Another good friend is gone

“What’s going on, Turnovers?”

That’s the way David McFarland always greeted me. Never Al, never Gibson, never anything else – just Turnovers whenever he would first see me. After that, on the basketball floor sidelines or on the golf course, he called me Al, but that first greeting every time, I knew who it was, without having to look.

David McFarland was the first girls’ coach I worked with as a young reporter who was just starting out in this business.

We became good friends and there are stories I can’t repeat in this space, but there were a lot of good times. Many on the sidelines, many more on the golf course. Most of the off colored ones during trips to the KHSAA Sweet 16.

Sitting where I do at the official table during games, I’ve developed a lot of special relationships with a lot of coaches during the past four plus decades, but Mac was one of the more special ones.

It wasn’t a strange occurrence at all, especially during those early years, to answer the door and there would be Mac, inviting himself in just to spend some time talking with me and Janie and unloading whatever was on his mind.

He lived hard, and he had fun, but if he told you he would do something – write it down. It was a sure bet, especially if you were his friend.

“You should write a book about some of this stuff,” Mac told me often through those first nine seasons he coached the Lady Bulldogs, when we would be witness to some strange happenings on or off the floor. Believe me, there have been some strange happenings.

One of the wildest occurrences happened after the last play of the last game of a season, during that stretch when the KHSAA made the failed attempt of sitting teams in the end zone rather that on the sidelines.

I had been sitting on the floor, close to Mac’s seat, making photos in the district tournament that year at another site, when a last second shot missed its mark and landed right in the outstretched hands of McFarland as the horn sounded an end to Clinton County’s season with a loss.

Unhappy with the way the game had been called, and with the referee just a few feet away with outstretched hands in a gesture asking for the basketball, McFarland sent it right at him with such velocity that it knocked his glasses off his face and clearly took him off his step.

With the game over and no reason to call a technical foul, Mac just smiled as the ref picked up his glasses and left the floor, with ball still rolling across the floor.

Then there was the only time (that I’m aware of, at least), that Mac was mad at me. It happened during that same failed stretch when the KHSAA thought sitting teams in the end zones was a good idea. One night, during a closer away game than any Lady Dawg fan was hoping for, I was sitting under the goal making photos, just a few feet from Mac’s end of the bench chair.

Apparently what I should have kept to myself as a thought, came out aloud when I told a ref that a call he had made “sucked” and looking down at me in my Bulldog blue shirt and that old baseball cap I use to wear that was covered in Bulldog pins – the ref proceeded to “T”
me up.

Explaining that I wasn’t actually affiliated with the school didn’t help the situation and when I glanced over at Mac, there it was. The stare. That same stare that I had seen him give players for years from the bench.

He didn’t say a word, but I could read his mind: “Turnovers, if we lose this game by one, I’m going to kill you.”

Fortunately the night ended with a Lady Bulldogs win and he never, ever made mention of it at all. Neither did I.

When he finally left coaching for good, after leading the Bulldogs to a 16th District Championship in 1992, he showed up in my office one day with a plastic bag in his hand.

In it was his favorite “dress-up game” necktie, a blue, wide tie adorned with Bulldogs. It was adorned with several beer steins as well, and I had pointed out to him several times that I couldn’t believe he was able to get away with wearing that tie in Clinton County.

“I had it dry cleaned and now it’s yours – you’re the only one who noticed the beer steins.” McFarland said as he put it in my hands.

I never did find an occasion to put that necktie on, but it hung proudly in my closest with a host of other neckties.

On another occasion at the local golf course, things went bad one afternoon during a golf match and I spent a few seconds nose to nose with another fellow playing on an opposing team.

When the situation ended – without blows from either of us – I turned to walk back to the tee and McFarland was standing right behind me – he had my back.

“You’re a better man that I am, Turnovers,” McFarland said. “I’ would have already cleaned his clock.”

I stopped by Talbott Funeral Home Monday morning to see my friend, David McFarland, one last time.

I wore a necktie. It was blue, adorned with Bulldogs. And beer steins.

I’m going to miss my friend, David “Mac” McFarland.

David McFarland talks to his players at a timeout during the 1985-86 season. McFarland, who coached the Lady Dawgs, later the Bulldogs and also baseball at Clinton County High School, passed away last week at age 74.