He learned early in his career how important it was to maintain an even keel - an almost Zen-like calmness in the face of adversity. He remembers a fan yelling, “Bye-bye, Beamer!” on the last day of that season, when the Hokies lost to Virginia.įrank wasn’t one to become flustered. Shane was only 15 years old in 1992, but he was struck by the way his father maintained his composure even through all the public vitriol. The Hokies won the Independence Bowl the very next year, and they never had another losing season up until Beamer’s 2015 retirement. Braine gave Beamer one more chance and was immediately rewarded. Now a head coach himself at Timberland High, Wright tries to treat his own players the same way.īut then-athletic director David Braine saw something in Beamer, the way he taught his players like a professor, the way he cared for them. He appreciated how Beamer worked to cultivate positivity, how he was almost always uplifting and never belittling. Greg Wright, a former South Carolina walk-on who both played under Beamer and coached alongside him as a graduate assistant, said the lessons he learned from Beamer still resonate with him to this day. Once someone enters Beamer’s network, they stay there. He recruits them for lifelong relationships. Shane Beamer doesn’t just recruit players for three or four years of football production. Because people recognize authentic, and that’s what we’re going to be. The way that he treated people never changed. Said Shane about his father: “He was the exact same person when he coached in the national championship game and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as he was back in 1992, when he won two games and was almost fired. And if you can make special teams be interesting, you’ve got to be a pretty good coach, man.” “He did little things, like having videos to hype players up or keep them interested. “As a player, it was the first time I was ever given visual coaching, like visually how to attack,” Holloman said. But Beamer found ways to engage even the hot-shot freshmen. No five-star recruit signs with a team to return kicks. Beamer was only 30 years old when he joined the USC staff in 2007, yet he commanded respect in the way he treated his players. A common theme among the praise is an appreciation for Beamer’s coolness under pressure, his positive spirit and his genuine affection for his players.Īs special teams coordinator, he was the only coach other than Spurrier to stand in front of the entire roster and address the team. Since Beamer’s hire, waves of former Gamecocks - recent greats like Marcus Lattimore, Alshon Jeffery and Stephon Gilmore, guys Beamer recruited - have expressed both private and public support for the former USC assistant. They hired someone who understands better than most that a football team is more than a collection of players. They hired a man who spent four decades preparing for this exact moment, who studied under the tutelage of not only his father, but also Steve Spurrier, Slyvester Croom, Kirby Smart and Lincoln Riley. And Olivia’s and Sutton’s - both girls born in Columbia. The Gamecocks didn’t just hire Frank Beamer’s son. Even during the South Carolina interview process, Shane and his parents didn’t talk, other than a text message from Cheryl and Frank that said: “No matter where you are, we love you and we’re proud of you.” Frank has never put in a call for his son as he applied to coaching jobs, and Shane has never asked him to. Frank was Shane’s first teacher - and most important teacher - but even he would tell you that Shane is his own man. Yet Shane was never content to ride his father’s coattails. “I’m 43 years old,” Shane said, “and I’ve been the son of a head coach my entire life.” Instead, he’d write letters to football teams all over the country, asking them to please mail him one of their media guides. Shane didn’t have an iPad or YouTube or any of the technological luxuries his son has now. He spent countless hours in the family garage, where he would practice holding a headphone wire - just so he could properly hold his dad’s wire as he walked up and down the Virginia Tech sideline on game day. After the family moved to Blacksburg, Shane would stand on his parents’ back deck, put on a Fisher-Price headset and call down football “plays” to his sister and friends on the grass below. When Frank would go on road trips, Shane would grab a copy of his father’s itinerary, put on a suit and tie and arrange the chairs in the Beamer kitchen to simulate a bus - and he’d make his sister, Casey, ride in one of the seats. Shane was once just like Hunter, watching every move his father made and emulating it. As the wife of Hall of Fame college football coach Frank Beamer - the winningest coach in Virginia Tech history - she has seen the exact scenario play out before.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |