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Chapter 2: The Coaches
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2 The Coaches [54.242.75.224] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 09:17 GMT) Tony Lawless: “Sculptor of People” Jim Maddock, who played football for Tony Lawless at Fenwick and Bennie Oosterbaan at Michigan in the 1950s, still remembers calling a play that might have ended his career, something you didn’t do when the coach was known as “Furnace Face” because he got so mad when someone didn’t follow his instructions to the letter. Fenwick, nursing a 7–0 lead against DePaul Academy, faced a fourth-and-eight situation with 30 seconds to play in the first half. Maddock called for a punt. But as he broke the huddle, teammate Ed Shannon whispered in his ear,“Why not run around my end?” Maddock took the snap,faked a punt,and ran around Shannon’s end for a 60-yard touchdown (80 yards by Shannon’s account).In the locker room at halftime,Lawless didn’t say a word. After all, he didn’t call the play. “We expected him to say something,”Shannon said.“He would have been all over us if the play didn’t work. But it didn’t come from him. He would never have called the play.” In the second half, Fenwick faced another fourth-down situation. Recalling how easy it was to fake out the defense earlier, Maddock decided to run around the opposite end for what he figured would be another touchdown. He faked the punt but was tackled for a five-yard loss. “I come out and go where Lawless isn’t,”Maddock said.“He comes over to me and says,‘You jerk, you do that once a season, not twice in one game.’ He was a builder of character, a sculptor of people. What he was really after was to build you into someone who knew who he was and where he was going, right from wrong, and send you on at an early age to what you had to do for the rest of your life.” Lawless was a master psychologist and a great teacher of fundamentals.When he retired in 1956, he was still teaching the Notre Dame box, Knute Rockne’s version of the old single wing, while most strategists were coaching the T formation and the split-T and beginning to develop other option offenses. “Alumni said to get him out of that [Notre Dame box]. But I became a believer because he could teach it,”said former Glenbard West coach Bill Duchon,who played guard on Lawless’ 1945 Prep Bowl championship team and later was an assistant on Lawless’ staff from 1954 to 1959.“He was so good on fundamentals, blocking and tackling. He never passed up a teachable moment.” Shannon said you couldn’t play football for Lawless for four years without learning the game.“The only reason I was able to play at Michigan was because all he 32 / Dusty, Deek, and Mr. Do-Right taught me about the game became second instinct. At Michigan, I was ahead of a lot of guys, even All-Americans, because I knew more about the fundamentals of the game,” he said. Frank Reynolds, a 1955 Fenwick graduate who was a starting halfback on Terry Brennan’s 1957 Notre Dame team that snapped Oklahoma’s 47-game winning streak, recalled his first practice at Notre Dame. “Brennan came up to me and said,‘You’re from Fenwick.I know you know the fundamentals .’ Lawless had a deep passion for the game.The No. 1 thing was he wanted to see you compete and give everything you had on every play,” Reynolds said. Most of all,Lawless was a winner.In 25 years,his teams won 80 percent (172–40–6) of their games and never experienced a losing season. Although he produced only one unbeaten team (8–0–1 in 1936) and only one 10-victory season (10–1 in 1949), he coached a dozen teams that lost only one game. In his first seven seasons from 1932 to 1938, he was 45–6–3. Fenwick is all about Lawless and tradition, about Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Lattner’s bronze shoe in the glass case in the hallway, about Olympic diving gold medalist Ken Sitzberger,about NBA star Corey Maggette,about hallways cluttered with football, basketball, and swimming trophies, about walls filled with photographs of All-State and All-America athletes, about Jug (detention on Saturday mornings), and about Dan O’Brien, a 1934 graduate who...