Honoring a Virginia legend

As far as George Welsh was concerned, the practice field was hallowed ground, and you had darned well been ready to take care of business when you stepped upon it.

No foolishness allowed.

Anything other than pure focus and a player was bound to feel George’s wrath.

“If you weren”t ready to practice, George would throw your (expletive) off the football field,” said Shawn Moore, who quarterbacked Welsh’s Virginia Cavaliers to a national No. 1 ranking in 1990. “There were times where he would throw the coaches off the field, too, because he didn’t feel they were ready.”

The 74-year-old Welsh, who will be inducted into the state of Virginia Sports Hall of Fame tonight in Portsmouth, believed that practice made perfect.

In fact, he said Friday that he borrowed his favorite phrase about practice from the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels, a precision flight demonstration team.

Can’t flip a switch

“You play like you practice and you practice like you play,” Welsh preached to his teams. “That saying came out of the Blue Angels, who used to say, ‘Fight like you train and train like you fight.’”

It was a mantra developed during his days as a young assistant coach for Rip Engle and Joe Paterno at Penn State.

“Practice was very much emphasized even before Joe took over,” Welsh said. “Coach Engle had his own way of doing things and Joe was a lot tougher as a head coach. The emphasis was on practicing hard. I wonder how some of these college teams can go out there today and not hit hard during certain times during the week because I think it translates to Saturdays.”

Certainly, practicing hard was one of the building blocks Welsh used to make both his alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy, and the University of Virginia program into winners.

Resurrecting the dead

In 19 years at UVa, Welsh did the unthinkable. He became the winningest football coach in UVa and ACC history, compiling an astonishing record of 134-86-3, including a conference record 80 ACC victories, two conference championships, 12 bowl appearances, and 13 consecutive seasons of at least seven wins from 1987-99.

He was voted ACC coach of the year a record five times and was a three-time national coach of the year, leading to his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2004.

“Practice was the most important thing to George,” said longtime assistant coach Danny Wilmer. “He honestly felt that if you practiced every play like you’re in a game, you would win.”

“And he would throw anybody out of practice,” Wilmer added, “including Tiki Barber, anybody. Once, he threw both teams and the coaching staff off the field and make them stand on the sidelines.”

This columnist, who unknowingly walked into a closed Welsh practice at Scott Stadium early one Saturday morning and took a seat in the stands, saw for himself what Moore and Wilmer were talking about.

After the center/quarterback exchange was fouled up over and over again, Welsh finally boiled over and abruptly ended practice. He not only threw the teams out of the stadium, but threw the coaches out, too.

As the coaches trudged their way up the stadium steps, Tom O’Brien spotted me and said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

I told him I was supposed to talk to Welsh after practice.

O’Brien, now the head coach at N.C. State, didn’t even look up.

“Lots of luck on that,” he said.

I decided to wait and give Welsh a cooling-off period, and later, he was fine. Hey, I’m not stupid.

“Yeah, I used to send [players or coaches] over to the sidelines and tell them, “When you’re ready to practice, you can come back on the field,’” Welsh said Friday from his home in Crozet. “It didn’t take long. I’d tell them, ‘I’ll wait for you because I don’t have anything else to do tonight.’”

Some of Welsh’s worst moments weren’t limited to throwing players out of practice, but memorable events in practice.

Ask any UVa coach and they’ll break up laughing telling about the time that giant tackle Ray Roberts got into a fight with another player in practice and Welsh attempting to break it up.

“George went running out there and jumped up on big Ray’s back,” Wilmer chuckled. “He looked like an ant on an elephant. He was smacking Roberts with his hat, trying to get him to stop fighting.”

Welsh recalled the moment with some embarrassment.

“I remember jumping on [Roberts’] back,” Welsh said. “I don’t know why I did that. I was stupid. But after I broke my leg in practice in 1986, I was very careful. I didn’t demonstrate any more. Instead, I stayed 15 yards behind the ball to make sure I didn’t get hit.”

In that ’86 practice, Welsh was demonstrating a quarterback technique (he was third in the 1955 Heisman Trophy balloting as Navy’s quarterback) on the old, rain-soaked Astroturf at Scott Stadium.

“I didn’t have the right kind of shoes on for a slippery surface, and I took the ball from center and made a fake and was going to roll out and show the quarterback what I wanted,” Welsh recalled. “When I pivoted and made the fake, the guard was pulling as part of the deception, and stepped on my ankle and broke the ankle. I didn’t demonstrate anymore.”

Not long after that, Welsh made history when he and North Carolina coach Dick Crum, who had also broken a leg, met on the field for a post-game handshake — both of them on crutches.

All of Welsh’s exploits could fill a book. Everyone associated with the program during that era has a jillion memories.

“Ask any player and their stories will be very similar in that George was the best preparation coach they ever played for,” Moore said.

“George had a singleness, a purpose,” Wilmer said. “He always talked about being on an even keel, never getting too high or too low. And, he was such a smart man. His ego was almost non-existent.”

Gerry Capone, who came to UVa with Welsh in 1982 and remains as the Cavaliers’ director of football administration, said he was always amazed at how Welsh always kept focus.

“I don’t know whether it was his military background (Welsh was a naval officer), or what, but he was always disciplined,” Capone said. “He always managed to block out most of the world and all of the distractions to stay true to the task. He never waivered.”

Capone said that Welsh’s great leadership ability also allowed the head coach to keep the rest of the staff and players focused every day.

“When he was introduced as Virginia’s coach, his mantra was ‘Why not Virginia?’” Capone said. “Why couldn’t Virginia be a winner? He took over in a negative environment about UVa football in terms of the community, the state and nationally. We had stadium problems and training facility problems, but, again, he never lost focus on the goal.”

Wilmer said that every time he drives by Scott Stadium, he purposely holds his head up high, because he is one of few people that truly understand what Welsh accomplished here.

Damn near a miracle.

That’s why Welsh is a new member in the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.