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Published: January 14th 2009
I’m afraid this blog is going to have nothing to do with Korea, what kind of unfamiliar situations, or observations that we are succumbing to over here. My apologies for this. Although, in a round about way, the topic of this blog is about something that is happening to me while I’m in Korea; so if you can stretch your mind, it fits. This writing is more about something that has been affecting me, weighing on me, this week, while in Korea.
Now, I don’t consider myself a writer any more than I think of myself as a politician or an entertainer. I have numerous journals that seem to always fall by the wayside when things of more importance, as they always seem to, creep in. I am writing these words as a refuge, as a way to reflect, mourn, celebrate, and bless one of the greatest people I’ve had the fortune to share a brief moment of life with.
I have been debating whether or not to write something up and post it. To me, being so far from home and everyone I care for, this is the best way to reach everyone I can and share my thoughts. Many of these fond memories come from the dark recesses of my mind, while many come from an emotion filled letter I was compelled to write only hours after I had heard the news. No matter where from, and what about, this is my way of sharing my memories, so that you may want to, celebrating, and honoring a man that had a wonderful impact on me as an individual, Ron Rubick.
A few days ago, I opened my email to see a message from my mom with the words, ‘Coach Rubick.’ Coach Rubick, for those who don’t know, was my high school football coach, including all of the many hats a coach wears, as well as a mentor to me, a family friend, and everything you can image or expect a role model to be. I thought the message was out of the ordinary, not everyday do you get an email regarding an old coach of yours. The topic of what she wrote was less than to be desired. In his thirty two some odd years of coaching the Manitowoc Ships varsity football team, he racked up a 179-106-3 record, three state championships in 1984, 1985, and 1986, during which time included a state record forty-eight straight wins, and nine conference championships. He is a member of practically all the state and local Hall of Fame’s he’s qualified for, and if this is incorrect, it’s an outrage. With all that stacked up in his favor, his unyielding strength, and strength of spirit, Coach Rubick succumbed to what was believed to be pneumonia, and fell into a coma.
Earlier yesterday, I got the follow up news from my mom, that it was one battle too many. It was a brilliantly sunny day in Korea, when I received word one of my real life heroes passed away.
Many people, when asked, instantly throw out names of the most influential people in their lives. Outside of my family, I have two… Mr. Jim Mellberg, my fifth grade teacher, and, my varsity football coach, Ron Rubick. It’s funny, this thing called life, with all it’s twists and turns, because, until I moved to Korea, I worked in Montana as, you guessed it, a fifth grade teacher and varsity football coach.
I had the opportunity to play for Coach Rubick for three years at the tail end of his coaching career, from 1996-98, and I am honored to say it has benefitted me in ways I’m sure I’ll never quite totally grasp. Many who coach have major impacts on their players. I have dabbled in the ranks of coaching and I hoped to have a sliver of impact on my players as Rubick had on his.
As long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to, someday, be lucky enough to put on the red and white jersey and be a part of the Lincoln Ships. From the famous forty-eight game, three-time state championship teams, and the legendary stories I’ve heard Rubick orchestrated on the field during that time, to announcing his retirement at the Wisconsin State High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, it was you that put the honor in wearing those colors.
It must have been around my seventh birthday-ish, maybe 1988, when I chose to have a Lincoln Ships football themed birthday party. Looking back, I think it was a funny choice. Thinking back, I really only have one memory of Ships football prior to my brother, Jeff, starting in 1990. I couldn’t tell you any more about the game, other than faint memories and speculation. It was most likely against Fondy, on that cold overcast afternoon at Municipal Field, and all I can recall was that it was a real football game.
I didn’t know the stakes, the final score, even the opponent with any certainty. There were cheerleaders throwing red and white mini-footballs into the stands. If you timed it just right, you could go under the bleachers and grab all of them that fell through, I must have had thousands. There was a concession stand that smelled more like Lambeau Field than the south side of Manitowoc. The team, with their strikingly simple, red helmets, symbols of their uncomplicated resilience, smashed through a hand painted banner as they got announced to the crowd. All of those stimuli are heaven for a boy, but those aren’t the one thing I’ll never forget. During the game, I was walking along the chain linked fence, parallel to the faded asphalt track, when I noticed all the people. So many people were there, they lined the field, seemingly hundreds of thousands. To a young boy, this wasn’t high school football, this was the big time.
