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Show Spotlight on Sports (by Don Robinson) Coaching has to be one of the most precarious of professions. Each year it's a case of beginning over again with the liklihood that people won't remember past successes, but are much aware of immediate failure. The first reaction upon seeing the new football foot-ball .recruits is, "Where did all tha- horses go?" "This is a rebuilding year," is sometimes a post-mortem. This year does look like a rebuilding year for the- Moab lied Devils. Coach GJen Richeson lost three of his starting backs and his entire- offensive Hne. Nine of the starters m.ade first and second all-region teams. That smarts! A good part of the graduates were three-year three-year Ietlcrmen with the team, making tiheir absence seem even more dismal. On the other hand, this fall like every other fall looks slim because we- operate more on memory than optomism. The Red Devils will field a squad small in size this year, very small. However, if you remember the Mike Bynum led crew a few years ago, you remember that they looked like they 'had been run over with the same lawnniower. They won 12 games. There won't be any towering Sam Scharf or Chuck Zimmerman at tackles. There will be some tough youngsters that butted heads with the giants last year in scrimmage and had more success suc-cess than most of the opposition did. There won't be a cool, three-yea.r man like Jeff Cowan at quarterback, but there will be three quarterbacks Who can move a club. There likely won't be a speed merchant like , all-stater Steve Robinson, but in Kim NeaJ, Dave Bier-schied Bier-schied and Steve Walston you will have three road-runners road-runners that can zap an unwary defense. There is a nucleus of talent around from last year. This group lost only only one game in two years of junior high and junior varsity ball and that one on a fluke. They played with a varsity squad that won nine and lost 2. In otiher words, it's another year, another team. Twelve months from now we'll be wondering where the horses have gone. With the recreation leagues starting to wind up, here's another accolade for the men who volunteer to manage the many Tee League, Little League, Pony League and Colt League teams. These guys deserve a communit-wide thank you (also their patient wives). Now that they have spent most of their summer sum-mer evenings helping kids, they'll be giving up their vacations to take the winning teams upstate. As parents, par-ents, we are greatly in their debt. |