John U. Bacon

An important tenth year anniversary is coming up, but it’s not one I’ve been looking forward to.

I first met Mike Lapprich when I was an assistant hockey coach at Ann Arbor Huron High School, and he was just a ninth grader. He was a big defenseman with a baby face, a shy guy with an easy smile – an oversized puppy.

I came back five years later as the head coach, when Lapper, as we all called him, had just finished his first year as an assistant coach, at the ripe age of 18. The team we inherited had not won a game in over a year.

When I met the returning captain, Mike Henry, over lunch that summer, he brought a list of things he wanted to discuss. The first: “You have no idea what you’re getting into.” The second: “Lapper’s our man. He’s the guy we trust. Keep him, and treat him right.”

It was not a suggestion.

We had a lot of work to do. So, we went to work. I was the drill sergeant, but Lapper was their big brother. When they felt like quitting, he was the one who kept them going.

Day by day, little by little, we learned how to stretch like a team, we learned how to practice like a team, we learned how to how to dress like a team – green shirts and gold ties – and we learned how to play the game, as a team. By our third season, we had become a top-ten squad.

Lapper worked with the defensemen, who cut our goals-against in half over that stretch. Lapper also made the locker room look like the Red Wings’. When the players arrived for game nights, they entered an immaculate locker room, with hockey tape stacked in pyramids and their jerseys hanging up in their stalls, with their name and number facing them.

He loved the players, and they loved him. The best part is, both sides knew it.

The players proved it after our second season, when they voted unanimously for Lapper to receive the Unsung Hero award. I’d never seen a coach win a player’s award before. The picture of Lapper with the trophy in his hands, looking down, too choked up to speak, tells you just about all you need to know about the man – and what the players thought of him.

After our third season, Lapper’s world opened up. He moved into his own place, he enrolled in nursing school, and he even appeared in the pages of Car & Driver magazine, where he worked on the side. But the highlight, for him, was seeing his little brother Kevin play on our spring team. The first night they were on the same bench, Kevin notched two assists.

After the game, Lapper went back to his parents’ house for dinner, and gushed about Kevin’s play. For Lapper, life didn’t get much better than that.

Early the next morning, June 25, 2003, I got a call from Lapper’s mom. She told me Mike had been in a car accident the night before, and he had died.

Of course, I was in disbelief – and when I gathered the players later that day in our locker room, they were in disbelief, too. For most of them, Lapper was the first person they were close to who had died. It was brutal.

So many people showed up for Lapper’s funeral, dozens had to stand in the foyer, listening through speakers. We named the Unsung Hero award, our locker room and a scholarship in Lapper’s honor. But ultimately, nothing we could do could lessen our loss.

At his gravesite, in the shadows of Huron High and the V.A. Hospital, where Lapper volunteered, the pastor said a few words. When he finished, I escorted Lapper’s parents down to their car. Then I walked back up the gentle slope, where I saw our players walking down, without their gold ties. This was not how we do it, I thought, especially on this day of all days. But, for once, I said nothing.

One of our captains, Chris Fragner, came up to me, red-eyed, and put his arm over my shoulders. With his other hand he pinched the knot of my tie, and said, “Coach, we have a place for these.” He walked me back to the gravesite, where I saw five dozen gold ties draped over Lapper’s casket.

And that’s when I knew: Lapper’s legacy was not having his name on a locker room door or on a trophy or on a scholarship.

It was helping dozens of boys become men – something they carry with them to this day.

About the writer: Ann Arbor resident John U. Bacon is the author of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons” and “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football” – both national bestsellers. His upcoming book, “Fourth and Long: The Future of College Football,” will be published by Simon & Schuster in September 2013. You can follow him on Twitter (@Johnubacon), and at johnubacon.com.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

John U. Bacon

Last week, the Ann Arbor Pioneer High School football team went across town to play long-time rival Ann Arbor Huron. It wasn’t the players’ performance during the game that made news, however, but the coaches’ behavior afterward. And the news wasn’t good.

Pioneer came into the annual rivalry with Huron sporting a solid 4-3 record and a good chance to make the playoffs. Huron hadn’t won a game all year, and was simply playing out the season. The only stakes were bragging rights – and even those weren’t much in question.

With a minute left, Pioneer enjoyed an impressive 35-6 lead. At that point, it’s customary for the winning coach to tell his team to run out the clock by taking a knee, instead of trying to score again. But Pioneer threw a pass, and then another, and then another – one of them to the endzone – in a clear display of poor sportsmanship. That was the night’s first mistake.

This made Huron head coach Cory Gildersleeve apoplectic. He yelled across the field to Pioneer head coach Paul Test to knock it off. That was the second mistake made by the men that night. If your team is getting crushed, and you’re the head coach, you don’t worry about the other guys. You get your team to the locker room, and start working to get better.

When the game ended the players had no problem shaking hands, and saying good luck. But not the head coaches. At mid-field, Gildersleeve started pointing his finger and yelling at Paul Test – a coach I’ve known and admired for years. Test told Gildersleeve he didn’t call those pass plays – and that was the third mistake. That answer simply doesn’t fly. When you’re the head coach, you’re responsible for everything that your coaches and players do – and that certainly includes the plays your staff calls.

