Freddogg Off The Chain

Bill Zimmerman showed up at Cape, a 1981 sophomore from Pennsylvania, and he was the prototype Pole Vaulter, with a better body than Tarzan, certainly greater speed and a fearlessness when putting that all together for his aerial acrobatics that made him a potential 15 foot jumper but also an adventure at all lower heights.
The first day of practice on a cold and windy blustery March afternoon my black sprinters were doing their usual pre-practice warm-up of huddling together under the pit cover telling stories and reminding me how it was “too cold” to be out there in the first place.
Zimmerman asked them to get off because he was going to jump. They all looked at him then back at me and started to laugh. Zim ignored them as he somehow alone set the bar at 13 feet. I can still see Timmy Gray and Yogi looking straight up at the bar then over at me and they started laughing harder.
Zim stood at the end of the runway, pole on his shoulder and he looked Olympian. And then he took off with his sprinters speed and there was no look of hesitation on his face. The pole slid into the box and made a thud then there was the bend to the side. Zim was up and over and as he came down many of the sprinters had career starts. It was all the way hilarious.
Tim Gray, an all state nose guard, who went on to become a Major while serving in Iraq, looked at me with a smile and said, ”Fredman, you had better talk to your boy because he can’t be raining down from the sky like that on a bunch of black people.” Yogi who looked like a big old bear just walked over the squeezed Zim’s bicep then laughed a “lime in the coconut” deep laugh and said,”It’s about time we got some pole vault points around here.”
Zim was lovable and irascible harboring immense talents of the body and brain but he was also a heartbreaker.
Zim’s junior year he was obsessed with obtaining a longer pole as I once saw him pick up a sawed off 12 footer and jump 13 feet with it. I also saw him come to a complete stop going for 14 and come straight down on his side landing in the vaulting box. I drove my pickup onto the track put him into the bed and drove down to the emergency room at Beebe Hospital.
Zim was laying on his side, his injured muscles already blue, when the Middle Eastern Doctor, after listened to the adventurous mishap, touched Bill where it sort of hurt then said over and over, ”I have never seen a body like this. You can see every muscle and there is no discernable fat. I’ve never touched a patient with muscles so hard. He is the fittest human being I have ever seen. He”- “Hey doc, enough already! - Can we get some x-rays so I can get this sky pilot back in the air”.
Bills 15 foot banana pole arrived during an actual meet versus Seaford as the event had already been won with a jump of 10 feet. Bill ran over and unloaded his pole and was back on the runway. I couldn’t talk him out of trying it. He put the bar at 14’3” raced down the runway and sailed over the bar for a school record. I suggested “that was enough” but Zim wanted to break the 15 foot barrier.
Down the runway he rumbled as everyone watched, the plant was perfect but the bend was way radical and the pole broke into three pieces. A short middle piece hit a Seaford athlete straight in the stomach knocking him over which my sprinters found uproariously and hilariously slap stick funny.
Then there was bill running anchor on the 4 by 100 as under the roof shadow of the concession stand regular track fans looked at me watching Zim put down tape and said, ”Coach Fred what are you thinking? You know no white boy is supposed to be running anchor on this relay. Have you lost your mind?”
I reminded them that they were in a reserved section and if they weren’t on probation they would have to move. Everyone thought that was funny and most everyone was on probation for some jive deviation from societal norms.
Why is it that so many tremendous track athletes have hands of stone? And some of my best track athletes have been among the worse basketball players I have ever seen.
Zim flew out of the Zone as we rounded the third leg with a big lead. The incoming runner was screaming “Hey! Hey!” while the All Pro section was yelling “were you going boy?”
Zim was rocketing out, the pass was made barely legal but then that sound of a metal baton bouncing on a tartan track.
“We told you Fredman but you don’t want to listen to nobody, “my barely legal fans complained.
And as it turned out Zim was the quintessential risky relay runner so I sent him to the discus where he uncorked a 120 the first time he touched it and so that became another event for him.
Zimmerman qualified for the Penn Relays and on that Saturday rode to Franklin Field with his parents while I did “search and secure sprinters duty” under cover of darkness before making the long ride to the relays. I remember I had a new shirt that was dark blue with little red lines and looked so Penn I thought I may be recruited for a regatta when we got there.
