August 3, 2013

BREAKING CAMP: Like father, like son

 

Second generation of Red Devils on field

 

Rocky Stanley

The Independent

FLATWOODS — Year to year, it’s common to see a handful of current Russell football players whose fathers also roamed the place now known as Ivan McGlone Field.

 

This season, there’s a bumper crop.

 

Make it 13 second-generation Red Devils on the roster for 2013.

 

The Hall of Fame coach’s reaction?

 

“I’m getting old,” said McGlone, now 75 and back for his 38th season at Russell despite heart surgery and a collapsed lung earlier this year. “You have to kind of feel that way. I always say when I start getting the grand kids, I’m going to go.”

 

Junior Timmy Hammond and freshman Evan Ison share a bond. Their dads — Tim Hammond and Rusty Ison — played together in the backfield for Russell’s region championship teams in the early 1980s, along with several other dads of present-day Red Devils.

 

Link

Russell head coach Ivan McGlone is surrounded by second-generation Red Devil players Matt Cox (2), Jake Riffe (15), Evan Ison (16), Maxx Blackburn (38), Conner Slone (53), Mitch Redden (61), Jake Conley (63), Timmy Hammond (50), Sammy Smith (66), Austin Potter (22), Jacob McKee (3), Jacob Howard (21) and Garion Robinson (8).

 

 

The Independent

That's pretty cool.

That's pretty cool.

Lot of history at Russell, and Coach McGlone has been there for most of it.

With all the HS Football Documentaries that get done I think what would make for a really interesting one is if someone followed McPeek at Fairview and McGlone at Russell over the course of the same season. To compare and contrast these two and their polar opposite situations would make for a very interesting portrait of the HS Coaching profession and evolution of the game.

 

Truly respect McGlone and have had the pleasure of sitting down with him and just talking football and he truly is a special person. Makes me sad to see his health problems and the effect they have had on him... but at the same time it is sort of poetic that he literally continues to Coach football until he is truly unable to.