McCollum's Column: A wealth of experiences for Speer in 7 years at CCS
In seven years as football coach and athletic director at Conway Christian, Chuck Speer has had a lifetime of experiences.
* He started a football program literally from the grassroots up.
* His teams won a state eighth-man championship.
* He and many volunteers helped transform bumpy and uneven pasture land by the school into a workable fooball practice area.
* He helped supervise construction of a gymnasium, a baseball field and a football stadium. Along with supervising, he applied many hours with a shovel, string-trimmer and a wheelbarrow in clearing hardscrabble, scrub brush land.
* Under his watch, the school added several sports and he hired coaches for each.
* He shepherded a successful, relatively seamless and amazingly quick transition from a loosely bound Arkansas Christian schools conference to the more complicated and regulated Arkansas Activities Association and had his football teams make the state playoffs each of three years in AAA.
* He initiated “tailgate night,” one of the most successful promotions of any high school team in the area.
* He inspired his teams to compete and compete hard as the smallest football-playing school in the AAA.
* He realized a young athletic director’s dream last season as the CCS girls won a state 2A championship, defeating a county rival with a more longstanding tradition (St. Joseph) in the title game. He then endured a situation many athletic directors face with successful coaches: Ashley Nance left for Conway High and Speer had to quickly find a capable replacement in highly recommended Jeremy Carson.
* As a fledgling member of the AAA, Speer and CCS officials walked right into the middle of a building and volatile private vs. public schools controversy concerning classification and eligibility rules.
* Speer even endured and navigated nicely through a minefield during a controversy involving a volunteer baseball coach and re-certification that resulted in a called special meeting of the Arkansas Activities Association’s board of directors.
Along the way, he spent 92 hours and 42 minutes on a Toad Suck Daze weekend attached to a truck in winning the Stuck on a Truck contest.
Whew.
There may not be a whole lot at Corning High School he hasn’t seen or heard about.
“To think of all that has happened in seven years is unbelievable,” Speer said. “I remember when I first came here and interviewed for the job, they showed me a slab of concrete that was going to be a gymnasium but they didn’t have the money right then. I looked out on that pasture that would be where we would built a baseball field and the site by a creek where we would have a football stadium when we got the money. To go through all those experiences, it’s really been wild.”
I’ve always believed two of Speer’s greatest strengths have been perserverance and creativity. When his program was in the formative stages, he used warehouse pallets with cinder blocks attached to a rope as a sled for drills. Old crates were used for jumping drills. The goal posts were made of PVC pipe attached to concrete-filled tires.
He had a real vision of what things could be and he worked tirelessly and showed amazing patience in building that dream.
He also has a nice way of connecting and motivating the modern student and athlete, convincing them to do more with less was not that big of a deal. He influenced many a student, not just an athlete, in doing things the right way.
As a young coach, he benefitted from the counsel of coaching veterans of both college and high school, Mike Isom, John Flaherty and Helm Cooper.
“It was neat to put those guys in a room and just to soak it in,” Speer said. “They had some stories. There wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen.” Now, Speer is leaving the baby he has watched grow up. To rebuild the football program at Corning was an opportunity and new challenge he didn’t think he could pass up.
“It’ll always be a part of me, even in another community,” Speer said. “I’ll be keeping up with what happens.”
And in his new surroundings, he’ll have some pretty good stories to tell himself.
(Sports columnist David McCollum can be reached at 501-505-1235 or david.mccollum@thecabin.net)
