Coach Fry laid the blueprint for restoring pride

Originally, this month’s column was going to be about a wonderful experience I’m having with some junior high kids in Orient, as I’ve transitioned from my time as a coach in Creston to helping Kim DeJongh with her girls basketball program at O-M the past two years.

And, in a way, that still is the topic of the day, but interwoven with the lessons I learned from a great man who died Tuesday night. When I got the news, I knew I needed to talk about Hayden Fry’s influence when I was a student assistant in the University of Iowa Sports Information Office.

You see, I got a close-up look at how the tall Marine from west Texas rode into Iowa City and uprooted a program that was languishing in the midst of 17 straight non-winning seasons. A high school classmate of mine was on the football team when Fry succeeded Bob Commings, and he told me about the many ways Fry changed the culture and raised expectations. Everything was more organized, including grouping them together in student housing at Hillcrest Dorm instead of having them spread out all over campus.

You hear every new coach today talk about the importance of “culture” in taking over a program, but Fry was the original master of that. Iowa had not been to a bowl game or even experienced a winning season for the better part of two decades.

He’d say, “There are going to be some highs and lows, but someday we’ll get there.”

Well, “someday” didn’t take long. In his third year Iowa ended a streak of 15 straight years that either Ohio State or Michigan represented the Big Ten in the Rose Bowl. IOWA! It was amazing.

Iowa played in three Rose Bowls in 11 years, and there was an eight-year stretch in the 1980s when the Hawkeyes lost only 16 Big Ten games.

I saw all of the little changes that made Iowa a new type of football team. Some of the changes were cosmetic — imitating the uniform color scheme of the then very successful Pittsburgh Steelers, the new Tigerhawk logo that still serves as the iconic image of Iowa athletics, and the manner in which they entered the field in the traditional “swarm.”

As Gov. Reynolds said in declaring Iowa flags at half staff until sunset Friday in honor of Fry, “During the depths of the Farm Crisis of the 1980s, Fry popularized the ‘America Needs Farmers’ movement, showing farmers and rural America that he stood by them.” Players had an ANF logo on their helmets.

But, there also were many tangible improvements in performing as players at Iowa, too. As I’ve worked with young kids who were entering a situation of mostly sub-.500 seasons, I keep some of those lessons from coach Fry in mind.

Gary Thompson came in and injected some energy and enthusiasm into the O-M volleyball program last summer and fall, and I tried to tell the kids those realizations that you CAN be competitive can translate to the basketball court, as well.

That was part of the genius of Hayden Fry, who earned a master’s degree in psychology from Baylor University. So much of what he did was just making you believe that anything is possible. That you can raise your expectations and then work toward them with dedication and accountability to each other.

That first year that Fry was Iowa’s coach, the way that they warmed up for a game was even different than before. There was a faster pace, a stronger sense of purpose. The other team could look over and see how organized they were, and how much sharper they looked than previous Iowa teams.

In that vein, I’ve tried to be one small influence in the lives of these young O-M kids to instill some hope. They hadn’t won a junior high basketball game in two years, but things CAN be different. They enter the holiday break on a two-game winning streak, which isn’t something they even dreamed of 12 months ago. They achieved that through listening and hard work, every day.

As Fry said, mediocrity is easy. Why not work for something greater? You get what you earn. That’s a lifelong lesson, not just in sports.

One day during a recent O-M practice, I told the players on the boys team and the girls team to look up at some of the banners in the gym. There was the girls state basketball trip that I covered in the 1980s. There were more recent boys basketball conference championships. Of course, softball has had many great seasons over the years. There are other banners signifying Bulldog excellence, including a recent state baseball trip.

The message in that moment was, success HAS happened for kids wearing the red and white of the Orient-Macksburg Bulldogs. It can happen again. It starts at the lower levels. Everyone has to buy in.

Former quarterback and Heisman Trophy runner-up Chuck Long said Fry had a great charisma about him. He was humorous, but very disciplined at the same time. He had that rare quality of making it fun, yet he could be a taskmaster and get after you, too. He once displayed that big personality in the Creston home of quarterback Kyle McCann, who finished his career for Kirk Ferentz after being recruited by Fry.

My current players are eighth-graders Kasyn Shinn, Emily Campbell, Kinsey Eslinger and Tiffany Ott; and seventh-graders Carter Osborne and Maisyn Carson. Part of this growth process are members of my first team last year who are now in high school — Christa Cass, Kali Russell, Draven Pierce and Logann Carson.

Those girls, along with the boys team that has toiled through two tough seasons with only five players, are learningabout the benefits of dedication and raised expectations. Fry didn’t allow celebrating “moral victories” because he wanted a hunger for actual success. That’s part of the change in thinking. Believe you can beat them, not just play close.

So, in a way, 41 years after I interviewed Fry and assistants Bill Brashier and Bill Snyder as a 21-year-old college senior, I’m trying to put some of those lessons to work.

Without witnessing what he did to turn around that program, I’m not sure I would have the same belief in helping kids in their own pursuit of excellence.

Thanks, Coach Fry, for showing generations of Iowans that pride can be restored.

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Contact the writer:

Twitter: @larrypeterson

Email: lpeterson@crestonnews.com