Of football and flamenco

A coach's kids flee sports for the wussy arts.

By Kerry Madden-Lunsford

Apr 14, 2000 | I know stadiums well. Being the daughter of a football coach (Joe Madden, not John Madden), I grew up in stadiums. On our family vacations to see my grandparents in Leavenworth, Kan., my father would seek out stadiums along the Corn Belt. "Hey folks," he'd bark, "that's where the St. Louis Cardinals play!" or "Get your nose out of that book and look alive! This is the home of the Kansas City Chiefs!" We'd clamber out of the car and stand in empty stadium parking lots in the sweltering June sun, squinting at some football monolith.

The only landmark I can recall, other than stadiums, is the St. Louis Arch, but we only saw that from Interstate 70. What was the point of stopping when we could see the arch perfectly from the back seat of our Nash Rambler or Buick?

"Wake up and see the arch!" my mother would yell from the front seat, where she was making peanut butter or Underwood deviled ham sandwiches on her knees. "Who wants mayonnaise? Who doesn't want grape jelly? Don't put your feet on the ice chest! Give Clancy a sandwich!" Clancy was our sad-eyed black Lab, who drooled great pools of saliva on our bare legs during those endless trips across the Midwest.

In August, football season began in earnest, although it started for my father in July with two-a-day, which meant football practice twice a day. My brothers attended football camps beginning in elementary school. Often, there were three games a weekend. My younger brother, Duffy, played on Friday nights. My father's games were on Saturday afternoon, and my youngest brother, Casey, often played on Sunday afternoons. When my sister, Keely, was old enough, she began to cheer at Casey's games. I was never a cheerleader though I did attend all the games, often with a novel in hand.

My brother Duffy was a jock who loved girls, and most loved him right back. He could talk about all the girls he'd liked from age 3 up, starting with Bethie McCall -- they held hands and ate grapes. In first grade, he sliced open his chin on the Iowa ice chasing honey-haired Sheila Walsh. In second grade, he gave Anne Westgate a half-empty bottle of our mother's perfume. He loved Anne O'Connell, Ann Malone, Becky Morrison, Toni Brungo (he broke up with Toni over the phone before the Super Bowl), Franny Vancheri (he liked Frannie's older sister, Ellie, too), Patrice Sommers, Erin Doherty. (Erin wrecked his Duster, but he never told and took the blame.)

He liked the prettiest girls in my class too, but I was two years ahead of him, so mostly they were off-limits, which was a huge relief. Still, sometimes girls in my grade would whisper, "Your brother is soooo cute! He can stay and play!" Whenever this happened, he would flash an innocent grin at me, sensing my vitriolic rage at the thought of him hanging around.

Before my brothers were old enough to play football in a league, we would get to my father's games very early on Saturday and start tailgating. Tailgating in stadium parking lots meant eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with other coaches' kids and our mothers, "the coacheswives."

My sister grew up thinking "coacheswives" was one word. The coacheswives always had Bloody Marys with limes and fancy swizzle sticks in plastic cups. I loved watching them in their white or black go-go boots, red and gold or purple and white miniskirts, depending on the football team's colors, high high hair, perfectly red lipstick and thick eyelashes. There was always lots of laughter. The game hadn't started, so the pressure wasn't on, and they were finally with adults again after being stuck inside with small children all week.

We moved all the time in search of "the opportunity to win." I was born in Daytona Beach, Fla., where my father coached high school teams. He got a job at Mississippi State as a graduate assistant, and my mother remembers pushing me down the blistering streets of Starkville and a woman peering into my carriage murmuring, "My, she looks as happy as a dead pig in the sunshine." Mother also remembers the flea epidemic in the university housing and how folks would leap out of the apartments, slapping their arms and legs.

Next, we moved to Moorhead, Ky., and then on to Wake Forest for Brian Piccolo's senior year, although my father didn't coach him. Still, it was information I was able to use to earn the momentary respect of new friends in new football towns -- "Yeah, my father knew Brian Piccolo," especially during the heyday of "Brian's Song."

We stayed at Wake Forest for four years, and when I was 6, we moved to Ames, Iowa, where my father was hired as the defensive secondary coach (to coach John Majors) for the Iowa State Cyclones. He coached with Majors off and on for the next 11 years, and gradually I learned that Majors was "John" in the North and "Johnny" in the South.

In Ames, we lived in the Holiday Inn for a month -- three kids and our pregnant mother, who cooked beanie-wienies on a skillet in the motel room. I can recall her trying to scrub the skillet under the tiny motel faucet. I don't remember my father ever being there, except once in a while when he would blow in late at night from the football office. I do remember Duffy playing Tarzan in the motel room by lobbing a belt over the shower curtain rod only to have it come crashing down on him. He needed 10 stitches and my mother needed an extended vacation.

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