The field once resembled a habitat for goats, with patches of grass and rocks – tons of rocks.
We will make a football field out of this, the coach declared.
You do and you’ll have performed a miracle, I thought. Why not just open a quarry and earn some money for the school?
Two-plus years later, ta-da – a lush field of freshly mown grass has replaced that eyesore.
A miracle? Hardly.
“Most of that is sweat equity,” said Terry Ennis, the coach who promised a gridiron on the campus of Archbishop Thomas J. Murphy High School, northeast of Mill Creek. “Look at that grass. I wish my lawn at home looked that good.”
Not only is there grass, but there are goalposts, and the foundation for permanent bleachers is in place.
Never – no, never – underestimate the ability of Terry Ennis to get things done. Though he is quick to praise the inestimable efforts of one of his coaches, Bill Lucas, for the hours and hours of work he put in to get the field ready. And, yes, Ennis did his time out there, too. “I kinda like getting on the mower and tuning things out,” he said.
He had come hustling out of one of the portable buildings where his office is located. Terry Ennis doesn’t go anywhere at a mere walking pace. He always looks as if he’s headed for a five-alarm fire. There are places to go. And things to do.
He still has the tan he got from a vacation in Mexico, where he and his wife, Fran, go each year. “Puerto Vallarta,” he said. “I love that place.”
And he is still crackling with enthusiasm from a visit to another place he has deep affection for, the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., where for five days he attended the spring practices of the Fighting Irish football team. Ennis has several friends with Northwest ties on the coaching staff, including Bill Diedrick, the offensive coordinator who made the move from Stanford with head coach Tyrone Willingham.
Ennis was especially interested in what the Irish were doing defensively (“We’re not ready to go to the West Coast Offense quite yet,” he said wryly), and he was invited to sit in on their staff meetings. “You take a piece of what they do and apply it at the high school level,” he said.
You can’t go to Notre Dame without a certain tingly feeling coming over you. To walk across the campus on game day and visit the grotto and see Touchdown Jesus and get in line with the crowds at the bookstore and then enter that stadium where so many greats have played. I don’t care if the Irish have been off their game of late. It’s still a special place.
Ennis got to go into the home-team locker room. “It’s impressive,” he said. “At one end are the jerseys and pictures and replicas of the Heisman Trophy winners. That would speak volumes if you’re a kid and saw that every day.”
Then there is the sign reminding the Irish to “Play Like a Champion Today” as they walk through the tunnel into the stadium, a “pretty unique place” in the eyes of the 50something Ennis.
If Willingham and his staff can get the Irish back on their feet as fast as Ennis got Archbishop Murphy’s Wildcats off and running, Notre Dame fans should be toasting a winner soon. It took Ennis only two years to produce a winner – a record of 6-3 – with a bunch of kids who initially weren’t quite sure where all the pads went. And he did it in the first year the Wildcats played a varsity schedule in the Northwest A League.
It seems fairly amazing that they could do that well that fast. But it shouldn’t, knowing Ennis’ reputation. When he took over at Cascade, the Bruins had had several down years. In his first season, they had a winning record. From then on, they dominated the Western Conference for a decade and won a state championship.
About his current squad, he says “I have nothing to measure it by where we’re supposed to be, but we’re making steady progress. This is the first year we’ve had an offseason weight and conditioning program. The nice part is we’re looking to next year with most of our kids back.”
Ennis wasn’t thinking in terms of wins and losses last year, but being able to compete. “We wanted to earn the respect of our league opponents,” he said. “Every game we won we could have lost and two of the games we lost we could have won.”
Ennis’ title is coach, but he is a teacher first, a teacher relentless about details and execution. He may not always have the biggest or the quickest teams, but they’ll know their assignments and they’ll be better prepared than Perry Mason.
Of the kids who came out the first two years, most stuck it out and had a good work ethic. “They believed that if you start something, you finish it,” he said. “That doesn’t always happen.”
After 35 years of coaching (“I stopped counting when it reached 30,” he said), he still relishes the two hours a day he’s on the field with his kids in the fall. “I thoroughly enjoy that,” he said. “Watching the kids improve, working with the staff towards those common goals. Those seem to be the things that drive me.”
He puts a lot into football and expects his players to. “When you give, you seem to get quite a bit back,” he said. “Football lends itself to that.”
With that, he hustled off across the parking lot. There were places to go. And things to do.
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