Category: Coach

Toin Coss, says old Al

Werneke* in malaprop,

who knew his classics

and unbalanced a wishbone

with a little boy’s wry glee!

*(The late Al Werneke’s high school football teams won state championships in both Indiana and Illinois – one each – and twice straight at Belle Glades (Fla.) Glades Central and at Titusville (Fla.)  through the mid-1980s. His teams in Titusville ran at least five distinct offenses for the former Indiana State halfback who specialized in interior offensive line coaching and returned the Wing-T offense and the 5-2 Monster defense to prep prominence in the 1970s and ’80s.  I’d visit him at his DECA (diversified somethingorother work-release office) and we’d chew the fat over kids, education, the need for four years of physical education for all students, his boys who played at all levels and his insistence that his quarterbacks call their own games by the time they were seniors…”varsity athletics,” he’d intone “are nothing more or less than the Science Fair or the Math-Olympics for high school athletes, and the shame of it is we give those jocks more attention than the kids who play beautiful music or know the quadratic equation back and front. If I and my assistant coaches are doing our jobs right, these kids could and should be calling the plays on both offense and defense and with only a little input from us.”  He left the Midwest to spend summers learning the Wishbone from Frank Broyles, and included the pro set, wing-I, Power I, double- and double-double wide offenses and at least twice had runningbacks with 1,000 yards  each during regular season play at Titusville.  His only rule: don’t lie to me.  He’d helped more than one young man stand before a judge, take his licks, and them put one of them  into junior college after his college football scholarship fell through on a conviction for being (eriving) in the same car some young thugs then used to hop out of and go rob a convenience store the night before he was supposed to leave for Tuskeegee Institute on a full ride.  The kid whose brother graduated Titusville High and went on to mid-level All America defensive back status at North Dakota State and onto a berth with the Denver Broncos, enrolled at Brevard Community College, spent every afternoon in the school year coaching linemen and track and field weightmen and went on to become a college-degreed Corrections Officer for the State of Florida.  An other kid who played for Al at Glades Central was called “Too Small” and when he came up to Titusville to visit The Warneke’s one summer just after had assumed the head coaching position at still-legendary Glades Day School in Belle Glades, was another of his prides and joys.  When Werneke’s THS Terriers played former Bennie Blades’ led Glades Central in that school’s hometown, the THS coach was inundated by well-wishers and Bell Glades friends after the Titusville team upset the locals, about fifty or sixty of the parents and adults awaited their hero’s turn congratulating their hometown team and then joined those kids surrounding him, all clamoring for a chance to shake his hand.  Al died of complications of diabetes and never said but always wore the loss of his beloved Mary Werneke on his heart until he passed.  Their daughter survives the pair.