Halls/Fountain City Shopper news • February 1, 2017 • A-9
Winter workouts, then and now Winter workouts are under way at Tennessee – famous new strength and conditioning coach, new goals, positive attitudes, favorable conditions. Motivation is firmly in place. Players need only review the Vandy video to conclude the need for improvement. The Vols have great facilities. Official description is state of the art. Modern machines are or were all around. Ambiance is the stuff of champions. Refreshments are available. The team will strive to get stronger and quicker. One plan will not fit all. Individuals, as Butch likes to say, will have individual programs designed to meet their needs. Rock Gullickson has a book of plans. He may have a scientific formula for reducing injuries. This is critical. The winter aspect of college football is completely different from the good old days. Robert R. Neyland suggested that players not get fat in the off-season, what there was of it. His idea of the lull between storms was a couple of weeks of fishing in Florida. Early spring practice was vigorous. Under the guidance of Bowden Wyatt, football
Marvin West
players were encouraged to stay in shape. They could lift weights or participate in racquetball or handball. They could play intramural basketball or sign up for a volunteer, noncredit physical education class. Real live winter workouts arrived with young coach Doug Dickey. He had learned the value as an assistant coach at Arkansas. He was surprised that UT had nothing similar. Dickey told the story of sending forth a search committee to find a place for workouts. It didn’t find much. There was running room at Dean Planters Tobacco Warehouse. Weather permitting, there were open spaces at the agriculture campus. The report mentioned the possibility of the northwest corner of Neyland Stadium, under Section X. It was described as unsuitable, dirty, drab and dreary, space once used for storage. Dickey inspected it. He said the room looked like
something left over from the Civil War, except dusty cobwebs appeared older. The coach could have made it better. He made it worse. He installed old mats on the floor and hung a heavy rope from on high. Those who thought they wanted to be on his football team were going to do agility drills, wrestle, fight and scratch as if their life depended on it and then climb that blasted rope, hand over hand, until they bumped their head on the concrete ceiling. Center Bob Johnson remembers a one-on-one war, Vols on opposite sides of the mat, no rules, do anything you want to get to the other side. Tempo was frantic for other drills, run here, jump there! Down on the mat, up on your feet, seat roll right, jump up again, forward tumble. Everywhere a player looked or landed, there was another assistant coach yelling for more speed and greater effort. Dickey said some players were overcome by the setting and spirited exercises and lost their lunch. He admitted the smell was terrible. One of his most dramatic terms described the winter workout scene: “A stinking mess.”
Joe Graham, sophomore guard, landed right in the middle of it. There wasn’t room under Section X for all players. There were groups with different times to report. Joe was in the third group. “We arrived to the sound and smell of some of the guys throwing up. In the middle of the winter, the room seemed nearly steamy. Everybody was sweating. I don’t remember how long we worked but it seemed forever.” Dewey Warren was there. The scene matched his imagination of Marine boot camp, only worse. “Under Section X was like a dungeon, dark and smelly, the worst place I’ve ever been.” Bert Ackermann recalls that complaints to Coach Dickey went unheeded. Robbie Franklin said there were more losses than lunches. “We lost several teammates that first winter.” Ackermann said it was a special learning experience. “It was the foundation for the great comeback of Tennessee football under Doug Dickey.” Now would be a good time for a great comeback under Butch Jones. Marvin West invites reader reaction. His address is westwest6@netzero.com
Knox to prosecute aggravated animal cruelty A Corryton man has been charged with killing two neighborhood dogs on Thanksgiving morning and faces two counts of aggravated cruelty to animals. Billy C. Mounger Jr. is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Feb. 23 in Criminal Sessions Billy C. Court. UnMounger Jr. like a “simple” animal cruelty case, which is a misdemeanor, aggravated cruelty is a Class E felony, punishable by one to six years in prison and a fine of up to $3,000. “We don’t see a lot of these cases,” said Sean McDermott, public information officer with the Knox County District Attorney General’s office. “We only had one case brought last
Betty Bean year in criminal court.” That’s because law defines aggravated cruelty as an act committed “in a depraved and sadistic manner,” which creates a high threshold for the prosecution to prove. The case brought last year is scheduled for trial in March. Jethro and JuJu belonged to Frances Thompson and her husband, Eric Schafferman. Thompson sounded the alert on her Facebook page Thanksgiving Day after the dogs didn’t return from their morning run. “Jethro (blond) and Juju (black) are missing from the Wood Road area in Gibbs/Corryton. Left home
Thanksgiving morning without breakfast. Both are friendly and have collars with names and our phone number. Please call or message me if you have seen them. Please share.” The warrant says that Mounger shot the dogs “with aggravated cruelty and no justifiable purpose,” dragged their bodies out of the woods, loaded them into his pickup truck and drove to Irwin Road and dumped them. When found, their collars had been removed. Mounger also was charged with violating a state law requiring “big game” hunters to wear daylight fluorescent orange. Jethro, whom Thompson describes as a big, goofy Lab/boxer mix, had lived with the family for a year. Juju, who was black with a notch bitten out of one of her big pointy ears, was adopted from a friend who
could no longer give her the attention she needed. There were two other dogs in the household, as well. “This broke our hearts,” Thompson said. “It broke our hearts. “Eric and I both just sort of held each other and cried for a long time. He goes into a shell and gets real quiet. I cried every night. Jethro’s probably the most joybringing dog we ever had.” McDermott said his office sees three or four misdemeanor cases of animal cruelty per week in Sessions Court. Most of the cases involve dogs, followed closely by horses. Cats come in third, and are typically victims of hoarding situations. Under a state law that went into effect last year, the names of those convicted of aggravated animal abuse will be recorded on a registry, and will remain there for two years.
