Another sex scandal has emerged involving a college coach. We are all now too familiar with the Penn State sex scandal — but move over Penn State, there’s a new scandal on the block; an assistant coach at Syracuse University now finds himself in the hot seat.
But, rather than give more energy to these predators, I want to spend some time honoring a man who took his job as coach seriously: Coach Sistrunk.
I was a geeky bookworm being bused to school every day with tunes from the late ’70s and early ’80s as my personal soundtrack. The year was 1979, and I was a freshman at the magnet High School for Engineering Professions, but it shared a campus with Booker T. Washington in Houston, Texas. (Go War Eagles!)
Like most pre-pubescent, scrawny, athletically challenged youth, I loathed and feared gym class. I especially hated the ritual of dressing out for gym. I calculated how many days I could skip dressing out and still pass. There were consequences for not dressing for gym … which I will share later.
The days I did have to dress for gym were a precise exercise in timing and strategy. I told you I went to a magnet school and was somewhat protected in the comfort of the geek herd until I had to mix with the greater BTW population. You see, away from the other pocket-protector population, I was an easy target for the local neighborhood jackals.
I would race through the halls, gliding around all the iconic clicks of jocks, geeks, popular kids and break-dancers. (Hello, I told you it was the ’80s.) I would finally arrive at the locker room and quickly change into my regulation blue gym shorts, white T-shirt, knee-length tube socks and sneakers.
I had witnessed first hand the hazing ritual the older boys subjected on unlucky geeks caught in a vulnerable state of undress, so I was like Houdini in my quick change before the older boys would arrive. I timed it perfectly so that I was sitting on the lower bleachers closest to Coach Sistrunk’s office by the time the older guys emerged — loud and rambunctious — from the locker room.
I was not always the tall, lock-adorned, confident man I am now, so Coach Sistrunk (through my young geek eyes) was a very imposing figure. Coach was barrel-chested, dark-skinned and had a receding salt-and-pepper afro. He always wore a T-shirt, long tube socks, sneakers and standard coach shorts.
Coach Sistrunk would emerge from his office like a surly black bear from its wintery den. He was never without his favorite accessory: “Old Glory.” Old Glory was not just a paddle — it was retro-art. Coach drilled several holes in Old Glory, and the handle was meticulously wrapped with duct tape. This was when authority figures could discipline kids without DCS or a producer from the Maury show intervening.
Coach Sistrunk would call out the roll and you formed two ranks. Those that were dressed took their place on the gym floor for morning calisthenics, and those that were not dressed stood in line for a brief conversation with “Old Glory.”
The days that I did not dress out were surprisingly less traumatic than facing an entire period of embarrassing myself on the basketball court or showcasing cat-like agility as I escaped dangerous projectiles being launched at me by sadists during a game of dodge ball. Damn, some of those girls played rough!
Coach Sistrunk would line up the dress-code perpetrators, and — one by one — give them a single, swift, wooden kiss from Old Glory. In the moment you could not tell me that I was not being beaten like a piñata at a kids birthday party, but in hindsight I realized that big, bad Sistrunk was more show than force.
Coach had a unique delivery method that included his yelling your name precisely at the moment of paddle to cheek contact. My young mind perceived this as a public flogging, but actually Coach Sistrunk always took it pretty easy on the girls and geeks.
Here was a man who was not only honoring his position as an educator and authority figure, but was also a true protector of those in his care. It is unfortunate that so many other coaches have not shown similar respect in their roles. I am not sure even if Coach Sistrunk is still alive, but he and Old Glory have left an enduring impression on my backside … and my memory