Terrell Lester ... scouting around

April 25, 2008 11:11 am

— TERRELL LESTER Column

Scouting around ... Hall of Fame football coach Phil Ball is recuperating and undergoing therapy in Oklahoma City after sustaining a broken hip and a broken shoulder at his home in Edmond.
Ball was inducted into the Oklahoma Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1978 after wrapping up a three-decade career that took him to Wewoka, Walters, Seminole and Muskogee before landing at Central State College in 1964.
A child of the Depression and a veteran of World War II, the 82-year-old Ball said the therapy sessions are a little taxing.
“I never had anything in football that compared to some of the pain I’ve been having with this,” he said the other day.
“There were some losses that shook me to the bone. But I guess I’ve got to approach it like football, that you have those great games and everything works out fine, and there’s going to be those other games, too. I hope I can forget about those bad ones, and not dwell on them.”
Ball won the 1960 Class A state championship at Seminole, and two years later he moved to Muskogee, succeeding the legendary Paul Young.
Ball, who taught math, was a football coach who placed academics above athletics.
Another Hall of Fame coach, John Scott, played for Ball at Wewoka and earned All-State honors as a lineman.
Scott closed out his coaching career at Owasso, where he had served as athletic director. He remembered Ball grading math papers on bus rides to and from football games on Friday nights.
“He would sit up there at the front of the bus, with nothing but a little overhead light,” Scott said. “He wouldn’t say anything, going or coming. He’d just grade those papers. He was a dedicated teacher. And, a heckuva football coach.”
Thinking about those road trips, Ball laughed and said: “I hope that I never did grade those papers right after a loss. My scheme of things would have been distorted.”
Ball then said: “I know that some of the players said that they would never go into coaching because I’d be taking along my math papers and be grading them on the bus.”
Still, Scott was just one of many Ball proteges to follow him into the coaching ranks. And many have been visiting with him in recent days in the Oklahoma City hospital. ...
Catching up with Skiatook. Few, maybe none, could ever have imagined a scenario in which Skiatook had anything, much less a school facility, that the good people of Claremore would covet.
But it’s here. It’s the Dr. Gary Johnson Activity Center on the campus of Skiatook High School.
While Claremore’s Frank Mobra Fieldhouse is in the autumn of its useful life, the facility in Skiatook sprang forth during the winter with the exuberance and glow of youth. It was born of vision.
Claremore has plans, and hopes, for a new high school fieldhouse. School officials need look no farther than north Tulsa County for inspiration and imitation.
Claremore representatives have toured the 5,000-seat, $11-million, all-purpose palace in Skiatook. It is hoped that they took note.
Skiatook officials boast that theirs is a community-driven facility. They are courting, and booking, concerts, boat shows, trade shows. “It is equipped to do a lot of things,” Skiatook athletic director Pat James said recently. “Our superintendent (the same Dr. Gary Johnson whose name adorns the front door) wants as many things as possible in it.”
Claremore has moved into Class 6A, the state’s largest classification for athletic competition. Skiatook is a classification behind, and at the lower end of that classification.
It might be a sin to covet thy neighbor’s gym, but the fact that Skiatook has the closest thing to the Union Multi-Activity Center — the UMAC — in Tulsa and Claremore is shopping around for ideas is in itself sinful.
Talk on the street has been that Claremore is not considering a campus facility with anything close to 5,000 seats.
Claremore has much more to offer, what with a larger population base, a state university, a Class 6A school enrollment, and could therefore justify a similar-sized facility.
It probably won’t happen. It probably wouldn’t happen in a lot of cities.
But Skiatook has it. And that is now being held up as the gold standard.
“This particular model could be done in a lot of places, in a smaller version, and still have a great basketball facility,” James was saying.
“We have 17 rows of seating. You put, say, 12 rows of seating, and you still get a great way to watch a basketball game, a great way to watch wrestling ... whatever you decide to do in there.”
Whether it be a direct copy of the Dr. Gary Johnson Activity Center, or a down-sized version, Claremore needs to look no farther than Skiatook when it begins to build its future.