last words Davenport shreds diversity Those who had worried that the first female chancellor at UTK, Beverly Davenport, would be serious about diversity can rest easy based on her appointments to the first significant committee she named – the search committee for the new athletic director Davenport to replace Dave Hart. She shredded diversity with her six appointments. The six include only one woman and no AfricanAmericans, but two male trustees and the brother of a third trustee who is the chair of the UT board. Two are neighbors who live three houses apart on Lyons View Pike in West Knoxville on either side of the neglected historic UT-owned Williams House. The woman is Donna Thomas, who works for Hart and will help choose the person she will be working for. Stunning that no African-American serves on this search effort given that a large number of the players for basketball and football are AfricanAmerican. Women make up almost half of the total UT athletic program, not to mention the Title IX issues UT has paid millions to go away, but only one of the six is female and she has an acute conflict of interest. The best-known member is obviously Peyton Manning. This past weekend he made news by speaking to the GOP Congressional meeting in Philadelphia, along with President Donald Trump. There are several well-known UT female athletes such as Candace Parker, Chamique Holdsclaw, Semeka Randall and Tamika Catchings who maintain ties to UTK and could serve along with Manning. The truth is, Davenport’s committee includes members of great ability and significant achievements.
Victor Ashe
They contribute to our civic society in many ways. But they have been placed in an unfortunate situation that could be resolved easily by expanding the committee. It does not look good when half of a committee are trustees or related to a trustee. Two of these members helped recruit Derek Dooley to UT as football coach. We all know how well that worked out. Mistakes can be made, even by wellknown, respected people. What is also remarkable and exceptionally inconsistent about this committee is the obvious desire for the UT board of trustees to own it. On paper and in theory the campus athletic director reports to Chancellor Davenport. The board of trustees just approved her hiring as chancellor. No way she will turn down or even question the finalist this committee picks given who is on it. New trustees are always told that they should not micromanage the university, just as the Legislature is told the same. However, here Davenport has basically turned over the hiring of the new AD to the people who run the board. Will she do the same when she names the search committee for a new provost? So why did Davenport do this? It is hard to come up with an answer on this. However, it is not too late to expand the search committee to give proper representation to all. Hopefully, UT will move to remedy this. ■■ Bob Clement, former U.S. representative and TVA director, is out with a book on his life titled “Presidents, Kings and Convicts.” It starts with growing up in the Governor’s Residence. Not clear whether Clement will do a book signing here in Knoxville.
Putting 5,430 kids into 6,550 spaces: Knox County flunks math The challenge: Finding enough kids to populate Gibbs Middle School without wrecking Holston. Here’s one model: Gibbs: Pull 100-200 from Halls, aligning the middle and high school zones. Yes, that means families who live in Halls will find their kids zoned
to Gibbs, but that’s already happening with the high schools. And it would relieve legitimate over-crowding at Halls Middle. Take whatever kids come out of Gibbs and Corryton elementary schools. That will leave Gibbs Middle short to start, but folks swear growth will follow the school con-
Sandra Clark struction. (They might have been better off extending sewer lines. Time will tell.)
Leave Gresham and Whittle Springs alone. Trim enrollment at South-Doyle by using the river as its boundary. Kids on the east side would attend Vine or Holston. Holston: Rezone 200 from Carter to Holston. Currently, the Carter zone includes Holston Hills, a
stone’s throw to Holston Middle. This solves the middle school dilemma without closing a school. A more fiscally sound model would convert all or some of Vine to headquarters for the central office. “Be creative,” said Cynthia Finch. “Open a school
at Gibbs for the people who live there. Don’t zone anybody. Find other uses (for the empty spaces).” We’re running out of time for creativity. The number crunchers might look at a combined high and middle school at Holston. One thing’s for sure – we won’t all live happily ever after.
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