Photo courtesy of Melissa Buck Gillman

Dempsey Gillman (front row, middle): pride of his grandpa’s life

Depending on one’s perspective, Dempsey Gillman and his Tulsa Metro Christian Academy teammates would seem to have a high hill to climb—Oklahoma’s idea of a mountain—during their 2021 football season.

Jared McCoy’s Patriots must attempt this ascent without a number of the players—Cade Gibson, Levi Korir, and Malachi Penland, to name three—who gave them a leg up on a 48-37 victory over Washington for last year’s Oklahoma Class 2A Championship. But that only proved they could defend a championship. Now, they must prove it again.

Once is tough. Twice is tougher.

If they are to pull off this hat trick and put three successive championship Gold Balls side by side by side, Dempsey Gillman will have to play as he did during the 2020 championship game. The normally sized-to-undersized defensive lineman (6 foot, 218 pounds) made 16 tackles, including 3.5 for losses, 2.5 of those sacks. Only dearly departed (to graduation) linebacker Gibson did more. And even he did not do what Gillman did in the final minute of first half.

Gillman “intercepted” an intended Washington handoff in the backfield on a fumbled option play and set up Metro’s second touchdown in that final, fateful minute. The resultant 28-10 lead stood up to Washington’s furious fourth-quarter comeback attempt, in large part because now junior quarterback Kirk Francis threw five TD passes.

The Tulsa World suggests the Patriots can indeed win three titles in a row while at the same time acknowledging that it will be difficult enough just to win District 7, 2A’s “toughest.” Beggs will be as tough as an old boot, as it usually is, but four of the district’s eight teams will advance to the playoffs. So there’s a cushion to getting there.

Enjoy the journey. That idea has become a cliché and while it and other truisms may have lost their originality, they usually are built on a foundation of truth. Perhaps a person has to become old, as I have, to appreciate the fact that all things end. For Dempsey Gillman—and most senior football players—this is the end of the line.

Dempsey’s late grandpa Bucky Buck, with whom I grew up in Nowata, Oklahoma, saw this day coming and, even more: He recognized the reason. As we sat side-by-side in stands watching Dempsey, then a Collinsville eighth-grade linebacker, make tackle after tackle during a scrimmage, Bucky insisted that as good as Dempsey looked (much like his grandpa once had) that he was an even better baseball player. I used to ask Bucky if he ever tired of thinking he was right. But now, every day since he has been gone I wish I could hear him being right again. Dempsey is indeed a versatile baseball player, usually a catcher, one whom Wichita State University already has given a scholarship offer. Whether with bat or a tackle on the football field, Dempsey Gillman is a slugger.

Though he is both a little taller and little heavier than Bucky was, Dempsey would have more of a challenge finding his place on a Division I football team than he will have in baseball, where both his defensive skills and his batting prowess will stand him in good stead. This would be true even if Wichita State were the baseball team that Gene Stephenson, a new member of the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame, coached to heights in the years before, during, and after I was a sports columnist in Wichita.

Dempsey, I think, saw this moment coming, because he is a smart young man whom I doubt would try to deceive himself. If he wanted to do so, however, he has had some flashy notices with which to work during the preseason that ends Friday night when Metro Christian plays host to Checotah. He and quarterback Francis were among 10 players selected at each position when the World offered readers the opportunity to choose among them and rank the best players in the Tulsa area. Though such votes can devolve into a popularity contest and some schools and their fan bases—Metro has an active and good one—wage aggressive campaigns to lift up their deserving players. Dempsey had the third most votes overall, second among defensive linemen. The Tulsa World staff placed him eighth among the ten defensive linemen; so size does matter.

I would not presume to tell today’s players, nearly 60 years younger than me, how they should approach and feel about their last high school season. I can, however, tell them how it was for me. Unlike Dempsey, I didn’t see it coming. Though I knew my father, a federal veterinarian, was being considered for a job in California, it was not until the bitter end of the 1961 season that I learned that I had to leave childhood friends and lifelong teammates, including Bucky. It proved a traumatic experience. (If anyone cares to read a fuller account, it can be found in my memoir Football, Fast Friends, and Small Towns, available on Amazon.com or by order from your local bookstore.)

In those final days and on my final plays, it took every ounce of self-control I could muster—and that was not much—to keep from breaking down in the huddle. The realization that not only was this the last time I would play with the guys I had grown up with in the game but also that it could be the final time that I see in the huddle those faces as familiar as my own and at which I had been staring and was losing.

I would not wish that moment on anyone, but I do hope that Dempsey and the other Patriot seniors appreciate their last season together. It won’t come again, and it cannot be replaced. When you are champions there comes a pressure that I did not know and perhaps could not have handled. I certainly didn’t cope with what I did face as well as I would have liked. I have to believe it will be different for the Metro Christian players.

As great as it would be for these seniors to win a third championship (Dempsey was not attending Metro for the first), I have come to understand more fully what remains from the wins and losses—especially after the real loss of former teammates. It’s love.

I remember how much I loved Bucky, Charles Dugger, KB Berry, and my other teammates. One day, images and memories of teammates and this last season on which Metro Christian is about to embark are all a person will have. Put away the iPhone and embed into your mind a mental picture to which you can always return, even if the phone dies. This will be more golden than the Gold Ball in those golden years.