SACCO: Good ol’ boys win this round

By Jim Sacco

Published: June 12, 2008

The problem with good ol’ boys is, well, exactly that. They’re boys. Not men.

Men fight their own fights, they throw their own punches, they kick their own butts when need be. They don’t depend on other men to do their dirty work.

If a few former coaches at Fort Defiance are to be believed, the Reservation outside of Verona is a good ol’ boys club straight out of the movie “Diggstown.”

And if the administration at Fort Defiance and some of the “boys” who call themselves coaches, along with the “men” in charge that choose to enable them, have taught us anything with the no-answer-for-the-public firing job they did on 14-year wrestling coach Terry Waters, it’s that these boys are in control.

Men don’t send an e-mail to sports columnists crying foul and asking us to stop giving Waters press after our March 23 column telling people how Waters, who is legally deaf, defied the odds to build up a winning program for the Indians.

Nah, that’s something boys do when little Johnny across the street gets to hang out with all the cool guys. When little Johnny is the one that everybody wants to hang out with. The one the other kids would step in front of a bullet for if need be. Just like those kids who wrestled for Waters would have done for the man they lovingly called “C-Dubs.”

Men step in front of verbal bullets like those teenage Indians did.

Boys look on in a jealous rage and ask others to stop paying attention to them like these so-called adults did. Then, when they’re called out on it, get all defensive.

There’s nothing manly about what the good ol’ boys at Fort Defiance did this week, kicking the seventh most successful wrestling coach in the state of Virginia to the curb and sparking a heck of a lot more e-mails in defense of him after his firing than that lone e-mail sent back in March at his lauding.

And when boys start acting up, what do real men do? They shame them into realizing how childish they are. They chastise them for not having the gall to say why they actually fired him, instead of not picking up the phone when called or saying, “No comment,” when you ask them why a guy who produced two state champs, 14 runners-up and two undefeated seasons suddenly becomes their de facto whipping boy because, hey, he doesn’t fit in. He wasn’t part of your childish gang. He did things his way, not the way you want things done. He builds champions on a state level while you lift your arms in the air after winning a title in a five-team district.

Waters said Fort Defiance good ol’ boy enabler Larry Landes told him he was being let go because he didn’t work well with other coaches. Augusta County Schools Superintendent (also an enabler in this matter) Gary McQuain confirmed that Landes and Athletic Director Jack Tucker said they wanted to take the program in a different direction.

“I told him, ‘How can I have a relationship with people who never gave me a chance when I first got to Fort?’” Waters said in a text message Tuesday.

What? That e-mail from a coach at your high school is something you guys consider a good “working relationship”? Brutus and Caesar didn’t run a restaurant together after the Ides of March.
Different direction, Jack and Larry? Hey, this isn’t “Three’s Company” and you guys aren’t fooling anybody.

What “different direction” would this be? The only “different direction” you can go from a 231-65 record is down. Is that where you want a program that earns kudos from Turner Ashby coach Will Crockett, a guy who coached a Knights team to legendary battles with Waters and the Indians?

Or maybe the handle on the mop that wipes the floor with Group AA wrestling every year, Christiansburg coach Daryl Weber, and his high-fives to Waters’ program weren’t enough.
Who knows? But boys don’t talk unless it’s among themselves.

Sadly, nobody here thought about the wrestlers. The real people who are hurt in this matter. A group of kids who don’t give a rat’s furry behind about your little boys club that, and let’s be honest here, reeks of stupidity.

Nobody thought about guys such as Adam Owens who told us in a February 2006 story that “I wouldn’t wrestle for anybody else. If coach [Waters] were to quit today I wouldn’t wrestle anymore.”

Or Kevin Delawder saying in January 2007 that, “Without [Waters], I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

Nah, since when did high school sports become about the kids? This is all about you, right? To blazes with the athletes who cherish a $2 medal that you would soon toss away like a piece of tin foil.

Fort Defiance and the good ol’ boys who control that athletic program like it’s a marionette don’t care about the athletes. They care about themselves and their backwoods, Podunk agenda.
Kids? “To heck with them,” the school said with one fell swoop of the hand and by showing Waters the door.

But that’s what boys do.

Men, yeah, sometimes we pull the carpet out from under a coach.

But only boys would get their jollies by ripping the hearts out of kids.

Betcha there have been some tears spilled by wrestlers at the news of Waters’ firing.

We hope the good ol’ boys enjoyed the salty taste as they toasted their latest victory. But something tells us their own medicine will soon be the chaser.

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