For the first one, hundreds of cars overwhelmed every one of the athletic field parking lots, and spilled into nearby streets.
For the first one, fannies began shoving into the bleachers more than an hour before kickoff, and just minutes after the last bolt had been secured to hold the brand-new, 1,000-seat donated aluminum stands in place.
For the first one, Athletic Director Jack Trager had a horde of student workers ready to park cars, to sell $3 tickets and even to peddle the orange- and-black Greenville Panther seat cushions.
For the first home football game in the 95-year history of Greenville College, nearly 1,400 students, townsfolk and neighbors showed up on a Monday afternoon to cheer the dawning of an era.
They liked what they saw.
”Having football`s a blast for everybody,” said sophomore Hyosil Park, one of a dozen Panther cheerleaders who lead real cheers and also is a part-time student aide to coach Max Bowman. ”It`s really fun and it gives us something to look forward to.”
Greenville, a tiny but tradition-steeped school just off Int. Hwy. 70, about 50 miles east of St. Louis, had existed quite nicely without football since the Free Methodist Church took over Almira College, an all-women`s school in 1892, turned it coed and made it a liberal arts college with strong religious and academic leanings.
But the school`s declining enrollment in recent years, coupled with cutbacks in federal and state student-aid funds, threatened the proud college`s future and sent Greenville President W. Richard Stephens off in pursuit of ways to bring in more students and their tuition dollars. Stephens had watched 80 students involuntarily leave the campus when federal dollars dried up. Only about 600 remained at a school that costs at least $8,000 a year to attend.
Trager`s suggestion: Play football.
”After a lot of thought and a lot of prayer, this seemed to me to be something we could step out and do to help the programs we have,” said Stephens. ”The result is we couldn`t have written the script any more perfectly.”
So Greenville, which retains a strong Christian commitment even though it is no longer affiliated with any church, hired Bowman, who had been passed over for the head job after once serving as the No. 1 assistant at Division I Texas-El Paso.
The school gave the soft-spoken Bowman a tiny office in the administration building. There, he can watch opponents` game films on the VCR and can keep up with the on- and off-field progress of potential Panther recruits. He has no athletic scholarships to offer entice recruits to enroll in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics school.
”We know a lot of people in the coaching business, and all he heard was
`You`re going to do what?` ” Bowman`s wife, Beverly, said. ”It didn`t exactly seem like the usual career move.”
Nevertheless, Bowman, who arrived in town more than a year before the first kickoff, immediately set off in search of, first, a football, and then a coaching staff, players and facilities to mold a college football team.
He borrowed a couple of footballs from the local high school, then began to look for players who knew what to do with them. He found a handful players on campus and 85 more from around the country.
Bowman hired seven assistants, including one-time Division I assistant Joe Palmisano as his top aide. He moved in on what had been a foreclosed motorcycle dealership just down the road from the college`s outdoor sports`
fields, got a good deal from a local bank, then watched a school trustee buy the building and donate it to the school. There, the athletes and members of the community now have one of the state`s finest weight-training facilities and, when building refurbishing is finished, will have a fitness center complete with aerobics room, saunas and locker rooms.
He found a first-class scoreboard, got the bleachers donated and found a contractor to build a pressbox, where Greenville`s lone radio station sends the game over the airwaves and where the public-address announcer has already slapped nicknames on running backs Robert ”Ice Cube” Haynes and Corey
”Little Refrigerator” Hughes.
”We`ve put peoples` minds to rest that these players can fit into a small setting and they can fit into the academic atmosphere of Greenville College,” said Bowman, who brought in 16 players from Texas and a handful from New York, Pennsylvania and California.
”We figured if we could get 50 players to enroll the first year and 80 in three years, we were doing a heck of a job,” said Trager. ”Max did us one better with 85 the first year. Our objective of helping sagging enrollment was met even quicker than anticipated. I can`t say this hasn`t changed the school because it has. But it`s a positive thing, I think it`s changed us all positively.”
Trager put together the initial 9-game schedule, which will end with a homecoming date Nov. 7 against Eureka. That schedule originally called for the Panthers to play a full slate opposite junior-varsity competition.
Bowman, however, said no. Five Panther games now are slated against varsity opposition. Greenville rode Hughes` two touchdown runs to a 23-12 victory over Quincy Oct. 3 in its varsity debut. The Panthers are 4-0.
”When I mentioned a varsity schedule at first, all I heard was `You`re kidding.` Now all they think about is varsity competition,” said Bowman, who wants nothing less than for the Panthers to one day climb to a competitive level similar to four-time NCAA Division III champion Augustana.
”I`ve sensed a whole difference in the players` overall attitude. I can sense a confidence in each other as well as as a team.”
Greg Eells thought his playing days were over three years ago when he enrolled at Greenville after playing high school ball at Salem, Ill. But, when Bowman put out the call for help, Eells was one of about 20 Greenville students to answer.
”I figured Greenville wouldn`t have a team as good as my high school team,” said Eells, a junior. ”I never could have imagined anything this good. I never thought we`d even get facilities like this, let alone a team like this.”
Eells is one of a half-dozen of the original 20 Greenville volunteers who survived Bowman`s three-day-a-week 6 a.m. weightlifting workouts and the gruelling practice schedule.
The rest of the roster is composed primarily of recruited freshmen, including running back Keith Clayborn, who had once been on Nebraska`s shopping lift. But it also includes a handful of upperclassmen, including defensive lineman Don Brooks, a two-year starter at UTEP who followed Bowman out of Texas.
When Brooks left the streets of Houston, his football skills were refined. His life, however, was a mess.
”Coach Bowman helped me straighten out my life, I really respect him,”
said Brooks, who serves with Eells as a Panther team captain. ”I called Coach when I heard he got the job and asked if I could come up there with him. He said, `Sure.` I don`t think he`s ever understood why I wanted to play for him. ”I didn`t feel like the coaches at UTEP understood. Football`s just part of life. I have more fun, more friends here than I did at UTEP. Last year was a pretty good year, but that success isn`t really serious. At Greenville, I feel success all around.”
”Max happens to think that football is not the end all of life, but a beautiful talent where a young man can use his gift for the glory of God, the benefit of man and the strength of his own life,” said Stephens.
”The players have fit in and inspired this place,” Stephens added. ”I walked down on the field. I saw people who had never been on this campus. People with no one on the team, but who were so excited about the new thrust and the total college program. It was a beautiful thing, a marvelous thing for people to gather in a small, rural, depressed area of the state. To see people enjoying themselves is the fruit of a very successful venture.”
Bowman, once a successful junior-college coach, seems more than pleased to be out of glare of the Division I spotlight.
”Other things are just as important as the big-time environment, they`re called classes and school,” he said. ”I did have a fear: If I came to a level like this, can I make the adjustment? But you`re still dealing with kids, with athletes just like on the Division I level. They may be a step slower, or a little smaller, yet their attitude, their willingness to work, watching them mature is very similar.
”I can tell you the excitement I had in the first game was as much as any I`ve ever had. I`m glad that aspect doesn`t seem to change no matter what level you`re at.”
