News from Sept. 21, 2007:

Proctor downplays accomplishment

Coach credits his players, staff for successful career

By Craig Juer
(Daily Sports Reporter)

STRASBURG — Maybe it's because Glenn Proctor once aspired to be a sports announcer and writer, and edited the sports section of his college newspaper at Glenville (W.Va.) State. More likely, it's his enormous appetite for conversation.

Whatever the reason, Proctor's reign as coach of the Strasburg Rams has partly been characterized by his Ripkenesque reliability when it comes to granting interviews.

He'll remain on the practice field long after the special teamers have finally called it quits for the day, as the stench of sweat evaporates into the cooling air, the sunlight dims and the gnats feverishly devote their attention to the only two figures lingering by the edge of the woods.

The words that pour deliberately out in his trademark drawl are sometimes pertinent to the question asked and often tangential but, without exception, completely engaging. Twenty or 30 minutes fly by -- far exceeding the few moments necessary to accumulate quotable sentiments. Even as the window between the end of practice and the beginning of the night's film session -- his fleeting opportunity to get dinner -- closes, he stays without a hint of urgency, asking questions as well as answering them, until the topic at hand has been exhausted.

Despite his proclivity for chit-chat, there is one subject on which Proctor prefers not to dwell: himself.

"I don't like individual attention and that kind of thing, because it's just my personality," he said, without a trace of insincerity, referring to the fanfare surrounding his 300th win, accumulated Friday with a 30-13 win over Page County. "I've often told people that I'm very fortunate and blessed, and lucky, whatever you want to say, to have been in this situation."

So it was Proctor's initial instinct to dismiss the questions, downplay the event's significance, and talk openly about anything and everything other than No. 300. But thanks to some sage advice, he changed his perspective.

"I was kind of reluctant," he said. "But then one of my sons told me, he said, 'Dad, really, this is a tribute to all of your former players. You've never coached a team that was winless. They all have contributed, some in bigger ways than others. And so it's something that you need to do more for them than for yourself.' And so I started thinking about that, and it was probably pretty good advice."

So he talked about the players, not to mention the dozens of assistant coaches he's had. He produced the lists he keeps of all his coaching opponents and assistants, lists dotted with the Smoots and Orndorffs and Wymers that populate this area, along with scores of others.

He told stories about how he could coach players differently when he started than he does now. It wasn't unheard of, in the early days of his 44-year (and counting) tenure, for him to insert himself into practice following a disheartening loss.

"I'd go in and find me a uniform that fit," he said. "I'd go down and find the pads, put them on. I'd say, 'I'm going to teach you boys how to play.'

"Can you imagine doing that now? You'd probably get sued."

Back then, he didn't allow players' hair to reach their collar, or for them to consume more than two soft drinks a week, or to stay out past 10 p.m. -- and he checked.

When a player acts up in class, which has never been a rarity ("You know how football players are. They're kind of ruffians, anyway. They're not like church choirboys."), in-school suspension is now the preferred method of discipline. In the past, he'd keep the offending player after practice -- to sweep the locker room, tend to the field or simply run -- and enforce his own discipline.

He recalled the story of a timid young man who insisted he wanted to be a football player but displayed none of the requisite characteristics.

"This youngster, he was not very courageous, and wasn't tough enough to really be a football player and a tackler," Proctor said.
So Proctor lined up the biggest, best running backs he had, and ran them at the fellow in order for him to learn to tackle. Time and time again, he was unsuccessful.

"They'd knock him back 10 yards and he'd get up, and of course he was crying and bleeding," Proctor said. "I would challenge him and question him: 'So you want to be a football player, huh?'

'‘Yes, sir!'

'Get back up there!'"

Through fatherhood, Proctor acquired a distaste for that kind of coaching, and years later spoke apologetically to that young man on the phone.

"I told him, 'You don’t know how badly I feel about that, and I wish that there was a way I could make it up to you, and say some things that would make you feel better about it.' His response to me: 'Coach Proctor, if it hadn't have been for the things that you taught me in those kind of drills on the football field, I wouldn’t have survived Vietnam.'"

He talked about the families whose boys all played under him. Six Ramseys donned horned helmets, beginning with Dale (a junior fullback on Proctor's first squad) and including his brothers Chris and Gary (also a former assistant coach). Gary's son Mark played, as well as Chris' sons Nathan and Phil, now a senior captain. The Ausberry boys — Marshall, Edgar, Stanley and Arthur — all played, and the lattermost was an assistant coach. Vaughn Orndorff played in the early days, and now his grandson, Tanner, is a running back who carried seven times for 54 yards in win No. 300.

He spoke of his charges, both former and current, as a rough bunch that gave credence to the expression "boys will be boys," but he clearly admires them for what they became under his watch on the football field.

"I've always told my girls in track, 'Marry some guy that's going to be a good provider, someone that's going to be able to protect you and your family,'" he explained. "I guess I just have that innate belief that contact sports teach kids how to do that.

"You get knocked down, you get your nose bloodied, you get yourself cleaned up, and you get back and you fight again."

When Proctor's own playing days were over, and he realized his future was not in writing or broadcasting but in coaching, his players were the ones that allowed him to satisfy the competitiveness that caused him to flip over Monopoly and checkerboards in disgust as a very young boy. He maintains that coaches get too much credit when they win and too much blame when they lose, and since Proctor's won plenty more than he's lost, his players deserve a tremendous amount of credit as 300 enters the books.

"I think the game really is all about players. I really do. I've always believed that," he said.

"[Three-hundred] really is a tribute to the toil and the labor and the sweat and the blood that they have shed on a practice field or a game field."

* Contact Craig Juer at cjuer@nvdaily.com