It turns out Test has a history of running up the score, and leaving bad feelings behind. Just ask Dexter, which Pioneer beat 69-0 this year. After the game, Pioneer’s players put one of their assistant coaches – who had been released as Dexter’s head coach, but still teaches there – on their shoulders, and marched him right in front of the Dexter bench, as if to ask, “How do ya like me now?” Dexter’s answer: Not very much, thank you. But no fights broke out.

The Huron-Pioneer game probably would’ve ended the same way – with some hard feelings, but nothing more – until an unnamed Pioneer assistant coach saw the two head coaches arguing, broke from the handshake line and ran up to Huron’s head coach. It’s not clear whether he pushed Gildersleeve or punched him, but there’s no question he made contact. A Pioneer player pulled his coach away, but the coach jumped right back in – and just like that, a bench-clearing brawl broke out. Call those mistakes four and five.

That’s the bad news. The good news is just about everything that followed. No students rushed the field. The players, with only a few exceptions, tried to break things up. The schools’ athletic directors – both women – bravely jumped into the middle and helped end the melee. Since then, everybody’s apologized, and both teams’ captains have met to mend the fences.

Both head coaches received two game suspensions – one from the state, and one from the district. A few players will also be suspended for the next game – which, for the Pioneers, could be costly, as they push for the playoffs. Perhaps most important, the offending Pioneer assistant coach, who seems to have absolutely no idea what high school sports are supposed to teach, has been fired. Good.

But when I take a step back, I’m struck most by who started it, and who ended it. I can only hope that the men who run these teams start acting more like the women who supervise them and the teenagers who play for them.

On Friday night, it was women and children first. The men finished last.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” He also co-authored “A Legacy of Champions,” and provided commentary for “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game.” 

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

John U. Bacon

I know a lot of people who look forward to their high school reunions, others who dread them, and still others who avoid them like the plague. My brother falls squarely in the third category. “If I was that eager to see you,” he says, “why would I have waited five years?”

Now that we have Facebook, we already know who’s gained weight and who’s gone bald, so what else do we really need to see? Maybe that’s why attendance for reunions nationwide has dropped dramatically.

As for me, I like reunions. Yes, high school was often traumatic – a time when I could actually think everybody really was focused on my bad hair day, because what else could possibly be more important than scrutinizing my many flaws? But on the whole, I liked high school. I liked most of my classes at Huron High, from Homebuilding to Humanities. I had great teachers, and I made lifelong friends.

But a high school reunion can test all those memories, and throw us back into the same traumatized state we fell into the first time. One friend, who was a tough, popular guy in high school, has skipped all our reunions, he told me, out of fear. Despite my peer pressure, he did not show up for this one, either.

I can understand why. At our fifth-year reunion, we were just older versions of our high school selves, who hadn’t really done anything – so we resorted to the old stories and caste systems we created in high school. We got better at each successive reunion, but too often simply replaced our status as football heroes and homecoming queens with our new cars, careers and kids’ accomplishments. Given the depth of our interaction, we could have achieved the same effect by just exchanging our resumes, like baseball cards.

But at the 30th, we were more interested in each other than ourselves. Yes, we talked about kids and careers, but simply to bring each other up to date, not to brag, often adding a self-effacing story. Once we got past the surface, we quickly learned that no one’s life had gone according to plan – no one’s – and we all had some dreams dashed along the way. It’s made us better people.

The whole night, I didn’t hear anybody talk about their glory days, but I did hear a lot of stories about the many stupid things we did during those three very intense years, from bizarre dance moves to Peter Frampton hairdos to powder blue tuxedos. We played our music, from the classic “Brick House” to the very first rap songs. Your kids call them “Oldies.” We call them “High school.” Good luck explaining Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five.

One friend had the bright idea of bringing her yearbooks – and not just from high school, but junior high, too. If high school could be strange, junior high was the Mt. Everest of Awkward, every day a trial. In these yearbooks we had written things like, “Have a bomb summer!” and “Don’t ever change!”

Are you kidding me? “Don’t ever change”? In eighth grade I was probably 5-2, maybe 80 pounds, with the occasional death-defying pimple I was absolutely certain everybody in the school had stopped their lives to discuss in great detail. There was nothing about me I did not want to change. I wanted to put on a personal fire sale. Everything must go!

But all these years later, just about everything has changed – thank God. Heck, I’m now a strapping 5-foot-8! Not braggin’. Just sayin’.

At a 30th reunion, hearing “You haven’t changed!” didn’t sound so bad, after all – true or not. Watching our parents, however, we know more changes are coming. But, as a consolation prize, I still have my hair. So, that’s something. (We’ll see how long that lasts.)

But maybe my hair, then and now, isn’t so important after all. Perhaps the main thing is to connect. And that’s what we did Saturday night. It’s a simple thing, but it does something very profound to us – bringing us back to our first friends, and our original selves.

It occurred to me that it was in high school that I started learning what I really cared about, and what I didn’t, and how to be true to myself, even when it cost me.

I gained a new respect for that guy, who was braver than I’d remembered, and knew a few things his older self had almost forgotten.

I, for one, am looking forward to our next reunion.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” He also co-authored “A Legacy of Champions,” and provided commentary for “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game.” 

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

John U. Bacon

I went to Ann Arbor Huron High School, considered by every objective source to be the greatest high school in the history of the universe. And one of the things that made it so great when I was there was an intramural softball league.

