ALL WE HAVE LEFT ARE THE MEMORIES AND LESSONS

BY: Michael A. Aun, FIC, LUTCF, CSP, CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame

I dropped by to visit my old high school football coach J.W. Ingram recently….

I was in town for my 40th class reunion at the Lake Murray Community Center just west of Lexington. Coach Ingram had planned to attend but a bad cold kept the 93-year old mentor on the sideline. I always visit him when I'm in town, but this time he asked me to drop by.

Turns out that coach wanted to nominate me for the Lexington High School Athletic Hall of Fame. He reminded me that I was the guy who actually founded the Hall of Fame back in the eighties. In fact, I nominated Coach J. W. Ingram to be the very first inductee into the Hall. Now he was returning the favor.

I don't fool myself. I was an okay guard, tackle, center and occasional fullback in Ingram's cross-blocking T-formation offense. When you're a lineman and all you do is block, you don't generate many statistics. It's the less-than-glorious side of the football.

I did captain Ingram's defense where I mostly played as a down lineman but occasionally fell back as a linebacker. Since we only had six seniors on our team in 1966 we played every down, including special teams.

If I did enjoy any individual success it was as a place kicker and extra point specialist. In those days, we mostly ran the extra point and soccer style kicking was just coming into vogue on a high school level. In fact, Billy DuPree, who played for AC Flora in Columbia, was one of the first kickers in South Carolina to adopt the soccer style kick. He went on to play at the University of South Carolina.

I always got a lot of joy out of kicking the ball out of the end zone on kickoffs. Coach Ingram's philosophy on special teams is you can control the game because you know where everyone is on kickoffs and punts. He taught me early that all we wanted out of special teams was an unfair advantage. If you kick the ball in the end zone, they aren't going to run one back on you.

I was the last of the straight on "Lou Groza" style kickers, but I used a little twist to help my distance. The late Coach Carl Stegall taught me how to kick when I was only a freshman. He was our "B" team coach in those days. He showed me how I could tie a shoestring around the front cleat on my kicking shoe and tie it around my ankle an it would add 15-25 yards to every kick. He was right.

He said you only have to do two things: (1) Create an imaginary goal post with your arms and kick the ball through the arms and it will travel through the goal post, and (2) You have to keep your head down and follow through.

Life is very similar. You have to set a goal in you mind and you have to imagine what success will look like, and you have to keep your head down and follow through. Amazing how many lessons we picked up in athletics that transfer to real life.

Stegall also coached our track team where I was a discuss thrower and shot put specialist. Coach reminded me that I lettered on the track team, which I had almost forgotten. He wanted to mention that in my nomination to the committee.

I also played baseball for the Wildcats and our team went to the state Class A playoffs my sophomore year. Unfortunately, baseball was discontinued my junior and senior years so that was the only team on which I participated.

Coach Ingram moved me to fullback in my senior season, where I averaged 12 yards per carry the few times I touched the ball. We were playing Mid Carolina one night when their big defensive end tackled me, picking me up and slinging me around in the air. My leg hit some poor fool in the helmet who happened to be running by at the time. I broke my fibula.

Coach took a look at it, taped it up and put me back in the game. I ran around on a broken leg for a week. The following week we were playing Strom Thurmond High School in Edgefield. Before the game I was going out for a pass during warm-ups and stepped in a hole. I heard it snap this time, breaking my leg in five places. This time he took me to a doctor and my career as a football player had come to an abrupt end.

Coach advised me on the way to the doctors that I had been nominated to play in the South Carolina-North Carolina Shrine Bowl game. That never happened either. So life goes on and all we have left are the memories and lessons.