Looking back at my 49year career in the newspaper industry, it was not my goal when I entered high school.
I wanted to play sports. I was an average high school basketb all player at best, a selftaught barefooted soccer style kicker, and a cross-country runner (slow-paced).
In basketball, I was a shooter — not a scorer — and slow afoot. I was also eat up with the white man’s disease of no jumping ability whatsoever. My coaches could barely slide a sheet of notebook paper under my shoes.
Later in life, I helped coach for three years at the collegiate level while studying at then South Georgia College and Auburn University-Montgomery.
After watching Tony Franklin kick when he was at Texas A&M in the late 1970s, I thought it was cool kicking barefooted. My blazing 6.1-second speed in the 40-yard dash wasn’t needed at any of the offensive skill positions nor in the defensive secondary.
So, I started practicing kicking and my max distance improved from about 30-yards as straighton kicker with a square toe shoe to 50-plus yards sidewinding (no soccer in my background) my kicks with only a sock for protection.
Unfortunately, I didn’t know you couldn’t kick barefooted in Georgia. I couldn’t win for losing.
I used to run to my junior school from my grandparents house. It was not uphill in the rain and mud nor in the snow. It was not because I had to do, the bus came right by the house. It was something I enjoyed doing and, it was relaxing.
Our cross-country team was made up of basketball players who didn’t play football. We were not great or gifted, but we enjoyed being in the gym hooping. We had five-mile runs every day at 2 p.m. - my average time was about 7:30 a mile.
Baseball is what I watched on TV every Saturday on NBC because we did not field a team in high school. I only got to watch it if the weather was good as well as the reception from the 25-foot antenna next to the chimney stack.
We got CBS, NBC and PBS. ABC rarely came in with a good reception.
I later became an umpire with the pinnacle of my career being picked to call in the third round of the state tournament.
Perhaps the second greatest moment was calling behind the plate in the region championship game between Glynn Academy and Brunswick. There was a guy starting that afternoon who would later pitch in the big leagues — Adam Wainwright.
Take all of that experience of someone wanting to be on a team and falling short and you see how I became a sportswriter with the encouragement of my high school coaches.
They were brutally honest about my skill set in each sport. I was not going to be a “bonus baby” in any sports draft.
They told me I could make a living writing about sporting events if I worked at it. Just before my graduation date, all the work I had put in with The Blackshear Times and Waycross Journal-Herald paid off with a scholarship to Georgia Southern working in the Sports Information Department and at the Statesboro Herald.
As I close in on my 50year anniversary of getting started as a sportswriter, my life has come full circle. My wife, Sandy, and I own both 100-plus year old publications where we discovered our footing in the business.
Our first endeavor as owners was here at The Brantley Beacon.
Anything is possible if your honest and work hard.
• Rick Head is the Publisher and Editor of The Brantley Beacon and the Waycross Journal- Herald. He can be reached at beacon@btconline. net