Maybe your clearly inferior high school had one, too. But the IM softball league at Huron was created and run entirely by students – the burnouts, no less. That meant the adults, perhaps wisely, wanted nothing to do with it.

So the burnouts got the park permits – God bless ‘em – and every clique had a team, from the guys in auto shop to marching band. They gave their teams names like the Extra Burly Studs, the Master Batters and – yes – the ‘Nads. If you pause to think of their cheer, you’ll get the joke.

My buddies and I failed to get a team together our junior year, but our senior year, we found inspiration. Most of my friends weren’t playing spring sports, so we came home every day after school to catch “Leave It To Beaver” re-runs on Channel 20 – on something called UHF. (Kids, go ask Grandpa.)

Come softball season, we were moved to build a team around that very name: The Cleavers. But if we were going to face battle-tested squads like the All-Star Rogues and the Ghetto Tigers, we knew we’d need an edgier name. And that’s when we came up with – yes – the Almighty Cleavers. You know, to instill fear in our opponents.

You can imagine how well that worked.

Our next stroke of genius was our uniform: we each got one of our dads’ undershirts, then used a laundry marker to write one of the characters’ names on the back: Ward, Wally, Eddie – we had ‘em all. Now all we needed were 10 more players.

No problem. Once word got out about our hardcore name and unis, people flocked to our team, even a half-dozen women. None of the other teams were co-ed, but there was no rule against it – because there were almost no rules. That’s what you get when you play in a league founded by burnouts.

We didn’t just expect to lose. We were built to lose. But we didn’t care. In fact, that was our team motto: “We Don’t Care.” Whenever somebody was seen running too hard or – god forbid – sliding into home plate, we started our chant: “We Don’t Care! We Don’t Care!”

The girls could play wherever they wanted, and nobody was allowed to yell at anyone, no matter how badly they screwed up.

It probably helped that, like most teams, we brought cooling beverages to each game, be they “jumbos” of Goebel’s, “torpedoes” of Colt 45 or, for big games, an actual quarter barrel of Stroh’s Bohemian Style. We’d set it up right at the corner of Huron Parkway and Fuller, with Lord knows how many teachers, parents and police officers driving by. No one cared.

Yes, I know we were being stupid and illegal, but you have to remember this was at a time when Huron had a smoking lounge for students, Ann Arbor had a five-dollar pot law, and the Almighty Cleavers were probably on the conservative side of things. Okay, on a very relative scale. And all of it might explain why I can’t recall a single fight among the 12 tribes that played. (Take that any way you want.)

But what I saw next defied explanation: Against a bunch of guys who clearly wanted to beat us, our co-ed squad won the game. And then, another. And another.

It was incredible. Once the girls realized they weren’t going to get yelled at, their Inner Softball Players came out – and before we knew it, we finished the regular season at 9-2, in second place.

Well, our magical season had to come to an end, and it did – with a playoff loss to the always-tough Junior Junkies. Even more heartbreaking, actor Hugh Beaumont, who played Ward Cleaver, died the week before, prompting all of us to draw black armbands on our sacred jerseys.

But then, something even stranger happened. The mother of one of our founders happened to be the president of the American Psychiatric Association, so reporters were always calling her up to get her expert opinion on this or that. When an Associated Press reporter asked her about violence on television, she finally said, “Well, it can’t be that bad. My son watches ‘Leave It to Beaver’ every day with his buddies.’”

It just so happened the reporter was a big “Leave It to Beaver” fan, and voila! All of a sudden our team was on the AP wire, in the Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press and featured in TV Guide, for crying out loud.

My grandparents, in from Eastern Canada, must have been completely confused – or simply assumed all American teenagers appear in national stories for playing IM softball as a rite of passage before graduating. But the unexpected attention wasn’t the point.

I don’t know if I’ve ever had more fun playing anything than I did playing intramural softball that spring. No parents, no umpires, no rules except most runs win – and win or lose, get over it. “No One Cares!”

It was low-rent, small stakes, and big, big fun – because it was ours.

I don’t think kids today have any idea what that feels like.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the Wall Street Journal, and ESPN Magazine, among others. He is the author of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller, and “Third and Long: Three Years with Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines,” due out this fall through FSG. Bacon teaches at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009.

John U. Bacon

This tale of woe takes place in the ninth grade, back when ninth graders still stayed in junior high.

I had detention. I don’t remember why. But so did the prettiest girl in the class, whom I’ll call Rhonda – because that was her name.

The catch was, she was dating Benny, the captain of the football team. But, at detention, I learned there was trouble in paradise. Oh yes. They had broken up, with just four days to go before the big ninth grade dance. Tragic!

We had a fine chat when I walked her home, so when I got home, I decided, what the heck. I called her up to ask her to the dance. Sure, she said, why not.

Simple stuff!

Of course, I was level-jumping, and I knew it. So I had to avoid her the entire week, to make sure she didn’t back out. Because her locker was near the bathroom, that meant I couldn’t go to the bathroom at school all week. Couldn’t risk it.

And, as luck would have it, my mustache was finally coming in that very week, so after four days of rubbing my fingers over my lip, I had two mustaches: one made of wispy blond hair, the other of acne. Awesome.

Dragging that blade over my lip for my first shaving experience was fantastic. Man, that felt great!

