Remembering Longtime Pulaski Football Coach Joel Hicks

DUBLIN – Gather an assembly of old football dudes and chances are a good portion are no longer graceful of step. The older they are the more notable it is, the limps, shuffles, not quite straight postures, the still broad but stooped on one side shoulders.

The hits add up on the gridiron no matter how long ago was the crunch of pad on lightly-armored thigh.

There was a lot of far from smooth footwork from one such immense group of former players that met one recent cold and windy spring day at Pulaski County High’s Dobson Stadium. Football guys and other admirers came from all over the place to participate in the funeral and cheer the life of Coach Joel Hicks, who passed away at the age of 81 on March 4, 2023.

The start of services mirrored the traditional Cougars ceremonial game night entry to the stadium. In the old days the squad was led by its coaches, Hicks in the lead wearing his signature tight-fitting coaching shorts, well-wishers forming a corridor to the goal post waiting at the foot of the stairs to greet the team.

When that scene was repeated the day they said goodbye to the coach, those present there all knew the routine by heart whether they’d walked it or cheered it.

The descending procession followed son T.J. Hicks and Joel Hicks’ coaching protégé Jack Turner together bearing the urn of ashes own the long concrete staircase from the field house to the natural turf playing surface. The first group that followed were those who played for Hicks at one of his three High School coaching stops who later were his assistant coaches.

Then came the cadres of former players, in order Big Creek and Woodrow Wilson from West Virginia, and lastly the throng of former Cougars.

The 2023 Pulaski County squad, game jersies on, and their coach Cam Akers formed the corridor at the foot of the steps.

Once on the field each of the groups gathered in a vast semi-circle many individuals deep behind the Hicks family, daughter Amy, Mrs. Hicks and others, seated under a tent partially shielded from the bright afternoon sun but not so much from the gusting and chill breeze.

“If you think this is cold,” said Tim Hurst, one of the many who took the microphone to address the crowd with recollections and reflections on the life of the greatest Cougar of them all, “then you must not have been in Fairfax County that day for the State Semifinals.”

Said event was when Pulaski County was playing with the big boys of Group AAA Division 6 in 1992. The neutral field opponent was Robinson and it was likely the most Siberian cold and windy day for football anybody there had ever been witness to or competed in. The Cougars won when freshman Shayne Graham kicked a late field goal to seal it.

The Cougars beat Thomas Dale the next week 35-20 for the title, the only one Pulaski County has ever won, and played about as perfect a game as you can play. When was the last time you saw a high school squad contest an entire ballgame with not one solitary penalty? Any squad, for that matter.

You never saw Hicks any more busting at the seams overjoyed than he was that day. Or as wrenchingly heartbroken as the night at Victory Stadium when he lost Cougars lineman Lee Cook, who died during a seemingly routine play.

Both of those events, the highest of highs and the very depths of despairing lows for the coach, were recounted, celebrated, and mourned from the podium at the his funeral.

Turner, star player for Hicks, then his coaching protégé, then a former Cougars boss himself, and now coaching at Ferrum , was an organizer of the services. He spoke in cracking voice. Turner told the crowd – and it was a remarkable gallery at that, filling a large sweep of seats on the pressbox side of the stadium – that Hicks was his de facto father after Turner’s own parent died at a young age.

Turner said he didn’t know if it constituted an NCAA violation or not but when Hicks came to see him, a destitute college boy playing for Ferrum, he always left Turner more flush than he had been with cash grants straight from the coach’s pocket.

Larry Meador was the minister for the service, assisted by Scotty Scott, the public address voice of the Cougars, who introduced the speakers. Scott recalled a stint teaching special education at the high school when he was charged with organizing a squad of Cougars for Special Olympics.

Hicks, hard as flint but as described by Scott beyond soft-hearted, every year would assume responsibility to help with training these Olympians. Then the coach went to cheer the competition and the awards ceremony afterwards.

Randy Dunnigan was one of the former players who talked about the pains Hicks took doing advance work persuading college scouts to take a look at one or another of his prospects. Dunnigan got a scholarship out of it from West Virginia University, also Hicks’ school.

Tim Hurst when it was his turn to speak said simply “Coach Hicks put our community on the map.”

The whole service, close to two hours, all those old football players stood respectfully on what surely had been aching feet. The only one who sat was in a wheelchair. More coaches – who knows how many? – were in the grandstand. Don Holter from Salem was one of them. Willis White, the Spartans former Coach and Hicks’ contemporary and perhaps chief rival, was said to have come to the funeral home.

Another former player, Jose Rodriguez, who was Hicks’ quarterback at Woodrow Wilson, stood at the mike dressed elegantly in suit, tie, overcoat, wet cheeks to tell the crowd what Hicks had meant to him. Among other contributions to his future, Hicks helped Rodriguez land a spot on Davidson’s roster.

The quarterback recalled what a ferocious competitor Hicks was in one-on-one basketball games with his players, anybody, all comers. To summarize the quarterback’s analysis of the coach’s roundball game in one word “physical” ought to do.

Rodriguez recalled returning to the high school after coming home on break from Davidson to Beckley to see Hicks. The coach greeted him, they chatted, and the coach mentioned the high school had a right smart new cross country course and would the college football player care to take a spin with him on it?

The college athlete, feeling pretty good about his conditioning at that stage, said sure, let’s go. The two of them stayed together as they ran – Hicks did not jog - and from time to time the coach would turn to him and say “How you doing?” The reply “Great!” was snappy at first but less convincing with each subsequent recital.

Hicks was pulling away when he turned to ask about his running partner one last time. The young man from college could barely speak at that point. Hicks was moving out of sight on the hop when he hollered back, “Don’t worry, we’re not halfway there yet.”