I was sitting under the overhang and young Rickey Pitts was sitting a bench below just starring at my face as if to say “Thanks Coach for bring me to the big city for the first time.”
“What’s up Rick isn’t this something,”I asked. Ricky reached towards my face then pulled a stiff piece of cardboard out from under the collar. “Did you want to keep that in there because most people take them out,”he said with a little smile on his face.
Finally Zimmerman appeared across the field by the pole vault runway. I never counted my guys as arrivals until they touched down.
Zim was sitting on the infield talking with my other vaulter Shawn then I saw a tall guy wearing a red cap talking to them both. Shawn headed towards the stands then Zim began to sheath his pole. I knew there was trouble so I found my way all the way down and across the field.
The big clock had the big hand on the Roman numeral eight. I told Bill to stay where he was and talked to the official with the clipboard. Is Bill Zimmerman from Cape Henlopen registered in this event,”I asked. “Not anymore, “he said. “He was removed by that tall gentleman over there with the blazer and red hat.”
“Really and who is that gentleman?”
“That’s Jim Tuppany, ”he said. “Tuppeny, like in Director of Penn Relays and its ten thousand athletes? You mean that Jim Tuppeny? “
I went over to Coach Tuppeny and explained the nature of the high strung personality that was Bill and lobbied for his reinstatement. Bill had given Coach Tuppeny some advice as Coach was telling Shawn to get into the stands. Bill saw it as sticking up for his friend.
Tuppeny told me if Bill would come over and apologize to him in the next five minutes he would put him back into the meet. “Man, I was good.”
I went to Bill with the great news-that’s Jim Tuppeny- and even told him what to say explaining away his rude behavior by reason of emotional temporary insanity.
“You want me to go apologize to that guy,”Zim said. “You didn’t hear how rude he was to Shawn.”
“Shawn did not belong out here in the first place. Now get over there and apologize.”
“Apologize? I’d rather punch him in his face.”
I kicked Zim off the field myself and went and told his parents who were sitting in row one by the pole vault pit what had happened. They just dropped their heads while his dad apologized to me. It was a heartbreaking moment all around not because of the event but because Bill was out of control.
His senior year Bill was doing his thing and we were undefeated and feeling pretty good about our chances in the Division Two Championship Meet.
Then the third marking period grades came out and I was told that the best athlete in the school was ineligible because he failed gym and a two credit shop class. Both classes used a demerit system for grading which was an “academic bear trap” for the personality like Bill.
I was devastated because I kept a close watch on my high risk athletes but Bill was 1200 SAT guy. I just never saw it coming and what was worse the shop teacher lived across the street from me. No warning, no heads up, followed by some story about not finishing his personally selected Num Chuck project.
News Journal reporter Jack Ireland found me by phone that very afternoon. “I hear you lost Zimmerman,”Jack said. “Can you still win this thing?”
I told him everything, he asked me how I felt and I said, “Taking the Pole away from Zim because he failed shop is like taking the basketball away from Doctor J because he can’t make a bookcase.”
The next morning the quote was in bold type on the lead sports page of the New Journal. I was called to the Principal’s office and he had the paper laid out on his desk.
“I have a very upset shop teacher right now, ”he said, looking for empathy in all the wrong places.
“Permission to speak freely,” I asked, not that it ever mattered to me because I was more like Zim throughout my life than anyone else in the school.
“Freak the shop teacher! He should have told me! I could have stopped it! I could have saved Bill!”
We went into the state meet and lost the title to Howard by 8 points when I thought Bill was worth 14 but he wasn’t there and every coach has a sad story to tell so all is fair in love and war.
Bill Zimmerman was a passenger in a car that went off the road and hit a telephone pole one late night. Bill was not wearing a seat belt and went through the windshield. A few days later he died at 27 years of age.
My wife and I attended Bill’s funeral over in Denton, Maryland and I kept fighting but kept losing emotional control. Sometimes as a coach the athletes who test you the most you love with the deepest connections because they force you into introspection as you try to corral their talents just because you want them to be happy.
I discovered that Bill Zimmerman will always be a special part of me from down deep inside and I cry as I close out this story because that’s where he left me.