Being only 14, my dad had to drive me to her house, and this is where things got tricky. Her father happened to be the head coach of the Huron High School hockey team. My entire life, I dreamed not of winning Nobel Prizes or even playing for the Red Wings or even Michigan, but suiting up for the River Rats of Huron High.

So, when I got there, I had to be cool around Rhonda – who was wearing a beautiful spaghetti strap purple dress I remember to this day – tough around her dad, but sweet around her mom. After we took some pictures by the fireplace, I figured I’d pulled the whole thing off – until we get to the gym.

I made sure we showed up about 20 minutes late, so all my friends – and especially my enemies – could see me walk in with the prettiest girl in school.

Well, it worked – maybe too well.

My former best friend yells, from the back of the gym, with 300 people I’ve known my entire life between us: “Hey Bake! Look at your coat!”

I look down, and I see a sight I will also never forget: There are only two buttons on a sport coat, and I’ve got them mixed up. The coat is a mess – with everything tilted to the side, as if I’m on a skateboard flying by.

My brain goes into full panic mode – Reee! Reee! Reee! Overload! Overload! Can’t function! Can’t function! To this day I don’t know if I put my right foot down and kept walking, or even if I could have.

The rest of the night, I was a shell of my former self. But I was young, and after school got out, I recovered, finding solace by playing baseball and hanging out with my friends.

Until, that is, I got a little envelope from a strange address. I open it up. In it is a sweet note from Rhonda’s mom. And – what’s this? A photo, of us standing together, next to their fireplace – with my coat buttoned wrong!

And that’s when that tender wound that had just started to heal tore clean open.

Oh, and her father left Huron to start coaching one of the Red Wings’ minor league teams that fall. Lot of good all that did me.

So, boys, this prom season, be sure to double-check your coat to make sure you buttoned it properly. Girls, be sure to double-check your date’s coat to make sure he buttoned it properly. And moms, if your daughter’s date didn’t button his coat properly – don’t send him photos.

But don’t worry, boys. Even if you do screw it up, you’ll get over it – after years of therapy and light medication. You’ll be fine. Trust me.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the Wall Street Journal, and ESPN Magazine, among others. He is the author of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller, and “Third and Long: Three Years with Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines,” due out this fall through FSG. Bacon teaches at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009.

John U. Bacon

Whenever I talk to a high school coach who quit, they always say the kids were great, but the parents drove them crazy. Doesn’t matter what sport.

But when I coached the Ann Arbor Huron High School hockey team, I was lucky. Yes, getting to know the players was the best part, and now, seven years after I stepped down, I’m going to their weddings. What I didn’t expect, though, was becoming lifelong friends with their parents, too.

The team we took over hadn’t won many games, but after we had a decent first season, three hot shots showed up at our door. They had all been coached by Fred Fragner, who once played for the Junior Red Wings.

Whenever these boys blew a great scoring chance, or received a bad call or got whacked with a stick, Fred always told them, with a grin, “Three words: Be a man.” By the time they came to Huron, all three were just that.

Fred’s son, Chris, had more talent than I could have hoped for. Even better, no one worked harder, which solves a lot of problems if you’re the coach. He got that from his father. The only real differences between them were matters of style, not substance. Fred’s character was Chris’s character.

Another problem we didn’t have was Fred Fragner butting his nose into our business. He was a much better player than I ever was, and he did a great job coaching our fall conditioning team, but he left us alone each winter, which is a great gift for any coach. He never had a bad word for anyone – with the possible exception of a few referees, who, I must say, richly deserved it. Fred Fragner knew a rotten ref when he saw one.

Chris had become so good his senior year that only one guy could keep him from being named the state’s top player – me. Other coaches would have played Chris in big blow-outs to pad his stats, but I never did – and Chris never complained. Neither did his parents. Those of you who’ve coached kids sports can appreciate what a gift that is, too.

It was only after I stepped down that a friend of mine pointed out what great families we had on our team. I hadn’t considered that as a separate factor before, but I soon realized that was the foundation of everything we had accomplished – and Fred Fragner was smack-dab in the middle of it all.

After Chris graduated, he became the first player from our high school to make the University of Michigan team in two decades. He didn’t play much, but he never complained. Now he’s using his business degree to pursue a career in finance, and playing with washed-up skaters like me on Tuesday nights.

Along the way, I’d become close friends with all the Fragners, and especially Fred, who always flashed his big rack of white teeth whenever he let loose his booming laugh. I saw that rack of white teeth and heard that laugh for the last time on Monday. After a year-long battle with an aggressive form of cancer, Fred Fragner took his last breath that night.

He was a great husband to Patty, his wife of 37 years, a great father to his daughter Jessi and to Chris, and a great friend to many more, including me.

The year had been filled with physical pain and heartbreaking setbacks, but I never heard Fred complain. He savored everything he could – including the weddings of his two children last year. Faced with a diagnosis he knew was bad news, he followed the advice he had so often given to his son. “Three words: Be a man.”

Fred Fragner was a man – one of the best I have ever known.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the Wall Street Journal, and ESPN Magazine, among others. He is the author of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller, and “Third and Long: Three Years with Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines,” due out this fall through FSG. Bacon teaches at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009. This commentary originally aired on Michigan Radio.

John U. Bacon

Michigan towns invest a lot in their high schools – and they should, because those schools represent them. That’s why you see those signs at the city limits boasting about their Class B state baseball champs or Class D volleyball team – from 1994. I’ve always thought that’s pretty cool – and even cooler for the state champs who get to see it every time they come home.

