bulldogsfan

I am a former football player for Red Boiling Springs and am darn proud to say it. Sitting here reading some of the posts that some people have written really takes me back to my high school days. I graduated from RBS in 1992 and will never forget the years that I played the great game of high school football for the great bulldog team. I moved to RBS in the summer of 1984; just before starting the 5th grade. I never had been to a school that housed the elementary and the high school altogether, so it was a very big change for me. I remember staying after school and watching the high school boys practice and thinking about how great it must have been to be able to play. The years went on and due to a foot injury I wasn’t able to suit up until I was a sophomore in high school, which would have been the football season of 89. Now this season was very memorable because the county had just hired us a new coach and everybody was excited about it. This coach had been an assistant coach at nearby Trousdale County High School and if anybody knew Trousdale County at that moment in time they would know that they were the team to beat because they were so good. This coach came to RBS that season and gave everybody hope because he knew what he was doing and had a love and passion for the game that no other coach at RBS had shown before. Not to say that every other coach was no good, just that this coach seemed to hold more knowledge and gave the players better hopes of winning. Who was this coach? Well, his name was Clay Dixon and I will never forget that name for the rest of my life. Coach Dixon was the turning point for the Bulldog team and got us to the point of being feared by every opponent we played. I can remember the first day of practicing under Coach Dixon, and will never forget it. School had to start late that year due to the heat, but this didn’t stop football practice from beginning. Coach Dixon had put an announcement in the paper about Practice starting the night of August 1st and whoever wanted to play had to plan to attend. I can remember the entire night, Coach Dixon’s idea of the first practice was to weed out the kids who really wanted to play ball and who was there just to be there. The entire 2 hours was nothing but bleacher running and what we liked to call Harvard step tests. For those of you who do not know what those are, it is where you jump up a step and back down as many times as you can or until you throw up and then you keep going. We had 40 kids turn up for the first night of practice; however, only about 25 came to the second. Many people said that was a wrong way to begin a practice season, but Coach Dixon knew exactly what he was doing and it worked. Most of the kids who did show up that first night would not have made it on the great Bulldog team. I knew it and many of the remaining players knew it. Most of them were your basic trouble makers and wouldn’t know what the word team meant even if it slapped them in the face. Well, this first season turned out to be a tough one for us. Even when school was out due to heat we were out on the field practicing our butts off just to get better and better. Our first game of the season was against the Cannon Co. Lions; I can still remember it to this day. Now, the last victory the Bulldogs had before this particular season was against the Lions during the season of 1985. RBS had not won a game since then. After this game we had a couple of players come up to our team telling us that we were the best Bulldog team he had seen since the 85 season. We ended up going through that season without a win and hearing nearly the same speech that we had heard from the Lions the first week; we were a much better team and would put a win under out belt soon. I played football for the Bulldogs for 2 more years before my time came to graduate and it was the best years of my life. During the 1990 season we were asked to play an extra game because one of our fellow district teams had a game cancelled and needed to play one more game to even their record out for district playoffs, so we added 11 losses that season instead of just 10. At the end of the 1991 season, the Bulldogs had accumulated a total of 70 losses. Now, anybody can sit back and say that RBS doesn’t work hard, but I think I speak for everybody that ever has or ever will play for the Bulldogs when I say that we busted our butts just as much as any other team we ever played. Nothing is as disheartening as trying to pump up some people before game time on Friday and hear them all say “you are probably going to lose.” It gives a negative attitude to everybody; even the players start thinking that way after hearing it so many times. Even though this attitude rang throughout the town, we were still out there every single day and every Friday night trying to turn that bad attitude around. Playing for the Bulldogs is something that I will never forget and will never be ashamed to admit. There isn’t one day that goes by that I don’t wish I could go back and relive those days over again. If it were offered to me I would jump at the chance just to say that I had stepped on the great Bulldog field for one more play. I would like to say thanks to all the guys on these boards that believe in the Bulldogs. You are what help keep the spirit alive. GO DAWGS!!!!!