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“The team Catawba has coming back is as strong a football team as you can have.”
Mars Hill football coach Tim Clifton.
“Catawba’s a great story. In 1994, they were 2-9. Talk about ebb and flow of the league. Now, it’s 2000 and that’s a very short time. I attribute it to the combination of the continuity in the coaching staff and getting good players to buy into the system. It’s what the rest of us want to emulate.”
Newberry football coach Mike Taylor.
That was pretty much the theme of Operation SAC Friday morning in Salisbury. All of the South Atlantic Conference football coaches showed up to talk about their team — and obviously about Catawba’s rise to power.
When you think about it, the success story is one a movie screenwriter would love.
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I’ll write the script. Oh boy, my first movie. Here goes:
A country boy coach from South Carolina brings his pretty, down-to-earth, stand-by-her-man wife to North Carolina and takes over the football program at one of the league’s smallest schools. It is a loser, man, getting creamed each and every week.
Then, the coach turns on the corn pone charm that won over his wife years before. His assistants buy into it. Talented players buy into it. And suddenly, the country boy coach is practically on the same level as the No. 1 team in the nation, or as it is referred to in my movie: the bully.
The climb to respectability begins. A 6-4 season. 7-3. 8-3. 9-2.
By now, the theater’s audience has been captured. They’re cheering as the little school not only goes 11-2 but makes the Division IInational playoffs — and actually wins its first game in rousing fashion, scoring 48 points.
The movie then brings the audience down as it loses to — who else? — the bully — in the second round of the playoffs in a heartbreaking 28-25 decision.
Now, the movie is at the midway point. It’s the next season and the country boy coach has practically everybody back. Sixteen of 21 starters to be exact. And the league’s other coaches seem to be rooting for him and his little school to finally put the bully in his place.
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OK, it’s the movie’s intermission. Let’s do some research.
The bully is, of course, Carson-Newman, a program that everybody wants to beat, a program everybody knows can be beaten, but a program that always wins, somehow, some way.
You respect the bully but just once, you’d like to see somebody else win.
The ones who feel this way see Catawba’s returning talent on offense, its power on defense and have decided that David Bennett and the Indians are the team to dethrone mighty Carson-Newman.
Bennett’s reaction? Puh-leeze.
“You can’t put all your eggs in one basket,” he said. “We were supposed to be a good football team in 1998. We went up the mountain to play Carson-Newman ranked fourth in the country and they were No. 1. It was the fourth game of the year. When we lost, you know what those seniors did? They packed it in. They said, ‘We can’t go to the playoffs’ and I found out later, a lot of the seniors gave up.”
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Giving up would not be a very good ending for the country boy coach. Not in this movie.
But in the wacky Division IIplayoff format, one loss could do a team in.
Presbyterian is ranked 22nd in the nation and Daryl Dickey said his team would have to win nine games. “And winning nine games isn’t promising you you’ll get in, either,” he said.
Unlike Division 1-AA, which takes the top 16 teams and seeds them, Division IIpicks four teams from four regions. And only four, regardless of whether another region is weak and your region has six solid national contenders.
“It’s a money thing,” said Bennett, who harps on this subject every year. “They don’t want to fly us little Division IIteams around. So they go regional — go get on that bus and play.”
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So it leaves the little school at a disadvantage. It almost has to go undefeated, or, at least, finish with one loss in the regular season.
The bully can get in on reputation and tradition.
And Carson-Newman should. It has earned that right and the little school knows it.
But remember, this is a movie and in the movies, dreams can come true.
“I’ve been in the league now for eight years,” said Clifton. “In the past, you’d take Carson-Newman ... then take everybody else, put them in a bag, shake it up and how they rolled out, you’d be close (in picking the order of teams). But Catawba returns so many starters. And they’re so hungry.”
Everything looks so good for the little school before it even hits the field.
Try to get Carson-Newman coach Ken Sparks worked up about Catawba. You can’t. He is cool. Calm. He speaks softly, confidently. Like he has heard all of this before. Every year, it seems, there’s a school that is supposed to challenge his club — and never does.
This year, going by the numbers, the country boy and his team has gotten the nod.
“Games aren’t played on the computer,” Sparks reminded those in attendance. “They’re played on grass.”
Dadgum bully.
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After intermission, my movie is winding down. It is a clear, sunny day in Salisbury and the showdown has finally arrived. The bully has to come to the little school, where 7,000 curious onlookers have packed into the 4,000-seat stadium, still reveling over last year’s playoffs.
The last 30 minutes of my movie has the country boy coach urging on his troops, giving an emotional halftime speech, gyrating on the sidelines as his underdogs stay with the bully point for point.
It finally comes down to this. The bully has forged ahead by one point. The little school has one last possession.
The camera zooms in on the clock as the seconds tick down and it’s the little school’s last chance. From midfield, the quarterback, a hometown hero from his high school days, goes back to pass. His golden arm lofts a beautiful spiral toward the endzone. The camera zeroes in on the flight of the ball — in slow motion, of course (I’ve been watching too much of Steve Sabol’s NFL’s Greatest Moments).
Then, the camera slows down the stride of the wide receiver — like the coach, a country boy from South Carolina, let’s say a town called Irmo.
Another camera hones in on the country boy coach — eyes wide open, heart in his throat. By this time, the ball has been in the air about two minutes — hey, it’s the movies — but you expect the coach to leap and thrust his arms in the air like Rocky.
The wide receiver is behind the defensive back. The ball comes down ... and the screen goes dark.
Tune in Oct. 28 at Kirkland Field to see how it all turns out.
Don’t you just hate these two-part movies?
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Ronnie Gallagher is the sports editor — and the screenwriter — of the Post.
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Ronnie