A town’s pride often carries over to the team’s mascots, like the Midland Chemics, the Calumet Copper Kings, or the Bad Axe Hatchets – great names, every one of them. When you pull those jerseys over your head, you know you’re wearing a piece of your home, your history, your very identity.

But if you play for the Panthers or the Wildcats or – heaven forbid – the Eagles, you’re one of a hundred. Actually, you’re one of 103. That’s how many high schools have those names in Michigan alone.

Ann Arbor’s newest high school is among the unfortunate.

Instead of letting the students pick their mascot, a committee of 50 did it for them. And really, a committee of 50 isn’t a committee. It’s a small village. The committee did what committees do: it picked the lamest possible names.

They called the new high school Skyline, which makes no sense at all, because Ann Arbor doesn’t have a skyline – and if it did, it wouldn’t be in the northwest corner of town, where the school is. No, in that neighborhood, you have a treeline. See the difference? The committee couldn’t.

But the mascot the committee picked is worse. After careful study and lots of discussion, they came up with – yes! – the Eagles! Just like 44 other schools in the state, Michigan’s most common nickname. Awesome.

Which is why I feel grateful to wake up every morning and know that I am … a River Rat!

Yeah, you heard me right. The mascot for my alma mater, Ann Arbor Huron, is the River Rats. And yes, there’s a story behind that.

For well over a century, Ann Arbor had only one high school, whose teams were called the Pioneers. So, when they opened Ann Arbor’s second high school in 1969, Ann Arbor’s first school decided to call themselves the Pioneer … Pioneers! Hey, it rhymes. Get it? And only three teams in our hockey league are called that!

The question was, what to call the new school? They were building it hard by the Huron River, so that was easy: Huron High. Nice.

Now, what about the mascot? Years before Huron was even finished, Pioneer students started calling their new rivals the “sewer rats.” This being the sixties, and this being Ann Arbor, the Huron students weren’t offended, but flattered, converting the name to the River Rats, and claiming it as their own.

The administrators hoped the students would pick the Highlanders or the Hawks, but the counter-culture crowd voted for “River Rats” in a landslide. So the administrators decided to start the school without an official mascot.

The name finally caught on for good during football camp a few years later. Huron was so overcrowded in its early years, the joke went, that even the rats left the building. So when the football players sat down to eat, and a huge, hairy rat ambled into the cafeteria, the football players didn’t need a committee to start their spontaneous chant: “The rat is back! The rat is back!”

So what if the principal later found that rat under Huron’s trademark arch – and clubbed it to death with a two-by-four? Those players, inspired by that rat, beat Pioneer for the first time in 1976, and the name stuck.

Yes, other schools might make fun of us – as I’m sure they do the Hematites, the Flivvers, and the Nimrods, all great names – but they know who we are, because we’re the only River Rats around. And because we have a story, we know who we are, too.

Poor Eagles. Poor Pioneers.

Go Rats!

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the New York Times, and ESPN Magazine, among others. His most recent book is “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller. Bacon teaches at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio; Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism; and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009. This commentary originally aired on Michigan Radio.

Alec Washabaugh helps carry the boat as Meaghan Kennedy directs traffic. Both are students at Pioneer High School. Next fall, Kennedy will be heading to Indiana University in Bloomington, where she’ll attend school on a crew scholarship. (Photos by the writer.)

From behind me comes the warning from one of the coxswains: “Heads up!” Coxswains steer the boats on the water – and on land as well, because lifting and turning the long craft requires coordination.

A peek over my shoulder confirms that the command is directed at me – I’m standing near the middle of an upside-down 8-person rowing shell held aloft by eight women. My noggin is safe for a few seconds as they pause. To clear the boat completely, I’d need to hustle a good 25 feet in one direction or the other. But that seems like an overly dramatic and panicky move. Surely that’s not what boathouse culture demands? Instead, I simply kneel. The boat makes its way over me and down to the dock.

The learning curve is steep. A few minutes later: “Heads up!” The scene repeats itself.

I confirm with Pioneer senior Meaghan Kennedy, who’s standing nearby, that yes, maybe I should find another vantage point. Kennedy is coxswain for the men’s varsity eight-man boat and one of the team’s captains, along with twins Zach and Mackenzie Miller. Kennedy is waiting to guide her own boat down to the dock.

Who Pays for This?

The Chronicle’s report of the March 24, 2010 meeting of the Ann Arbor Public Schools board of trustees includes details on this year’s proposed budget, which features a new “pay-to-play” program for athletics [emphasis added]:

[Superintendent Todd] Roberts emphasized that it was a goal for extracurricular activities not to prevent any student from participating. The cost to participate in high school sports would be $150 for the first sport, and $50 for every sport thereafter. In middle school, there would simply be one $50 athletic fee for any number of sports played over one year. Scholarships would be available, he said, for athletics, as well as to cover the musical instrument fees.

Up to now, the fee assessed by the district has been $35 to cover insurance for sports sanctioned by the Michigan High School Athletic Association. Rowing is not a sanctioned sport.

