MCDERMITT JOURNAL: The football team that never wins, finally did
The McDermitt Bulldogs finally won a football game on Thursday.
They beat their arch-rivals from Owyhee, another reservation-based team, on a home field that’s split in two by the Nevada-Oregon border. It’s a desolate place where there are no Friday night lights, where the whinnies of wild horses call out in the desert, just beyond the goal posts.
For the boys (and girl) from McDermitt, the afternoon was different. The feelings it evoked were elusive, like quicksilver you might try to pull from a nearby stream.
Winning feels different. It hurts when you don’t have it, and dazzles when you do.
Most teams win every once in a while, others more rarely.
The Bulldogs are one of those teams.
They hadn’t won a high school football game in seven long years, since October 2016.
They once lost 100-0 and it could have been worse. One season their only score was on a freak safety. They were outscored that year something like 393 to 2.
It’s the kind of losing streak that could make a young player hang his head. Give up. Quit. And some did. You can’t blame a kid for that.
But the two coaches never quit, even though they have struggled for years merely to field enough players to compete in a rural eight-man league that’s known by some as the Farmers versus the Cowboys.
Teams drive for hours on clunky buses for away games, just for the thrill of competing.
And for the Bulldogs, losing.
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Richard Egan and Jack Smith are two men from vastly different backgrounds.
They have also become my friends.
Two years ago, while researching a book, I spent an entire season in McDermitt, a border town anchored by a casino, two gas stations and a Paiute-Shoshone reservation.
I wanted to write about what it was like to lose, and then again. And then again.
What does that do to your psyche?
But the team didn’t lose that year, because they didn’t even get to play. They forfeited the season because they couldn’t find enough players to compete.
The same thing happened the following year.
But the coaches battled through it. They’re fighters, with scrappy pasts. Richard is a descendant of Chief Egan, a Paiute leader who in the 1860s fought for his people’s rights when wagon trains filled with settlers invaded their traditional lands.
Richard played football for the Bulldogs when the team won the state championship in 1982. He knew how to deliver hits that still woke opposing player in the middle of the night, days after they were delivered.
Jack could hit, too. He grew up a youth boxer who eventually turned pro, coached by a fire-hydrant tough father, a boxer, pro-wrestler and cigar-chomping wise guy who taught his son the meaning of getting up off the mat.
Jack still keeps his Dad’s ashes in a pair of boxing gloves by his bed.
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Over the seasons, I have kept in touch with both coaches.
I call to hear about the new prospects. I ask about Richard’s wife and family, about Jack’s dog, Hazel.
This season, Jack said one day, started out as one like no other.
The coaches were dangerously close to canceling another campaign. They had seven players. They needed eight.
The squad included a girl from the reservation, named Lonie. She told Richard early on she was going to play, but he’d heard that from girls who later opted for girls volleyball.
But Lonie kept her word. She showed up for the first practices in the dog-day afternoons of late August, and for every practice after that.
She’s a big girl, “husky,” Richard says. She could hit and take a hit.
But they still numbered only seven.
Then one day, the principal walked into Jack’s office with a freshman who had just transferred to the school from rural Idaho. The boy wanted to play football. And he could play, throw a ball.
He could play quarterback.
And so McDermitt had itself a season. And what a story line!
Fielding the first female player in league history. Saved at the eleventh-hour by a walk-on who seemed sent from football heaven.
“You should have come this year,” Jack said.
With so many canceled seasons, the Bulldogs had lost their league status and had to scrap together a meager four-game season, all to be played at home.
Rural Nevada is a long way from my home in San Francisco, so I couldn’t attend the first game. I remember checking the score the following day.
McDermitt lost 54-0.
Richard was nonplussed. It just felt good to be on the field again, the green grass, competing.
He told his team not to go all hang-dog on him.
“Did we have fun?” he asked them.
They did.
For the first time in years, they were taking snaps that meant something.
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The last time the Bulldogs played Owhyee, they lost 72-0 when the opposing coach refused to pull his starters after the final outcome was well in hand.
When two Native American teams play, the hits are harder. Bragging rights carry a steeper currency.
This is reservation football on the edge of America.
Richard understands that.
Maybe the fans had a feeling about this one, because 300 showed up on a gray early-autumn afternoon to root on the home boys (and girl).
“I mean, there were bodies,” Richard said later. “People were there.”
It was Homecoming Weekend. Like he always does, Richard told his kids before the game that it was about sportsmanship, no matter the outcome.
They were listening. Especially Lonie.
On Owyhee's first play from scrimmage, a 170-pound linebacker turned the corner for the sidelines and came right at her.
It might sound cliche to say that he didn’t know what hit him, but he didn’t.
“Lonie put that boy down,” Richard said. “She tackled him hard. When he got up, he was wobbling, with a look that said, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen that before.’”
The Bulldogs scored on their first drive and led 16-0 at the half.
There was no gloating. Richard had run into the Owyhee coach that week and the other guy swirled a toothpick in his mouth.
“It’s gonna be a battle next week,” he said without irony.
“Yep,” Richard responded.
And this time, it was a battle.
It was a war.
“We didn’t do anything fancy,” Richard said. “Just old-school hit-you-in-the-nose offense.”
The Bulldogs ran out of gas at the end, but they held on, with Owyhee only scoring when it was too late.
“I don’t know,” Richard said of his team. “They found a way.”
Over the years, Richard has given a lot of speeches about losing.
But this time they won.
Kind of takes your breath away.
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When the final whistle blew, the place was bedlam.
“Well, I think first of all, we’re so used to losing and not knowing how to win,” Richard said. “So when we did, it was a celebration.”
Seven years of frustration finally blown off like so much fog. “I feel good for all of those kids,” he said. Even if they hadn’t endured the endless losing the two coaches had.
Out of the corner of his eye, Richard saw two players run toward both coaches carrying a five-gallon jug of Gatorade. He flinched and barely avoided contact.
Jack wasn’t so lucky.
“Man, the kids really gave him a bath,” Richard recalled. “He didn’t see it coming.”
Jacks says it felt like a sucker punch. The Gatorade hit him right in the face. It was in his eyes, running down his throat. The sun was going down and it felt cold.
So that’s what winning feels like. Frigid and sudden. Nearly drowned.
“It was like a movie,” Jack said.
For Jack, it capped a perfect day as a teacher and coach. Over the years, he’s headed up both football and basketball teams. Each year, he checks the new talent, hoping to win, but prepared to lose.
The morning of the game, the athletics and conditioning instructor walked into an empty gym and saw a poster that outgoing seniors had pasted to the wall.
The high school is graduating 11 seniors this year, a big class for a rural school. Jack has worked with many of them since they were in the third grade.
It was a long relationship, one fostered by each side, win or lose, but mostly losing.
The poster features his picture. “Holy Smith!” it said. “Where did all the time go?”
The emotions hit him hard. And Jack has taken lots of hits in this life.
These days, he’s even talking about retiring.
“I got teary-eyed,” said the veteran coach, “standing there by myself with 30-plus years flashing through my head.”
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So what do you do when you win a game? Wash away years of losing?
You get ready for the next one.
In three weeks, the Bulldogs will take on Sierra Lutheran at home.
But for now, they celebrate.
“The team made the community proud,” Richard said. “Even today, I was in the market a few times and it’s still the big talk, how those kids performed.”
Winning isn't the only thing.
But damn it sure feels good.
Cold and invigorating.
Like a Gatorade bath.