3 hours ago
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Coach Purcell passes on.
My old wrestling coach at Zane Jr. High Times-Standard Online -. Coach Purcell was a great teacher and seemed to love his job. I remember a time he wanted me to demonstrate some wrestling techniques to the "scrubs" or seventh graders when I was in 9th grade. I weighed 67 lbs when I was in Junior High, so I was small but quick. (I graduated High school right about 100 lbs.) He brought onto the mat a seventh grader named Andy Lowenthal for me to wrestle. Andy tore me up big time! Here I was the older mentor and was laid out on the canvus wrestling for my life. Needless to say I was embarrased. But it was kinda funny.
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4 comments:
The last time i saw you rich, one of your butt cheecks weighed a hundred pounds.
Yes me too,
He talked me into tring out for the 9th grade wrestling team.And I made it only to get my ass beat bad by Sandy Richie of Jacobs and Ken Norton of Winship.
Coach we celebrate your life and memories.
Thank You
Rick
I wrestled for Coach Purcell for three years and he was also my gym teacher at Zane. He was the only gym teacher that had enough confidence in my physical abilities and leadership skills to make me a team captain in gym class. The other coaches never gave me a fair shake because I was the smallest kid in the class, even though I was a good athlete.
Coach Purcell was a kind and gentle man with a good heart, and he will be missed.
Andy was stout, crazy, and very strong. He used to love to fight and was tough as nails, so I am not surprised he could whip you even though he was a little younger.
I know you were small in school Richard, but you couldn't have been smaller than me, and I wrestled for Coach Purcell at 94 pounds in 9th grade. I graduated high school at 135 pounds.
I know you were more than 100 pounds when you were slinging thosed 65 MPH fastballs for our 20-30 Joe DiMaggio team when I was 18 and you were 17.
Stu: Very few people were in my weight class at Zane. Ken Biasca was one, we were neighbors. I watched you wrestle in 9th grade, and I wouldn't have wanted to wrestle you. I wish I was that big in HS (135)! I have pictures of Robin and I and I can assure you, I weighed next to nothing. I was in my 20's before I gained any good weight. Tony Mills and I were nearly the same size when we played on 20/30.
I used to joke that I was always hassled about being too small and skinny by people for years. Then for a few years in my 20's I heard nothing. Then all of the sudden people were saying, "you sure are fat!" In between I never heard anyone say, "You sure look good, Richard." Oh, well.
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