The way high school sports should always work

Ed Thomas, the legendary Aplington-Parkersburg High School football coach, was shot in the head while conducting a weight-training class Wednesday morning, June 24, in Parkersburg, Iowa, and died from the wounds. Back in 1986, long before he had produced four NFL pro players, in fact before the consolidation with Aplington, long before he helped the whole Parkersburg community recover from a devastating tornado, young Coach Thomas and his Parkersburg Crusaders were involved in a classic high school football game with the Grundy Center Spartans. What happened that night in ’86 foretold what kind of teacher, coach and man Thomas would become. Our columnist, then writing for the Des Moines Register, covered that long ago game this way.

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
November, 1986
PARKERSBURG, IOWA

The high school football season has now ended – the state championship games were played last weekend – but before we put it all behind us, the story of one late October game must be told.

What happened here between the Grundy Center Spartans and the Parkersburg Crusaders will serve as a delightful counterbalance to the ugliness and poor sportsmanship that seemed to abound in the season of ’86.

This autumn had given us a lot of sorry stuff – fistfights, helmet throwing, a coach feeling he had to pull his team from the field before a game ended, one of our example-setting college coaches ordering an absolutely meaningless field goal when he was already winning by a lopsided score. Ugh.

Well, let’s forget all that now and focus instead on what must go down as one of the most truly important games of the year.

And to think some were saying that the Grundy-Parkersburg encounter, which wasn’t even scheduled until three days before it was played on October 28, would be a throwaway, that it didn’t count for anything. As it turned out, you’ll see, it counted for everything.

Both teams had narrowly missed qualifying for the playoffs themselves. But the opponents that each had scheduled for the final game of the regular season, had qualified. That meant both the Spartans and the Crusaders had to decide whether they wanted to bother finding a ninth game, or simply calling it quits with the eight games they’d already played.

Parkersburg is coached by Ed Thomas, 36, in his 12th year here. He’s built a solid program, and this team was 7-1. Grundy, equally as strong, was 6-2 in the sixth year that Don Knock, 32, has been coaching there.

Knock is a native of Parkersburg, and he and Thomas have become close friends. “In fact,” Knock said, “Ed and his wife, Jan, are godparents for my son, Kyle.”

The coaches of the two schools, located only 12 miles apart, spend a lot of time on the phone with each other during the football season comparing strategies. Their teams had never met, because they are in different conferences and because Grundy is a 2-A school and Parkersburg is 1-A.

But when they realized both were looking for a ninth game, they decided in a phone chat to finish the season against each other if their squads would agree. The players voted to play, and the game was set.

“After we decided to do it,” said Thomas, “both Donny and I were a little leery. I mean, we’re such good friends and we’re both so competitive that we were worried how it’d go.”

It could not have gone better. Both coaches now say they can’t recall seeing a more exciting, hard-fought football game at any level of competition.

“But the best part,” said Thomas, “is that it was clean.”

Early in the fourth quarter, Parkersburg led 21-7, but Grundy mounted a great comeback and tied it as regulation time expired.

A first overtime went scoreless. In the second, each scored a touchdown on the wildest of plays, and it was tied at 28. In the third overtime, Grundy kicked a field goal to win it, 31-28.

But it was then, in the aftermath, that this game became really special. The players had gathered at midfield and were shaking hands. They turned to see their two coaches engaged in a long, shameless embrace. “We had started just to shake hands, and then we both hugged each other,” said Thomas. “It had been a real emotional night for both of us.”

Thomas and Knock, acting spontaneously, then asked the two squads to sit together on the gridiron. Fans from both towns ringed the large huddle.

First Thomas, then Knock, talked.

“This game,” said Thomas, “with all its excitement and with the way we’re getting together here afterward, is what high school athletics is all about.”

Knock reassured the Parkersburg players “that there are no losers in a game like this one. We all will leave here with our heads held high.”

Then everyone – coaches, players and fans – got down on one knee and said a prayer of thanks for opportunities given, challenges met, values learned. It was a 15-minute scene that still gives nearly everyone on both sides goose bumps when they recall it.

Check with Tom Teeple, Parkersburg barber and a football official who happened to be working on the “chain gang” that marks the yardage. “I wish everybody in the state of Iowa that has anything to do with high school athletics could’ve seen what happened,” Teeple said. “For once, it was just like it should be all the time.”

You can write the columnist at chuck@Offenburger.com.