Coaches Griffith at Pioneer High School and Kraft at Huron High say the pay-to-play system will have an impact on their programs. Griffith told The Chronicle his rowers already pay $580 a year. For a fall and spring seasons rower, the proposed system would mean $200 more, pushing the total to $780. Griffith says that could give some of his 73 rowers this year pause. And if fewer students come out for the sport, that will nudge the cost higher still – the $580 cost is calculated by taking the budget set by the nonprofit Pioneer Rowing Club and dividing by the number of rowers.

Not a financial bailout. Huron High rowing coach Tom Kraft empties some water out of the launch from the previous day’s rain.

Kraft has similar concerns. The Huron Rowing Association is the nonprofit that oversees the capital investment and operations for the Huron High School team. Cost per rower per season is $275, which comes to$550 for a full year. Kraft notes that some scholarship money is available. One obligation that scholarships don’t cover, says Kraft, is the 400 points worth of fundraising effort each rower needs to contribute. There’s a point system for volunteering with various fundraisers – a deficit in points gets paid at a 1 point = 1 dollar conversion.

The school system supports the rowing program with funds for coaches and travel.

The rowers are not alone in already paying something to support their participation in athletics. All 38 varsity sports at each of the two high schools have associated booster clubs. The check that Pioneer golfers write to the booster club, for example, is $200. But in a phone interview, Liz Margolis, spokeswoman for Ann Arbor Public Schools, stressed that no student can be prevented from participating in a sport due to failure to pay a booster club fee. The same will be true of the pay-to-play system, Margolis said.

Out on the Water with Pioneer Crew: “A Fool Maid of Honor”

From the dock downstream, to the south, it’s about 500 meters to Argo Dam. Once the two racing shells – one 8-man and the other a 4-man – have made their way to the dam end of the pond, Coach Griffith checks in with them from our launch. Before we’d left shore he had searched the boat house for one of the bullhorns, but found only a megaphone – just a cone with no electronic amplification. He tests it out: “Is this at all a viable means of communication?” The indication from the rowers is, no, not really. But they make do.

Out on the water from foreground to background: Meaghan Kennedy, Zach Miller, Drew McMillan, Lucas Kennedy, Konstantinos Papefthymiou, Liad Lehavy, Nick Terrell.

Griffith starts them off with a two-pause drill. He wants them to interject “hiccup pauses” to make sure they get good “send” to the boat. The coxswains – Meaghan Kennedy for the 8-man and Zack Ackerman in the 4-man – are to call out the pauses to the crew.

We make our way back upstream well past the dock. Griffith admonishes the rowers, to “roll up together” better. We encounter some other rowing shells, and a kayaker who’s out on the pond that day, so Griffith hangs back with his motor launch. He doesn’t want to subject them to the wake from our boat.

We stop short of the US-23 bridge and turn around. The assigned drill – back up towards the dam – involves increasing the stroke rate every 20 strokes for 10 strokes at a time. This cadence is monitored by the coxswains, who are fed data from a rowing computer. The rowing computer works on the same principle as modern bicycling computers that count wheel rotations with a magnet.

Pioneer men’s team, foreground to background: Henry MacConnel, Josh LaHaye, David Chapman, Chris Darnton, Zack Ackerman (coxswain, hand only – look for the purple swatch at the edge of the frame).

In the racing shell, a magnet under the seat of the first rower – the stroke seat – tickles a sensor each time it slides past. The computer automatically calculates the stroke rate based on elapsed time.

Griffith has the boats practice their starts. “Sit ready! Attention! Row!” is the command sequence. He focuses his rowers on body angle – they’re laying back too far at the end of the stroke during the starts. With high stroke cadences, he tells them, they can cut off the lay back – there’s no need to go past vertical.

I switch out of Griffith’s boat and climb aboard a launch with women’s coach Suzanne Buzzell. “Buzz” did her collegiate rowing at Michigan State University. She’s putting an 8-woman boat through its paces. They’re working on building up to a stroke rate of 32 per minute. Buzz is focusing them on their “catches” – the part of the stroke when the oar blade first enters the water: “Keep the catches light! Let the blade fall right in! Effortless catches!”

Pioneer women’s team: Sarah Foster (coxswain), Hannah Graham, Annika Gage, Anna DeBoer, Claire Barrett, Rachel Bielajew, Ella Janowitz, Annie Oldani, Kendall Phillips.

And then, “Fool maid of honor!” Surely this was the distortion from the bullhorn? Or the way sound travels across the open water? [Unlike Griffith, Buzz had managed to snag an electronic bullhorn from the boat house.] A few more repetitions allow the actual words to settle acoustically in my ear: “Full blade of water.” Ah. That makes somewhat more sense.

At the end of the stroke, Buzz wants the blades coming out squared and clean: “Don’t throw up that water!” Although Buzz is focused on giving technical feedback, she explains to me that underlying the technical work is an aerobic- and stamina-building drill.

Well past the US-23 and railroad bridges not far from Barton Dam, we turn around. The kayaker, who’s been following at a distance, approaches and asks if he’s bugging us. No, he’s fine, says Buzz. She asks if he’s trying to race them. He confirms that he is. He’s fine just as long as he doesn’t run into them, Buzz advises.

The women in the boat want to hear from Buzz how they’re doing. Asks one, “Are my shoulders staying down?” Buzz’s frank assessment: “Yes – when I yell at you!” Another wants to know, “Is my handle height at the catch getting better?” Again, Buzz doesn’t tell give her the unconditional praise she’s probably hoping to hear: “When I yell at you – yes.”

