BY MIKE LONDON
SALISBURY POST

BARIUM SPRINGS — Whenever the South Iredell High football team slacks off at practice, coach Kent Millsaps offers a verbal prod that never fails to grab his navy-and-gold clad Vikings’ undivided attention.

“Whenever they start whining and complaining, I remind them that they’re still alive and breathing and Ryan’s not,” Millsaps said. “I remind ’em that Ryan would love to be out here.”

“Ryan” was lineman Ryan Sobiech.

Sobiech was killed in an auto accident on a Friday morning last March when he lost control of his vehicle while rounding a curve. His three passengers walked away. Sobiech did not, pinning an abrupt nightmare ending on a budding career whose early pages read like a fairy tale.

Sobiech, 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds, was a star at ice-skating and hockey, rare talents in the crossroads communities of Troutman and Barium Springs that combine to form South Iredell. But Sobiech, who was home-schooled most of his life, decided prior to his junior year that he desired more than anything to be a football player. That career choice brought him to meet Millsaps and enroll at South Iredell.

Sobiech made an immediate impression. The big kid possessed surprising grace and footwork for someone who’d never played. He displayed a work ethic that would have shamed Rocky.

“Ryan never missed weightlifting sessions. Never missed practice,” said Millsaps. “This was going to be his senior season and it would’ve been a very good year for him.”

“It was amazing,” added athletic director Don “Duck” Sparks. “Ryan touched the lives of so many people and didn’t go here but a year.”

Students and coaches drained away some of their pent-up grief at an assembly last spring, two weeks after the accident.

“There were six or seven speakers,” said Millsaps. “Now, usually when a speaker comes in and there are 1,400 kids in the bleachers, there will be some knuckleheads. There will be kids who are loud and disrespectful.

“But for 30 minutes that day, you could’ve heard a pin drop.”

Now, five months later, you get the impression strolling the calm campus and hushed hallways that you could still hear that pin drop. The kids here appear no different than those who make up the student bodies at Davie or South Rowan, but there is little laughter. Only silence so thick that a steak knife would be required to slice it. Everyone lost in his or her private thoughts.

The ROTC parades quietly. The P.E. basketball games are virtually noiseless — like someone’s hit the mute button. Kids pad down the stairwells like cats as if they fear waking a light sleeper. Even the coaches speak in subdued tones.

It’s like everyone’s holding back, holding on, holding in — waiting to exhale. Hard-nosed stoics waiting for the command to release all that hoarded emotion.

Some of this school’s stored-up tears will doubtless be spent tonight. The Vikings plan to retire Sobiech’s jersey when they take on West Rowan. And as each Viking player enters the stadium, he’ll touch or rub or say a quick prayer over a touching tribute to Sobiech found at the north end of the stadium. There you’ll see a bright navy 64 painted on a huge chunk of rock. And there you’ll see an honorary broadsword planted in that stone. It’s like something straight from the “Tales of the Knights of the Round Table.”

That riveting rock should remind Falcon followers to thank their lucky stars that their own fallen hero, Joe Jackson, will recover from his lung injuries and will someday return to the field.

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South Iredell’s coaches had just started to shake the Sobiech tragedy when a second helping of misfortune struck in June. This time it was the school’s baseball star, Michael McClain. He’s the Mooresville Legion player whose skull was shattered like an eggshell by a freak knee-to-temple collision.

South baseball coach Bobby Deal was on vacation when McClain suffered his nearly fatal injuries. When Deal returned home and checked his phone messages, there was an absolute flurry of anguished calls. All dated to that fateful Tuesday night.

“It’s pretty tough,” said Deal. “Just a freak accident. Michael got hit in just the right spot.”

The complete McClain saga has yet to be written. The youngster’s odyssey could yet have a heartwarming ending, but a hard road must be traveled first. Long odds must be beaten.

“Michael’s been in and out of the hospital,” sighed Deal. “He had trouble with blood clots during his rehab and he’s had trouble with fluid getting in there. We just hope he can someday get back with us. Will it be this semester? Next semester? Or next year? We just don’t know.”

McClain, a junior, is currently tackling his schoolwork from his bed and has been unable to join his freshman sister and sophomore brother at South. Deal acknowledges that if McClain can’t manage a miraculous return to the diamond, it will be a severe blow to the Vikings’ chances of challenging in their new 4A league.

Deal says his school has solid baseball tradition (East Rowan’s Jeff Safrit once coached the Vikings and the school’s had a couple of state runners-up) and fine fan support. With a healthy McClain, it could be an exciting spring.

“Michael could be one of the best ever out of Iredell County,” Deal said. “And we’ve had good ones. Chris Woodfin (1980s) graduated here, went to N.C. State and got drafted by the Chicago White Sox.

“Michael could do that. He’s so good that he hit around .300 last year as a sophomore and people said he had a bad year. You can put Michael at pitcher, shortstop, center field. Anywhere you want to.”

Mostly McClain roamed center for Deal, so you can’t fault the coach when he wistfully stares toward the outfield every few minutes.

“I remember last fall, Michael would be the only one out there,” he said. “He’d go pick up five baseballs and run to the outfield to work on his crow-hop. That’s why he’s so good. He was always working on his own, not just when the whole team practiced. He’s an awesome kid.”

Unfortunately, for the moment, Deal has only fond recollections of his star. And memories can’t bat cleanup or chase down fly balls.

Perhaps it was Millsaps, who best described the dark late-summer mood at South Iredell.

“We’re snake-bit,” he sighed. “You ask yourself, ‘What else can go wrong?’ ”

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Contact Mike London at 704-797-4259 or mlondon@salisburypost.com .