Friendly faces, different places

Flashes from the past…

… Friday, a drop-by from Sam Goodwin, the winningest football coach in NSU history, now the athletic director at his alma mater, Henderson State. Sam was en route to his hometown of Pineville for a reunion of his high school football team; actually, for the 80th birthday celebration of one of the Rebels’ coaches. On Feb. 23 in Little Rock, Sam will be among the 2007 inductees in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, chiefly for his playing career at Henderson State and for his incredible run of five state championships in seven years in the mid 1970s at Little Rock’s Parkview HS.

I was able to tell him a story he didn’t know about those years. When we were driving up on a Friday to play a 1991 game at Arkansas State, we made a pit stop and I bought the Little Rock paper. The sports section’s big story that day was a feature on an undersized offensive lineman for one of the Little Rock high school teams.

The lead paragraph went something like this: “When Sam Goodwin was at Little Rock-Parkview, the Patriots made a living with undersized, overachieving players like Hall High School’s Johnny James.”

The rest of the story, no mention of Sam. That impressed me. Think about it: the sportswriter assumed that if you followed high school football in Arkansas, at all, you automatically KNEW Sam Goodwin and what he had done 15 years earlier at Little Rock-Parkview. That’s just how good he was.

… Nice to see former two-time Demon Academic All-America baseball star Terry Joseph, the 1995 SLC Player of the Year and one of our all-time greats, finally break through into college coaching – in football.

T.J. worked as a graduate assistant coach at LSU this past year after a few seasons in the high school ranks in New Orleans. That proved to be a heck of a springboard. Last week, he was hired at Southeastern. Two days later, former LSU assistant coach and new Louisiana Tech coach Derek Dooley plucked T.J. away from the Lions. Now Terry’s office will be just down the street from J.C. Love Field, the Bulldogs’ baseball stadium where I am sure he launched a few shots in to the trees behind the short left field fence from 1992-95.

….Last week, it was wonderful to see plenty of Demons on the road at NSU games in Texas. In San Marcos, there was the effervescent John “Lil’ Snack” Smith, who is off to a roaring start in his professional life up I-35 in Austin.

At Arlington, what a thrill it was to reunite with Wayne Waggoner. The sharp-shooting Demon guard in 1980-82 was the best shooter I’ve seen wearing the Purple and White. He averaged 17.6 ppg in his senior year, 1981-82, on a balanced team. He was a NBA Draft pick and made it to the last cut with Dallas.

Wags is married with two cute little boys. He’s in the trucking business and has moved back to the DFW metroplex after several years in Charlotte, N.C. He and coach Mike McConathy are old friends, going back to the friendship their dads, Bernard Waggoner and John McConathy, formed while they were two of the greatest players in Demon history in the late 1940s.

Also at UTA, awesome to reunite with Jill Cantrelle, a former student worker in the athletic administrative offices in the early 1990s. She’s engaged and brought her future hubby to say hello and learn how to cheer for her Demons. She, the former Angela Hennigan, the former Heather Hanners and many others were part of a good-sized group of NSU alums in the stands.

Also there – former Demon guard Brent Shropshire, who was invited by coach McConathy to speak to the team. He played on coach Mike’s first NSU team and was a red-hot scorer down the stretch as the Demons surged to the SLC Tournament finals. He’s back home in the Metroplex.

-- Doug Ireland, SID