Eagle Pass 12 Alamo Heights 37 September 13, 2013

MULES DIRTY THE EAGLES’ NEST

Alamo Heights bumped the season record to 2-1 with a handy 37-12 victory over the Eagle Pass Eagles on a lucky Friday September 13 at Harry B. Orem Stadium.  The Mules got off to a very quick start stacking up five scores before Eagle Pass got on the board.  AH scored on all 5 of its first full possessions.  Robert Schuler took a four-yard pass from Dalton Banks early.  Then less than four minutes later, QB Scotty Uhl scampered for 30 yards and six more.  With the clock winking down the seconds in the first quarter, QB Dalton Banks took care of a 24-yard keeper and hit the end zone.  Kicker Robert Carter helped the Mules cause with a 32-yard field goal in the front half of the second quarter and then running back Byron Proctor got his first of two scores with a nine yard run.  He followed that up early in the fourth with an 11-yard touchdown.  Proctor totaled 154 yards on 14 carries to go along with his two TD’s.

Eagles’ QB Ty Chisum showed his athletic ability and challenged the Mules all night.  He gave equal time to wriggling out of the grasp of several Mules defenders and also being swallowed up by the defensive pressure.  He did however run for one touchdown and pass for another.  But credit the Mules withering defense with keeping pressure on the quarterback and not allowing the run which played a key role in tucking away the Mules’ second straight win.  The defense held Eagle Pass to eight first downs and forced seven punts.

“His Inside Voice” 

A weekly discussion with Coach Mike Norment

Mule Fan:  Alamo Heights was impressive in getting its second straight win and popped out quickly to put Eagle Pass in a hole. The defense also did a great job of pressuring and taking away the run.  What were your general thoughts about the victory?

Coach Norment:  We talked about wanting to jump on them early.  So the defense did a great job of forcing three and out and gave the offense great field position and the offense was able to turn that into points on the scoreboard.  Overall we did a great job and did exactly what we talked about.  We were able to get a big lead and so then we were able to coast and get a lot of players into the game.

Mule Fan:  Just on that point Coach, all these kids work hard during the week and hard in the off-season and you get a game like this where you can basically empty the bench.  How gratifying is that as a coach to see these kids get some snaps in a varsity game?

Coach Norment:  As a coach you really fret because all these kids have put in the time and you want all of them to be able to play.  You really do.  Unfortunately you can’t play everybody because of how competitive a lot of our games are.  So it is always great when you can put kids into the game and watch them do a great job and excel.  I was real excited to watch some of these guys actually get in and have great games.

Mule Fan:  In these first three games you’ve had a number of different circumstances, which have caused you to have to put a lot of different lineups and combinations on the field particularly offensively.  Are you comfortable enough with the combinations you’ve seen to know what you’ve got going into district?

Coach Norment:  One good thing is that it has given us some added depth having to make these combinations and get some people some playing time that probably wouldn’t have gotten this much.  So that’s the positive.  The negative is that we really haven’t played as a unit with who I think (all) the starters are.  But the added depth will come in handy.  And like I said in an earlier interview, what I like is getting put into adverse situations and seeing how we respond.  We’ve responded very well to making lineup changes and sometimes it has been the day of the game where we’ve made these changes.  The way they’re responded has been a huge positive and that tells me about the type of kids we have. If in a game something negative happens they’re going to be able to respond and come back and do a good job.

Mule Fan:  How does the routine change during the off week?

Coach Norment:  We’ll still practice but we’ll cut it back a bit.  This is also a great time for the seniors to take college visits.  We’re telling them that if they need to go this is a perfect time because we’re giving them Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off.  The practices will be shorter while we’re here.  Since we don’t yet know a lot about our next opponent we’re being really general to start working on things that we saw we needed to work on from the Eagle Pass game.  Then we’ll start getting some film and breaking it down and start working the game plan working against offenses and defenses that we’re going to see against Boerne Champion.  If they’re banged up or bruised they might be asked to come out and practice a little if this were a regular week.  But we’ll probably give the ones who are banged up a few days off to get healthy and recuperate.

Mule Fan:  The kids are off on Friday but we know the coaches will not be.  How will scouting work this week for you and the staff?

Coach Norment:  Boerne had last week off so they were at our game against Eagle Pass and we’ll be in Marble Falls this week for their game.  That’s the only game from our district this week so we’ll be there.

