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Heb Evans as a Coach
By Lou HigginsGovernor Dummer Academy, '64
Calling Heb a coach is like calling Everest a mountain, or The Empire State a building - it's true, but inadequate. For almost 35 years, he built athletic skills and inspired greatness. His tools were a relentless attention to fundamentals and a merciless insistence that we always, ALWAYS play our best. Heb scorned shirkers and was contemptuous of any effort that fell short of the goal - which was to win. With Heb, you always knew that the goal was not to play the game, it was to win the game. Heb made us believe that any game on any day can be won. All it takes is a complete mastery of fundamentals coupled with the best conditioning, fired by the greatest desire. Green Bay had Lombardi. We had Heb.
He was a master of tactics and strategy, and knew the rules better than the refs. Refs didn't bother to argue with him. Arguing with Heb over the rules of lacrosse would be akin to disputing with Moses over the meaning of the tablets. When a ref made a lousy call, Heb could be heard to snort. Then it was over. Heb would attribute the mistake to the poor soul's failing vision, knowing it was part of the game, and besides, like all great coaches, he preferred to make his own luck. At various times, Heb coached soccer, football, and lacrosse, but it was on the wrestling mats of Alumni Gym that his genius found its greatest display. From the middle 1950s through the '60s, he sent forth his wrestlers against the best the league could muster, and he watched them win again and again. In 1962 and again in '63 he coached undefeated teams that went on to become tournament champions. In those times, Saturday afternoons in Alumni Gym were boisterous displays of pride in being a Governor. Students, faculty, neighbors, friends -the whole community - packed the bleachers and erupted in deafening cheers as the wrestlers walked onto the floor. After all, this was the Governor Dummer Academy Varsity Wrestling Team, Mr. Evans, Coach.
Like all great coaches, he was superstitious and wonderfully idiosyncratic. He always wore Brine athletic socks, the same necktie, the same gray herringbone Harris tweed jacket, and highly polished loafers. To psych us up, he played The Student Prince, sung by Mario Lanza. At meets, he chained smoked unfiltered Camels and growled into a tape recorder, memorializing the opponents' moves, the better to beat them at the next encounter. When one of his boys made a mistake, Heb bawled "Good Lord!" his strongest epithet. His voice was deep, truly basso profundo, and Heb could bellow like a bull. Thousands of us heard that howl of anguish and immediately stopped doing whatever it was we were doing and started doing the thing we were supposed to be doing - the right thing, the proper thing.
"Good Lord, Leahy!" "Good Lord, Stringer!" "Good Lord, Fraser!" Forty years have passed, but I remember as though it were yesterday. I can still hear him. Heb Evans was a legendary coach, caring mentor, dedicated teacher. Pity the boys at all the schools that did not have Heb Evans. He was the best.