Before the party, my mom decked out the dining room in red and white streamers. I unveiled the cake, the most glorious thing imaginable to a boy once described as ‘husky,’ which was crowned with the image of a red and white football player tiptoeing down the sideline. I began waiting for my friends to show up when the doorbell rang. I ran over to see who the first person was to show up, when I became absolutely dumbstruck. Brock Matthias, at the time he was the current quarterback for the Ships, was waiting on the other side of the door with his football jacket on. I didn’t know what else to do, but continue up the stairs adjacent to the door as soon as I recognized who it actually was. It was the first time I remember feeling completely caught by surprise, not even suspecting this in the slightest. I was so embarrassed, and honored that an actual ‘Ship’ would come to my house! I remember it being as if Bono himself knocked on my door to hang out with me for a while. He didn’t stay long, we took some pictures with the cake and the streamers around, and that is all I really recall. In fact, those pictures found their way out of the closet on my graduation day. In retrospect, Brock and my parents’ are friends and arranged the meeting, but that doesn’t take anything away from meeting your first rock star.
Not often do I think back to so many fond memories. Jeff began playing in ’90, putting me in fourth grade, nine years old. So many things come rushing back to me, our own football games in the field behind the visitors stands, the face paint on homecoming, the silly meaningless crushes on nearly all of the cheerleaders. The reflection of the lights off the helmets, the earth shaking collisions heard in the stands between players, the student band playing with their perfect steps and uniforms at halftime, what seemed to be a sea of red erupting as the ships fought, and the post game visits with my brother, high fiving his grass stained, gloved hand, dripping and smelling of sweat will never leave me. I cherished the team banquets, where, at the age of nine, I may have shed my first tear of sadness during the senior speeches. The same team banquet where I, nine years later, gave my own speech, and yet more tears. I will never, ever, forget your advice; the final line of all the nine consecutive banquets I attended. He approached the microphone and said, after the many thank you’s, “boys, tonight, when you go to bed, give your mom a big hug, look her straight in the eyes and tell her you love her. Then I want you to turn to your dad, give him a big hug too, and look him in the eyes and say, ‘dad, I love you.’” At such an early age, it never really hit me why you said that, but growing older, I cherish every word of it.
I began playing football as a seventh grader at Wilson the same year my other brother, James, moved up to the varsity to fill Jeff’s cleats once he graduated, almost literally. I am blessed to be part of a family that was given the talents to play the game at a high level. Although being a part of your teams and playing the game of football under your tutelage was valuable, it wasn’t the game but a result of playing the game which directly played a role in any one of me or my brothers’ futures. For example, Jeff was recruited to Iowa to play football, but ended up playing baseball instead; James played a few years of football at Carroll College, but his acceptance never depended on it; I only looked at my prospective college, one that I never played at, because a recruiter visited me in the JFK Fieldhouse one afternoon. Football played an important role in where we ended up, no question. What I find much more valuable was what we took away from the field, the conditioning, the practices, the D meetings, the conditioning, the offseason weights, and Coach, that mattered most.
I am only one of the many, many players you have affected, but I know I am not standing alone. Through the selflessness you have given in the name of your players, those I have played with, those I know through my brothers, those I have watched, and even those I don’t know that have played before me, you have made us better people through the game of football. Football was the theme of your teachings, and your example was the book from which we learned.
I stepped into a starting role, filling James’ cleats, again almost literally, as a sophomore. I felt as though I was at the bottom of a mountain staring up. James and Jeff left me six consecutive years of post-season honors to uphold. It was that year, with you and your incredible coaching staff’s help, I learned what could be accomplished, and what I am truly capable of. I saw fierceness in your eyes, a focus, and determination on game day I have never seen before, but realized what is required of oneself to be successful. That year, we won the conference title, but lost in the playoffs, in one of the coldest days I have ever experienced, to, none other than, Fond du Lac. My first taste of the bitterness sports can sometimes leave. No matter how hard you can possibly try, you can give one hundred and thirty percent of yourself to the game, and still someone or some other team can simply be better than you. Then came your talks of resilience; bouncing back, getting in the weight room, and putting in the hard work so that you can improve. That season, for the first time, I slipped our red home jersey over the scratched shoulder pads, tucked it into the most beautiful white pants I’ve seen to this day, and became a member of a larger cause, I was finally a Ship. Those are the lessons, learned through your encouragement and character, which I take with me everywhere I’ve go, to places like Iowa, Alaska, Montana, and Korea, a footprint I can only hope my legacy achieves. Lessons you don’t learn from textbooks, from networking, or socializing. Things I credit to you, Coach Rubick, which made this one life more meaningful.