Sarah Foster calls out the stroke count.

The practice for this boat wraps up with some start drills. The idea is to start with a five-stroke sequence with increasing power: half, half, three-quarter, full, full. That five-stroke sequence segues into 5 full strokes.

They’re trying to get the stroke rate up as high as possible. After several start drills, Buzz asks coxswain Sarah Foster for a report. They’ve been hitting between 31 and 32 strokes per minute with a high of 33.

Buzz tells them for the final drill she’d like to see a 36: “That’s doable,” she assures them. As they set off in search of a 36, Buzz exhorts them: “See how high you can get it. Have fun with this, ladies! Send it!”

The report back from Foster: 35 and a half. Asks Buzz, “Seriously?” Yep. Buzz tells them to stroke it into the dock. The 36 will apparently be left for another day.

But no.

Annika Gage, rowing in the second seat, wants to take another shot at 36. Buzz obliges, giving them 15 strokes after the initial five, to get to 36 strokes per minute. “Sit ready! Attention! Row!” And 20 strokes later Foster announces their victory for the afternoon: “36 and a half!”

Out on the Water with Huron Crew

It’s a week later now. Huron High coach Tom Kraft and I are waiting outside the boat house as assistants Ted Deakin, Jerry Hoffman and Mike Dove tell the team how practice will work that day. Kraft tells me that Dove should be credited with getting the Huron rowing program started. After helping with Pioneer for a few years, he’s now back at Huron.

Huron High rowers Peter Dolce (left)  and Matt Goolsby (right) before they were asked to “sit ready.”

The workout will be an experiment, says Kraft, combining the novice (first-year) rowers with varsity. Four novice rowers and four varsity rowers will sit in each boat. It’s a way for novice rowers to learn more quickly, Kraft says.

As we head out on the water, it’s windy – windy to the point that Kraft notes that the coxswains will need to be extra mindful, given the less experienced rowers in the boats. He also tells the oarsmen to be focused on the commands they hear from the coxswains: “If they ask you to row, you row, don’t make the coxies ask twice.”

After collecting the boats – three 8-man racing shells  and two coaches launches – near the dam end of Argo, the warm up starts heading north. They start with six people rowing, the other two just “setting” the boat – that is, balancing it. As they make their way up the pond, one of the three boats is clearly zipping along faster than the others. “Somehow that boat got loaded up with strong guys,” comments Kraft.

Kraft gives pointers: “Make sure it’s the outside hand doing the work!” “Get your hands out in front of your knees, sit up tall.”

After warming up, their first workout piece is seven minutes long with increasing stroke rates. In terms of stroke rate, here’s what it looks like:

1 minute  at 24 spm
2 minutes at 26 spm
3 minutes at 28 spm
1 minute  at 30 spm

-

Huron High School oar blade, just before the catch. In the center of the frame is Drew Baxter. Matt Schulte, sitting behind Baxter, is setting the boat during this warm-up phase.

With varsity-level rowers in every seat, Kraft said, they’d do 36-38 strokes per minute for an entire piece. For novices, 32 strokes might be all they could handle.

After the piece is done, Mike Dove gets them started on their second piece – it will be a five-stroke start.  “All boats sitting ready! Attention! Row!”

Kraft notes that for some of the rowers that is surely only their second-ever racing start. But then he observes, “They got through it. And nobody died!”

Regatta: Hebda Cup

Coming up on the schedule for the Huron and Pioneer rowing teams is the Hebda Cup in Wyandotte on April 24. There are around 20 races scheduled between 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. that Saturday. The drive to Wyandotte, from Ann Arbor takes around an hour.

Former Ann Arbor mayor Ingrid Sheldon, speaking to a leadership forum at Huron High School.

Some facts that students learned about former Ann Arbor mayor Ingrid Sheldon on Saturday: 1) She spent the first part of her schooling, through 7th grade, in a one-room schoolhouse on Earhart Road, 2) she thinks a large part of the mayor’s job entails cheerleading for the city, 3) she doesn’t take herself too seriously. This last fact was demonstrated as she pulled items out of a large “gift box” she’d brought, full of things she said would be useful for students in leadership roles – including a pair of yellow pompoms. And yes, she gave a little cheer.

Sheldon was keynote speaker at a leadership conference held Saturday at Huron High School. The event was organized by the school’s Interact Club, a service organization for  teens that’s affiliated with Rotary International. (Sheldon is a member of Ann Arbor Rotary, which sponsors Huron’s Interact Club.) About 40 students attended from Huron, Pioneer High, and several other local schools.

The Chronicle heard about this event via Emily Hsiao, a Huron senior whom we first met in January. Hsiao was one of the main organizers for Saturday’s leadership conference, held as part of National Youth Service Day.

Sheldon’s advice to students was practical: Leaders don’t have to be the people who have all the ideas and energy, she said. They just have to recognize and support those who do. She described a “spiral of leadership” as starting with one small thing you do, then learning about yourself, doing something more, building on every experience. In her own case, she said she started by volunteering with the Ann Arbor Jaycees, then got involved with the schools and finally in politics. A Republican, Sheldon served as a city council member from 1988 to 1992, then was elected mayor. ”I defeated the woman whose picture is in your program,” she quipped. (Next to Sheldon’s bio, where her picture should be, was a photo of Democrat Liz Brater.) Sheldon was mayor from 1993 to 2000.