Mule Fan:  Technology has changed and made it easier to scout with all that is available to you now.  Does it still make a difference to go see a game live and what would you learn seeing a game live that you cannot pick up on game film?

Coach Norment:  Just the feel of the game.  On film you can’t tell if a player gets hurt.  If there is an injury, is it serious or will the player be back the next week? You get a feel for how the team is responding because you can see the sidelines.  Maybe you can pick up something on the sideline that you might not pick up on film.  I still think it is important.  We send our junior high coaches out.  They always scout the team that we’re going to play throughout the year.  They do a great job of getting us the information even though we get the film.  They give us great insight that we can’t always get from film.  And we get film on every team we play in our district.  When we play (Buda) Hays we’ll get nine films.  There is always something you can learn by going and watching though.

Mule Fan:  So describe what will happen this Friday.  How many will you take to see Boerne?  How do you divide assignments?

Coach Norment:  We’ll take quite a few.  For example defense will watch their offense but we’ll help each other out.  If Boerne has the ball then our offensive coaches help the defensive coaches by calling out the different routes they run while they are watching the play develop in general.  More eyes are better.  We’ll get a sense of the size of their players too, which is harder on film.

Mule Fan:  As we record this you have not yet seen Boerne on film.  This is a rivalry game and they have not been here in a while.  They have a new head coach and are 2-0.  Generally speaking what are your views on what they have done and might do differently under a new coach? 

Coach Norment:  Keith Kaiser is the new head coach. He actually coached here in 2001.  I know him very well. He is a great coach and the Boerne players are going to be well coached.  They always have been.  As you said it is a rivalry game and we’ll both be up for each other.  We’ll know more specifics soon but they’ll come here wanting to beat us especially because we did a pretty good job on them last year on their Homecoming game.  I’m sure the revenge factor will be talked about.  And of course having a new coach coming in and trying to build a program it helps to beat your big rival and coach Kaiser knows the rivalry because as I said he was here.  So I expect a really good game.

AH Football Film Night Completes You

The Mule Fan editorial staff will occasionally jump upon the soapbox.  We must climb up to express our opinion and/or seek input about a little privilege we call “AH Football Film Night” held weekly on Monday nights at 7:00pm in the Oaks building on the AHHS campus.  For the uninitiated, this is not a scholarly film review session of the classics.  It is a weekly gathering (or rather it is supposed to be) of player parents, friends and any AH fan to sit down with Coach Mike Norment and get a down-by-down review of each play of the previous Friday night game with his narrative of why things happened the way they did.  It is really fun and you learn a ton!  So far, not many takers.  This is a change from when your humble scribe last foamed at the mouth about varsity football. 

These little sessions used to take place in the visitors locker room with Coach Byrd and were very well attended (not hundreds but enough to make it worth everyone’s time).  We’d put out folding chairs and sit for an hour and get a review of the game from inside the head of the head coach.  Well now the players all have this app called HUDL.  So one who has access to HUDL can have another look even before Monday. That has possibly dented attendance.  Or maybe the ironing is muscling its way into our Monday night agendas.  Monday Night Football is not really a valid excuse.  But it is tough to expect Coach Norment to want to give up time with his family to show film to eight guys every week.  He’s already seen the footage. 

In December of 1980, NBC tried an experiment and aired a game between the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins without announcers of any kind; just video and crowd noise.  Obviously it didn’t catch on.  It is really good to have the play-by-play and the analysis.  Having the coach there to teach us about what is going on is really a neat deal.  And by the way, watching in the classroom in the Oaks building (just west of the natatorium) is to the visitor’s locker room what first class is to coach. Let’s get some turnout and keep it going. 

For this coming session only, film night will be on Tuesday, October 1 at 7pm.  Then it returns to the regularly scheduled time slot of Mondays at 7pm.  Obviously no film night during the week of 23 September.

Eating for the Mules at Order Up and EZ’s

You have to eat so why not help the Mules while you do? Two community restaurants have stepped up to support Mules Dine Out Days and there are a few dates remaining in this generous program.   Mules Football earns cash on meals ordered at Order Up in Lincoln Heights and EZ’s at Sunset Ridge.  Go by Order Up specifically on September 24^th (all day) and EZ’s on September 19^th and 26^th (from 5pm-closing).  Write AHHS Football on the back of the receipt and put the receipt in the fundraiser box next to the bulletin board.  We are told that AH Football collects 15-20% of sales that are "dropped in the bucket."

