Good times with Dickie Cline
When Marty Stanley called me back in the spring of 2001 and told me Dickie Cline had been hired as the new football coach at Glenn, I remember being excited.
At the time, I didn’t know Dickie nearly as well as I do now. But I did know him a little bit. I knew him well enough to know that he was a heck of a football coach, and there was something about his personality that stuck out — to me, he always carried himself more like a college coach in a lot of ways.
And I know for sure that air about him rubbed/rubs some people in his profession the wrong way. But not me. Dickie absolutely has an ego. Now, find me a football coach that doesn’t.
Well not surprisingly, Dickie did just fine at Glenn. In fact, I would say in most of his nine years there he maximized the team’s potential, and there’s really nothing more a coach can do.
I am disappointed that he won’t be the coach there any longer — his departure was a mutual decision between himself and Glenn administrators — but I know he will still be around. I would be surprised if he isn’t on the sidelines of a local high school this fall, either as a head or assistant coach.
He might even become a college coach, which wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
Anyway, if you are still with me, I must tell my favorite Dickie story:
Back in the mid/late 1990’s when Dickie was the coach at Ledford, he had a massive running back named Madision Hedgecock, who would later play at North Carolina and is now a fullback for the New York Giants.
So one fall morning, I drove down to Glenn to interview Hedgecock. I pulled into the parking lot, found a space and parked. Went in and hung out with Dickie for a while, interviewed Bumgarner, and walked outside.
When I get to the parking lot, my car had been pulled out of the space and was sitting dead in the middle of the driving lane between spaces. There was a jeep in the spot where I was parked.
I was not real happy when I walked back in and told Dickie about what happened. He walked out in the parking lot, surveyed the situation, and I remember him saying “I know who did it.”
Not only did Dickie find the student — who has used a strap to drag my car out of the space — and come down really hard on him, but he served the kid up to me and made him apologize.
I was calmer than I should have been, but only because I was impressed with the way Dickie handled it.
On the drive back, I found it downright hilarious. And I remember getting back to the office and telling my old boss, Terry Oberle, and my new boss, Phil Hrichak, all about it.
Dickie is good stuff. I hope he keeps coaching as long as I am doing this job.