So what else was in Sheldon’s box of leadership props? The collection included a book of jokes (sense of humor), a clock (punctuality), binoculars (vision), running shoes (keeping up), canned food (a “can-do” attitude), a diploma (education), and a toy phone that played a busy signal (perseverance). This last one was a tough concept to convey, since most students had likely never encountered a busy signal before.

[Editor's note: After Sheldon's presentation, students broke up into workshops, including one on journalism led by The Chronicle. There, we learned from students that, not surprisingly, they get most of their news from online sources. Yahoo News, USA Today and the New York Times were high on their lists.]

We couldn’t stay for the entire event, so we checked in with Emily Hsiao on Sunday to hear how the day unfolded. She reported that, as a service project, they collected 18 bags of trash from the school grounds on Saturday afternoon. They also brainstormed to come up with projects that address social issues – a “fit fair” for kids to learn about health eating and staying active, and an advice website for victims of dating abuse. “It’s amazing how kids can come up with this stuff with just a little encouragement!” Hsiao wrote in an email.

Some of the students attending Saturday's leadership conference at Huron High. From left: Jeremy Cohen (Huron High), David Wu (Saline Middle School), Douglas Yang (Huron High), Hao Hao Wang (Clague Middle School), Angela Song (Clague Middle School), Trisha Paul (Huron High). Standing: Andreas Hailu (Huron High).

Brian Hinz in the role of Baptist Minister, rehearsing "The Laramie Project" at Huron High School.

The stage in Huron High School’s theater is stark, as is the play that students are rehearsing: A community coming to grips with the murder of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay college student who was murdered in Laramie, Wyoming, 11 years ago.

“The Laramie Project,” which opens Friday, was a choice that several students in the Huron Players theater group advocated for, says director BJ Wallingford, and one that he’s personally wanted to do for years. The play is not without controversy – it’s one that is frequently protested by the ultra-conservative Westboro Baptist Church, and were it not for efforts by the Ann Arbor Police Department, protesters would have descended on Huron High as well. More on that later.

At a rehearsal on Monday, actors went through their paces and the technical crew worked out glitches in lighting and audio in the school’s new theater, which opened last fall. The play itself is powerful, a challenge for both actors and the audience in confronting people with attitudes and beliefs that often differ fundamentally from their own.

“I don’t think it’s a gay play,” Wallingford said. “I think it’s a play about hatred.” Written by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project, the play is based on hundreds of interviews they did with townspeople, reporters and others after Shepard’s death. It explores the hatred leveled against Shepard and homosexuals, Wallingford said, but the same themes would apply to hatred against other groups, including women, blacks, Jews or any minority that has been the target of anger and discrimination.

Victoria Good playing the role of Marge Murray, and Gulia Chernyak as Alison Mears. This is not a musical, but they do sing a song.

Students have been working on the show for two months, with each of the 23 actors taking on several roles. (In the original production, eight actors played nearly 70 parts.) They use minimalist props or costumes – a hat, a Bible, a backpack – to indicate their role change. The only real piece of set scenery is a fence, evoking the one that Shepard was tied to when his attackers left him for dead, after brutally beating him. (At Monday’s rehearsal, the crew was still working on the fence in the theater’s workshop – benches served as a substitute on stage.) Wallingford said they kept the set simple, not wanting to gloss over the content by prettying up the stage.

The content of the play has provided fodder for some deep discussions among the cast, Wallingford said. It’s been a way to examine beliefs, to try to understand views that differ from your own, to reflect on the consequences of hatred, he said: “We’re doing what we hope the audience will do.”

Some of the technical bits are challenging, as are some glitches of the new theater, which seats about 200. On Monday, for example, the air vents above the stage had opened automatically, letting in light and cold air – Wallingford wasn’t sure how that happened, but he wasn’t particularly surprised, either.

Nor was he surprised when Westboro Baptist announced plans to protest “The Laramie Project.” The church typically targets any production of the play – their leader, Rev. Fred Phelps, is featured in the production – and they were on hand to protest when the University of Michigan performed the play in 2005. What Wallingford was most concerned about was a counterprotest – he’d heard from people in the Ann Arbor community who wanted to demonstrate against the Westboro group, and he feared that things could get out of control.

Someone at the Ann Arbor Police Department (Wallingford wasn’t sure who) contacted the church and persuaded them not to protest. The Chronicle was unsuccessful in finding out who took that step – we weren’t able to reach anyone at the AAPD who knew about it.

“The Laramie Project” will be performed at Huron High School on Feb. 6-7 and Feb. 13-14 – all shows begin at 7:30 p.m. More details are on the Huron Players website. After the performances on Feb. 6 and 13, there will be a reception with the cast and the school’s Gay and Straight Alliance.

Lyndzii Stevens as Romaine Patterson.

Will Deakin as Matt Mickelson. In the background: Rachel Evans as Trish Steger and Meghan Cleary as Barbara Pitts.

Katie Marenghi as Stephanie Johnson.

Nick Richardson as Stephen Belber, and Olivia Gramprie as Zubaida Ula.

Dan Ehrlich as Jedadiah Schultz, Megan Wesner as the waitress, Micah Warschausky as Greg Pierotti, and Allison Punch as Leigh Fondakowski.