then Coach Everett blew his whistle and said, "Okay, that's it. I'll see you all in three hours. 2 p.m., don't be late. I then crawled to my bicycle and found I could not lift it.

Somehow, I survived, and even made it to the third day of two-a-days when we were assigned pads. True to form, nothing fit my 4'10" frame. We raided the junior high equipment room and found pads and a practice uniform that would do. Coach made me feel special when he ordered a helmet and shoes that actually fit me.

I finally made it through the first brutal week of practice and excruciating bike rides. I was even assigned a position: third string strong safety. This was notable not only because I must have been the weakest strong safety since the inception of the pigskin, but also because we barely had enough players for two strings. School started, and the Bulldogs won their first three games. I played in none of them.

We had a game scheduled against Hermleigh, about twenty miles from Loraine. We built up a huge lead, and when the fourth quarter came around, all the scrubs were playing. Finally, when even the scrubs were tired, Coach Everett turned to me. "Redwine...get in there. And do try not to get yourself paralyzed."

I was assigned to the wide receiver. The Hermleigh quarterback must have noticed how scrawny I was, because on the second play I was in he threw the football to my wide receiver. There he was...coming right toward me. What to do? I hadn't tackled anyone who wasn't a blood relative before.

On instinct, I ran toward him and WHAM! I just drilled him right on the shoestrings and down he went with a thud. Hermleigh's coach ran onto the field.The guy had landed on the football and it had knocked the breath out of him. I jumped up...stunned. I didn't even know how to celebrate.

The next Monday's practice I was fired up and ready to go. My peers had even dubbed me with a nickname...Shoestring Dave," and Coach Everett took special notice of me. He even promoted me to second string. I was breaking through. The heck with baseball. Who needed baseball. I was Bob Lilly.

I went to two-a-days and played football all four years in high school.

I loved to wear that Bulldog uniform.