From time to time, someone will ask me if I believe in Hell.
Believe in it? I practiced there — “there” being the football practice field at Mogadore High School in the mid-1980s. Specifically, the hellish, unforgiving conditions of two-a-days on a cement-hard, dusty field under the blazing hot August sun, all of it wrapped in a wet, heavy, suffocating blanket of Northeast Ohio humidity.
It was, well, hell.
Two practices a day for a couple weeks, although it felt like a year. One morning practice for several hours, one afternoon practice for several hours, with a couple-hour break in between that seemed more like five minutes where you went home, got out of the sun, did your best to rehydrate and actively dreaded heading back down to the field again.
When you woke in the morning, the clear, blue sky signaled that it was going to be a hot one. They were all hot ones. The football gods wouldn’t have it any other way.
No matter how much time goes by — and it’s been a lot of time now for me — I still get a little queasy each year when the calendar flips to August. I get a little queasy when I see the morning dew on the grass, I get a little queasy when the sun starts roaring up over the horizon, I get a little queasy when I step outside and the humidity hits me like a brick wall.
I get a little queasy because although I haven’t participated in a two-a-day practice since 1985, it seems like yesterday when we were pushing our minds and our bodies to the breaking point to be the best football players and the best football team we could be. Queasy is meant in the most literal sense, too, because it wasn’t uncommon to see a player vomiting during one of these grueling practices.
During a morning two-a-day my sophomore year in 1983, that player was me. I had broken my leg the second day of conditioning drills in late July and spent the next several weeks in a cast, hobbling around on crutches while everyone else was getting in shape. When the cast finally came off and I was cleared to play again, two-a-days were nearly over. As a result of the injury and time off, my conditioning wasn’t where it needed to be — a fact I realized about one hour into my first two-a-day practice.
After going through calisthenics, sprints and agility drills, my stomach had finally had enough. It began rumbling like a volcano, and I had just enough time to pull my helmet off before, well, you know.
That was my baptism by fire with Mogadore two-a-days. And I was breathing fire the rest of that day, my body as hot as a blast furnace and my mouth as dry as the Sahara.
But I was hardly the one to suffer cruel fates during these summer practices.
Our coaches implored us to eat right and stay hydrated to give our bodies a fighting chance of making it through conditioning and two-a-days. They especially encouraged us to eat fruit, something that one player took a little too far one day before a shorts-and-tee shirt conditioning workout. After running a couple 40-yard sprints, he suddenly started retching an impressive volume of … something. Our coach, Norm Lingle, asked him what he ate before coming down to the field.
“I did what you said, coach,” the player replied. “I ate fruit.”
“What kind of fruit?” Lingle asked.
“Lemon meringue pie,” said the kid, still looking a little green in the gills.
“Lemon meringue pie?!” Lingle responded incredulously. “You ate a piece of lemon meringue pie before coming to practice?”
“No,” the kid said. “I ate the whole pie. You said to eat a lot of fruit.”
There were just enough lighter moments like that to keep us sane.
Another such instance happened when the coaches were putting the kickoff team together one morning. They were looking for two fast players to put on each end of the kickoff line, spots that today are known as gunners but weren’t called that then. We were huddled around coach Lingle, and he said, “OK, I need a streaker.” One always-wisecracking player raised his hand and said, “I’ll do it, coach.” Lingle, seeing who the respondent was, looked at him and said, “Those are called flashers, Brian.”
Mixed in with two-a-day practices were our three scrimmages: two on Saturdays and one especially inconvenient scrimmage on a Wednesday night. After concluding a Tuesday two-a-day marathon, we were gathered around coach Lingle, and he was going over some preparations with us ahead of the next night’s scrimmage. As he finished, he said we would be back on the field Thursday morning to resume practices.
The same player from the “flasher” quip immediately spoke up. “Coach, are you sure we should be practicing the next morning after the scrimmage? We’re going to be awfully sore when we wake up.” To which Lingle replied: “Then we’ll work it out of you.”
There was always plenty of discipline meted out in two-a-days as well. One player was unceremoniously sent home for the day after taking the field for a morning practice wearing high-top tennis shoes with no laces and no socks. The reaction by one of our assistant coaches when he saw the player’s choice of footwear might have registered on the Richter scale.
Another player was tossed from a morning practice when he kept dropping a pass on a route in the flat. He was a running back, and his job was to delay in the backfield for a count or two, then drift into the flat for a pass. The play was always wide open and went for big yardage. But on this morning, he repeatedly dropped the pass because he didn’t have his hands positioned correctly to catch the ball. The offense kept running the play over and over, the kid kept dropping the ball, and our offensive coordinator kept getting more and more frustrated, telling the player to put his hands right so he could catch it.
Finally, the coach said, “Run it again. If you drop it this time, just keep running and go home. Don’t come back until tomorrow. I’m tired of watching it.”
I don’t need to tell you how that ended.
I remember these moments well all these decades later. I remember the morning dew soaking the back of my practice pants as I sat on the grass during calisthenics. I remember my mouthpiece getting caked in dust, leaving me to crunch on it the rest of the day. I remember my chest heaving under my shoulder pads as my lungs desperately sought out precious molecules of oxygen in the hot, stifling air.
Maybe it’s some form of PTSD, or maybe it’s just my way of hanging on to my youth, but those days are seared into my memory. It’s 2021 now, far removed from the mid-1980s, but the calendar has flipped to August and the morning sun is just starting to peek above the horizon.
It’s going to be a hot one.
Tom Hardesty is a Portager sports columnist. He was formerly assistant sports editor at the Record-Courier and author of the book Glimpses of Heaven.