Cliché Corner – Cuz learnin’ is gud!

Impress your friends; baffle your enemies with all this nawlidge.

Choose the football cliché.

A. “The white zone is for the loading and unloading of passengers”

B.  “We had them schemed right”

Answer:  B. To have selected the right game plan for the opponent

A     Mule Fan Staff Airs Dirty Laundry Regarding Off Week

Tug of War with Management to Blame

The suits and board of directors who sit atop this once-heralded publication are at it again.  Understand that your reporter has been through quite a slog with these dopes.  We thought we’d straightened out everything but apparently there are a few loose ends.  Without involving our Mule Fan readers too deeply in the controversy we feel an obligation to give at least a topical view. 

As you know, each season the Mules have an off week and we are there now.  For as long as we can remember our reporting staff has been locked in debate with management about our writing obligations during this time.  Do the readers want the last game recap and coach’s views as soon as possible or do we wait and let the coaches get a more thorough scouting report on the opening district opponent and see pictures about how they spent their “time off?”  Will memories of details from the last game fade and fans really want to move on?  All difficult questions to answer to be sure and the cause of many sleepless nights buy your Mule Fan editor.

But here is how the bozos in our carpeted offices see it.   They demanded that one week’s content is all football and the following week leading up to district, feature our boys lounging at home with their “wives and kids!”  Seriously.  That’s just how disconnected they are from what happens in the field.  We only have a handful of players who are married and they’re already empty nesters.

This publication is a labor of love.  We write in horrid conditions such as candle-lit rooms with no windows with walls covered with soot, slime, coal dust and under a stable-like noxious stench that can makes one’s eyes bleed.  And that is just when we are writing at home!  We will spare you readers the blistering description of our Mule Fan offices and what management considers “palatial digs.”  We continue to wait for the people that rake in the change for our toiling to just say a simple thank you or at least give us a free library card.

So in compromise, we will certainly use our best judgment to time content to your needs and desires during this two-week break between games.  And since our contract requires that we manufacture a certain number of words, we have elected to reprise a feature written before many of you were born back in 2008 about the inimitable Rick Shaw, the Mules public address announcer for 1,036 dog years, Alamo Heights Pool proprietor and former King of the Sunset Ridge La Fonda Beandom. Management fought us on this saying all content had to be original.  Our insistence was that most of you readers weren’t aware of a Mule Fan in those days or cared so it would be “new”.  And that many more of you in those days spent Friday nights at Chuck E. Cheese or blowing up balloon animals with Daisy B.  We lost that argument.  They said it could not be the same.  We caved and yours truly went through and found two typos that were corrected and here we are with a story that is NOT THE SAME (hee hee).

Shaw Ready to Belt Out Another Season of Public Address Calls Amid Controversy 

By Bob Cohen  

(Originally published in the Mule Fan in September 2008)

Radio and TV sportscasters who stay in the business a while will inevitably develop a signature phrase to describe something on the field or court. It’s their trademark. “Holy Cow,” “HOOOLLLLEEE TOOOOLEEDO,” “Oh Doctor,” “He breezed him one more time,” “Turn out the lights, the party’s over,” “That ball is history,” and many others which get burned into our memory.

Public address announcers also chip in a few of their own from time to time. And so it is with Rick Shaw, the long time PA voice of the Alamo Heights Mules. How many Mules is it when a “host of Mules” join in on a tackle? We all know it’s somewhere between two and 11 but that doesn’t matter so much. It’s just good to know Rick’s up there in the press box and it’s a fall evening at Harry Orem Stadium. It’s all good.

But there is one particular piece of announcing which is just this side of crucial to a home Alamo Heights football crowd. It is to a home Alamo Heights football game what free refills are to iced tea, what wax teeth are to Halloween, what the curl is to a Dairy Queen cone. When the chains move for the Mules, what must follow next is Shaw’s trademark. Do I even have to write it? “THAT’S ENOUGH FOR ANOTHER ALAMO HEIGHTS (then the required pause timed precisely long enough for dozens of Mule fans to fill their lungs and complete the statement)….. FIRST DOWN!” Ahhh, just writing it makes me happy. Simple, comforting, reassuring and OURS.

Did he plan it? Nope. The best ones are never planned. They appear like a freckle. Soon they are part of you. The origin is much more ordinary. Shaw, the ’09 restaurateur, AH Pool Czar and one-time sword-toting, plumed-hat wearing emperor of the city for 10 days, is a take charge guy whose voice can rattle windows without a microphone. And in the early days of his proprietorship of La Fonda, it was only every 10 minutes that the kitchen and wait staff heard, “That’s another…ENCHILADA PLATE.”