I cherish my final game, especially. We won, a feat neither of my older brothers can say, since winning a final game is rare in this age of playoff systems. We beat Green Bay Preble, at home, nonetheless, to end a less than stellar season. The seniors, a scene that is played out at every high school team’s final home game, walked around and lingered on the field longer than usual as the underclassmen waited in the buses to head back to school. We took many puffy, red eyed photographs with our family, the coaching staff, and Rubick. At the time, we had no idea those pictures would be the last ever taken of Ron Rubick, on the field, as the head coach of the Manitowoc Lincoln High School Ships. It is an absolute honor, to have walked off the same field as him, let alone the final field of his career.
Soon after, my family and I attended the Wisconsin High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame Banquet dinner, of which he would be inducted, with the Rubicks and several others of his friends. There, in a room with his closest friends, he told them he would be retiring as coach. With all the grace and genuineness he used in a career of such success on the field, he chose to end that career in the same fashion. His legacy may just be his character.
The man I coach with in Montana sometimes loses sight of this. Needing to keep things in perspective, he sometimes asks me, “Does it really matter, in the long run, if we beat the Twin Bridges Falcons?” I reply, “Nope, not at all.” Of course, I want to win, we all know that. But what matters in the long run, which is the question at hand, is that we, as coaches, put forth every effort we can to try to create a favorable outcome. To show our players that we are doing all we possibly can for them, to ensure their success. If, by chance, it isn’t a win, what is important is that we lose gracefully, stand by the players’ efforts, and hope we can find something in the loss that we can learn from and improve ourselves. Perhaps, with some luck, that player will someday take what he or she has learned and apply it to their life away from the arena of sports. It is times like that, Coach, when you are the closest to me.
There is also his incredible and incredibly fun wife, JoNell. I will never forget riding to the away games with you and my mom in our van when I was young growing up. She is one of the greatest story tellers of all time, the one I remember most vividly ends with Coach, after a slip and fall on a backpacking trip, upside down on the trail, with flailing arms and legs like a turtle that’s been flipped! Try to have that in your memory bank as he is screaming encouragement, pushing over chalkboards, at halftime of your first ever varsity game. Yeah, that’s something. Mrs. Rubick, the eternal team mother-in-law, was always so quick with the post game hugs, the freshly popped popcorn in the basement on defense meeting night, or just a laugh; I will never forget that infectious laugh. I am so blessed to have been witness to the greatness you two radiate.
I will always remember you as the graying, balding, roundish teddy bear of a man who came into the weight room one afternoon. He walked directly to the bench press, I’m sure D and Rozy and I were in the middle of using, and sat down. After I struggled to push out eight reps, of two hundred and whatever pounds, you laid down, and cranked out fifteen quick ones without even flinching. You sat up, smirked at us a little, perhaps just to make sure we were watching, gave us a little nod, and left. Yeah, just like that, that’s the Rubick I know. That’s the Rubick I will never forget.
I can only pray, Coach, that you were and are now in a position to heed your own advice. The very same advice you said at the team banquets, to so many of the players you have impacted so greatly in your life. ‘I want you to take your wife, wrap both arms around her and give her a big hug. Look her straight in the eye and tell her you love her. Then grab your kids, hug them, look at them and tell them you love them.’ And the first chance you get, Coach, please, “grab
your mom, wrap both arms around
her and give
her a big hug, look her straight in the eyes and tell her you love her. Then, turn to your dad, wrap your arms around
him, and give
him a big hug too. Look
him straight in the eyes and say, ‘dad, I love you.’”
All my love, Coach,
Bubba Wick
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JBinns
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Big Boy, You are on point. He was bigger than life. He didn't coach us to be great football players. He coached us to be great men. Heaven just got a little bit stronger. Binns