Posted on 08/24/2004 8:22:59 AM PDT by dukeman
PUNTA GORDA -- A set of shoulder pads and a football helmet hung on a fence post like a scarecrow at harvest.
A cow mooing in a field replaced the shrill of a coach's whistle.
On the front of a barn was a salvaged sign that read:
Charlotte Tarpons, Class 4A Regional Champs, 2002.
Inside the barn, shoulder pads hung beside a horse's saddle and a stuffed boar's head with a Charlotte High hat on its head.
There were weights next to feedbags, jerseys next to power tools, and scattered about were 50 high school football players ready to give a demoralized community something to cheer for again.
Football returned to Charlotte High on Monday afternoon, and no one seemed to mind that practice took place at assistant coach Wade Taylor's 5-acre farm.
Standing on a gazebo behind Taylor's home, athletic director Brian Nolan spoke to the players for the first time since Hurricane Charley destroyed their school and athletic facilities.
"I told them, 'What you're going to do is going to be one of the hardest things you've ever done in the 17 years of your life,' " Nolan said.
"It's going to be hard, but the good you're going to do is going to be a life-defining moment, because on a Friday night, for a couple of hours, we can forget about what happened."
After the meeting, the players put on their yellow helmets and ran sprints down a dirt road full of potholes.
The season of their lives had begun.
"The way I see it, it's a start," said Jeff Holland, a sophomore player. "It's a step in the right direction, for our season to continue on."
Charlotte High football has been a staple in Punta Gorda for decades. If you were ever looking for someone on a Friday night, all you had to do was follow the barbecue smoke to Tarpon Stadium.
"Our athletic program, and football specifically, this town feeds on it," Nolan said.
"People have had seats reserved for years and years years and they're going to miss that," said Wallace Keller, the former athletic director for whom the stadium is named. "It's always been a place to go on Friday nights, and they're not going to have that."
Even though no home game will be played at Charlotte High this season, the football team now takes on a greater importance. Amid all the debris, a diversion is about to appear.
"They're looking at the football team to help bring the community back," Holland said. "That's what Charlotte's known for, football."
"It's very important, and for all of our athletics to go on, too, because it means so much to this community," Keller said.
"It's brought stress to everyone and this is one way to get our stress out," said sophomore Shelby Hoskins.
Charlotte will decide at a meeting Thursday if it will be able to play its season-opener on Sept. 3 at Lemon Bay. Player safety is a concern because of the lack of practice time.
The Tarpons' first "home" game is expected to be played at Fort Myers Bishop Verot against Cape Coral Mariner on Sept. 10.
"Then, we'll just go from there and see where we can play games," Nolan said.
Nolan said Charlotte is looking to play its home games at Bishop Verot, North Port, Fort Myers, Venice and Port Charlotte.
According to Nolan, Charlotte High generates $60,000 a year in gate receipts for home games at Tarpon Stadium. The school will continue to receive gate money for home games, but will lose out on concession money.
Other schools have stepped in to help. Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas plans to donate the gate receipts from its first home game to Charlotte High.
Charlotte defeated St. Thomas Aquinas two seasons ago in the playoffs.
Sarasota High baseball coach Clyde Metcalf brought dozens of players to Punta Gorda on Sunday to help clean up.
Also on Sunday, Nolan said, he saw Bradenton Southeast coach Paul Maechtle, one of the most successful football coaches in the state, cutting trees with a chain saw.
Washington Redskins kicker John Hall, a Port Charlotte High grad, left training camp to help. On Monday, he was hanging Charlotte jerseys inside Taylor's barn.
Most of what was salvaged from the school was brought to Taylor's farm on Henry Street, about a mile from Charlotte High.
Still, a significant amount of equipment was lost in the storm.
"Heck," Nolan said, "we were picking up tackling dummies a mile away from the school."
Some of the equipment will be hauled from the farm to the Charlotte Sports Park, where the football team will practice starting today.
Some of the weights will remain at the farm so the kids in other sports have somewhere to lift.
Like many, Keller feels Charlotte High's football team has the potential to help mend the community.
But he is also saddened by the devastation to the school and remembers the small details buried beneath the rubble.
He remembers the night the new weight room was completed. The last bolt went in at 4 a.m.
And the night the stadium was dedicated to him. He walked through knee-high water to attend the party because it rained so hard that night.
The stadium sign with his name on it was lost in the hurricane. It has not been found.
"I know we'll get a lot of new stuff," Keller said. "But that new stuff won't mean what the old stuff did.
"There's so much tradition and history and it's gone. All of this tradition is gone forever.
"So many people worked so hard to bring that facility to what it was, and to see it devastated like that is very sad.
"But they will recover faster than you think."
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