“We were all this close (holding thumb and forefinger two centimeters from one another) to walking if it went on much longer,” said one employee who wished to remain anonymous. “I’m not joking. It was too much. We’d alternate placing prank calls to Rick just to occupy him on the phone and give us relief. The call from Alamo Heights couldn’t have come a moment too soon.”

As beloved as it is by the majority of Mule fans, talking up first down has not been without its controversies or detractors. As recently as last season, an increasingly vocal group which calls itself “Friends of Second Down” has started to make things a little uncomfortable for Mr. Shaw.

“It takes no chops at all to be a fan of first down. The risk factor is nada,” commented Eddie Huddles, the group’s spokesperson. “With first down, you’ve got four downs to work with and virtually the entire playbook available to you. Third down? Come on, we all know that in this day and age, the last thing quarterbacks and receivers need is their own down but they got one ‘cause they said they needed it.”

What about fourth down? On this subject one could conclude that Mr. Huddles is borderline mean-spirited. “You gonna try and argue fourth down is the most important down? The only people that care about it are punters, deep snappers, return men, their parents and grandparents, people who don’t punctuate text messages and the scoreboard operator who likes to punch the reset button. We don’t like to talk about this too much but we have some sketchy dudes in our organization who have considered setting fire to a stadium all because of fourth down. All the upside is in second down and its high time people came to grips with this.”

“These people are a nuisance,” commented an agitated Shaw, having to be calmed by John Thomas, his trusty spotter of many years. “They’re loonies. It’s as simple as that. I’m hesitant to even talk about them because I don’t want to give them credibility. When they come into La Fonda, the only thing they ever order is hot water. I spent 10 minutes one night trying to convince one that there was no such thing as a coffee cup for people who are left handed! And they always ask if we have square tortillas. They got in Alamo Heights pool once last summer and, well I’m not gonna say what they did but we had to drain the dang pool after it.”

While First Down is clearly something the home fans favor, it occurred to this reporter that the topic might be sensitive to one other group not normally considered irrational or anything approaching the more vocal malcontents. That group is the Defense and parents thereof. Nobody was really comfortable speaking on the record at first but I found one person who insisted on anonymity and couldn’t resist revealing a crackling cauldron of emotions bubbling under the surface.

“Well if you want to know the truth, it’s hard.” said our source. “We suffer in silence. Lookit, I don’t want to take anything away from the offense but our boys work their tails off too. Why should they be made to feel guilty to take the field?”

“Wasn’t Rick a quarterback in his playing days?” the person asked rhetorically. “And his brother Stan was a receiver at Heights wasn’t he? I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist but if you ask me it smells fishy. Why is he so quick to rub it in – every stinkin’ time?”

So sit back fans and know that there is a whole lot more to this PA gig than just down and distance and who made the tackle. Years of being perched high above Harry Orem Stadium have helped Shaw hone his craft. The atmosphere of a Mules home game wouldn’t be the same without him. You can tell he loves it too.

“Shoot I’d do this for free,” proclaimed Shaw when asked how he keeps it up year after year with all his other responsibilities. When reminded that he does do it for free, Shaw simply smiled and said, “It’s all for the blue and gold, long may it wave.”

All Alamo Heights fans appreciate it and hopefully that’s quite enough for a bunch more Alamo Heights first downs!

Mules Open District at Home in Rivalry Game with Boerne Champion

It has been several years since Boerne fans showed their mugs around here.  It was the night of the official celebration of the AH Centennial Year in early October 2009 and one of the biggest crowds in Harry B. Orem Stadium history which witnessed an impressive Mules hammering of Boerne Champion 58-14.  We are expecting another big crowd so arrive early for a 7:30 kickoff on September 27^th.  Those folks from Boerne tend to take a lot of our parking spaces around the neighborhood.  While we are happy to host as many as want to come (after all, we are capitalists), we think they ought to have to walk further than we do-just sayin'.  This ain’t no convenience store or one of them strip malls.

As of this writing, Boerne prepares for a game on Friday the 20^th against Marble Falls and goes into that game with a 2-0 record after wins over New Braunfels and Dripping Springs.  We’ll write some pregame words about Champion in the “Extra” edition next week.

WARNING:  “Ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for District.”