Freddogg Off The Chain

Photo is 1978 left to right Tracy Felton,Warren Perry,Glenn Smith and Lance White.That is Penn relays plaque for winning a 16 team mile relay section race in 3:26

Glenn Smith was a sophomore on the end of the junior varsity basketball bench in 1977 with his team up by 30 and five seconds remaining on the clock. Coach Don Lockwood looked down and uttered a single word,”Glenn.”
Glenn responded with a single two word sentence and his basketball career was abruptly ended.
The next day on a December afternoon he arrived at winter track practice wearing long black pants, a plain white tee shirt, and Chuck Taylor dirty white sneakers.
“You Coach Fredman,”he asked?
“Yes I am and who are you?”
“I’m Smith,”he said. “And I’m here to run anchor on your mile relay team.”
“Really, we’re pretty good and what do you know about mile relays,”I asked Smith?
“Man what are you talking about,”he said. “I am a runner and I can just run.”
I told Smith to toe the line and when ready to take a lap and in the 95 seconds it took him to get around I would let him know what kind of adaptive phys ed class would be best for him to join.
Smith took off and ran into my life with a 53 flat 400 meters with no training and no warm up, long pants and clopping shoes. Smith and I would share many moments of triumph and tragedy over the next two years including two state championships and I always think of him when the old crossroads of life lectures are brought up because Smith was dropped on his head in the middle of a busy intersection at age 15. He was facing life choices that come to other young men at 25. I told Glenn that over and over during long conversations and Glenn vacillated between respecting me as a man who cared what happened to him and “chumping me out” like the time he took all turns wide running the 600m at William and Mary and when I told him about it he just looked back and asked,”How many six hundreds did you ever run” and I didn’t take it personally even though I was the only other person there.
The 1977 Salesianum Invitational at Brandywine Creek State Park and we were entered in the Division Two race. I went to check our entry and when I returned to the Van I discovered Glenn and David eating cream doughnuts I had stashed in boxes under the last bench seat for after the race. I was amazed and dumbfounded that runners would actually warm up on cream doughnuts. There was white powder all over their brown faces and my world was way out of balance.
I am cool but I hit sarcastic overdrive and just kept asking what in the world are you doing? Find me other athletes standing behind vans eating doughnuts. Just find me one so I can know this is not isolated to my team.
“Ain’t nobody need or care about your stupid Fredman doughnuts,”Smith said. “Why did you buy them if we weren’t supposed to find them?”
The doughnut repartee continued as Smith arrogantly bit into a Boston Cream. “Eat the rest of them Glenn because you are out of this race today.”
That’s o.k because I quit. Don’t nobody want to run for no Doughnut Coach anyway?”
We raced to a medium finish then got in the van for the long ride downstate. There was tension and everyone was quiet.
Two hours later we were at the beginning of Glenn’s three mile country loop around the King Cole fed lot for large hybrid live stock.
Nick Miller started the chant, an instantaneous rap in the rhythm and blues period. The van rocked from side to side as my black athletes weren’t about to let Smith escape without having their fun. “Whatta ya know Mr Dough? Where you gonna go Mr. Dough? Smith ate all the bread. None was left for our Coach Fred. Coach Fred he pitched a fit but Smith don’t care because he quit. We were family, we were cousins till Smith showed up and ate two dozen.”
I was laughing because funny is what it is and as I watched Smith glide in front of the van across the road I could not detect even a hint of a smile.
Smith came into my classroom on Monday to hand in his stuff. I told him as soon as I took possession that he would never run another step at Cape, not indoor or outdoor because I was in control and to quit on me was to quit all seasons forever. I called his bluff and he backed down.
That November we returned to Brandywine State Park and won a State Championship after winning the Henlopen Conference Meet where Lance White took first and Smith third.
We celebrated behind the van I awarded Smith an orange Mr. Doughnut shirt and he was moderately amused. Smith our second runner of seven had dropped out of the championship race because he said the hills were hurting his heart.
Later in early spring we went to Dover with a plan to snap their 33 meet string of dual meet victories. That was in the days of three event limitations.
Dwayne Henry beat Smith straight up in the 100 and 400 and Coach Neylan has him set up to capture the 200 so I pulled Smith and took second and third but Henry was gone and Dover didn’t have their stud to deal with my emotional madman on the anchor leg of the mile relay and the meet came down to just that.
Three of my guys had shaved heads. I told them to run a clean race and to not even look sideways because I didn’t want to lose the meet on a sportsmanship infraction.
Dover versus Cape in the mile relay was always the showdown of showdowns. My 3rd man Duke Perry ran a personal best 51 to open a seven meter lead. Smith took the stick and walked through and out of the zone giving the lead right back to Dover. I was so mad that all that work was just given back.
Smith jumped on the shoulder of the Dover runner as I looked on with a sense of detachment. Coming off the turn with both teams about to break 3:30 in a dual meet Smith raised the baton in the air and shook his head no from side to side. The team on the infield was screaming,”Mr. Dough! Mr. Dough!’
We won the race but I expected a call for poor sportsmanship but it didn’t come. Everyone snapped. I got my team on the bus and just got out of there.
Later at the Dover Relays Smith was running leadoff for a loaded 4 by 800 team that had Cross Country All American Lance White on the anchor. Smith came through the quarter in 54 then bought it of the third 200. By the time he reached the exchange zone in 2:27 everyone was gone including his own relay team. I had instructed them to grab their sweats and hop back over the fence.
Coach Neylan was amazed. “That counts as an event,”he said.
“I know, we’re not supporting a 2:27 here tonight,”I said. “He who goes crazy must go it alone.”
That spring Glenn Smith would lead our team on a two by two formation lap around the track prior to the State Meet at our own school. Glenn would place second in the 100 meters and anchor a couple wining relay teams as we won the meet going away.
And then Glenn Smith went away as I simply could not keep him rooted into the school scene for another year.
Ten years later Glenn would die in an employee van accident on his way to work at the Chicken plant. His cross country teammates and relay teammates and coach were all there for his send off. A Charismatic heartbreaker and leader with immense natural talents had died without a mark on his body. He looked like he could get up and anchor another relay team. In the end that is what Glenn was born to do.