ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, July 26, 1996 TAG: 9607260024
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
TYPE: COMMENTARY
SOURCE: RAY COX
Bill Brown, who coached just about every sport Blacksburg High had to offer and was so beloved in the doing that former players still visit him years after his retirement, was on his way to a soccer game late in March when difficulties developed that would have been annoying had they not been so frightening.
He couldn't walk.
Brown is a football man right down to the depths of his Blacksburg blue-and-gold soul and in previous years might have taken more pleasure in brushing his teeth with cod liver oil than speaking well of soccer. But people change.
Brown's granddaughters, Katy and Kym Devens, played soccer for Blacksburg High and that was generally all he needed to know about the sport. If they were kicking the stuffings out of a round ball with odd designs on it, then he intended to be there.
First, though, it was suggested that he see about this mobility problem he was having.
``Then can I go to the soccer game?'' he said.
No, he was told. You best find a way to get to the nearest emergency room.
The game was played and the Devens sisters showed up. They always show up. Katy, the elder and soon to be a freshman at Radford University, knew what was going on with her 73-year-old grandfather and she was very scared. She reacted in a way that has come to be typical of her when something troubles her.
``I pushed myself even harder,'' she said.
The result was she played some of her best soccer. Her game was so strong, in fact, that she scored her only goal of the year. Being stationed at the defensive end of the field didn't afford her many looks at the net.
Scoring duties were usually left to the strikers such as her younger sister Kym, then a sophomore, who is, like Katy, tall and strong. Kym found the net often that day. That was typical of her. She would go on to be the team's leading scorer with 15 goals and be chosen the team most valuable player.
Patty Brown Devens, the girls' mother, told her father of the Indians' victory and the sisters' individual triumphs when he was still in the emergency room. That cheered him up because the doctors had given him less encouraging news.
He had had a stroke.
Coaches, especially football coaches, have always said that sports is about learning to deal with adversity. You say it enough and then you come to believe it. Brown believes it. Had he been at the Alamo, he might have remarked on how thoughtful it was of those smartly attired Mexicans to stage such an impressive and colorful parade for the enjoyment of such a small garrison of Texans.
He took the same approach with the stroke.
``I've been very fortunate,'' he said. ``I didn't lose my speech. And I've had great therapists.''
Before long, he was back on his feet. These days, he's graduated from a clumsy walker to a more nimble cane. Earlier this week, he was spotted walking around unaided in the pleasant house he shares with his wife, Lou, on leafy Sunset Boulevard just down the hill from the municipal golf course.
Still, the stroke prevented him from seeing as many of the Devens sisters soccer games as he did the previous spring. To be honest about it, he didn't miss the game itself as much as he missed those two girls playing it.
``I don't know much about soccer,'' Brown said, ``other than putting the ball in the net means a point.''
The fact of the matter is, if they weren't playing, he wouldn't be watching. That's all right. Football doesn't seem to do too much for the girls, either. Or at least, so it would seem by the fact that when conversation turns to football (as inevitably it will should you be privileged enough to visit the Brown household for any length of time), the girls listen respectfully but don't contribute.
The girls and their grandfather have found a common sporting ground. Some things apply universally.
``I tell them never to back off,'' Brown said. ``And they don't.''
There are other lessons.
``He tells us to run on the field and run off the field and always be a good sport,'' said Katy, who hopes to walk on the Radford University women's team this fall.
Katy will miss playing soccer for Blacksburg High if for no other reason than she only had two years of it and she'll no longer be able to play with her sister. The girls' father, Pat Devens, was in the Army and they lived all over before returning to the parents' hometown almost three years ago.
The girls had dreamed of playing at Blacksburg High. Years ago, it was decided that the football (and more recently soccer) stadium would be named for a distinguished coach whose contributions to education and young people in general were too numerous to be detailed. So they called it Bill Brown Stadium.
As special for the sisters was the fact that their other grandfather, Bud Devens, had been an engineer who had helped design the stadium. Bud Devens is another fellow who has cast a disapproving eye on the European import of a game that may be on its way to supplanting football forever on these shores.
``But whenever Katy and Kym play, he's always there,'' Patty Devens said.
That makes the girls happy.
``We always wanted to play on our grandfathers' field,'' Katy said.
Certainly the coach and the engineer are glad to have had a hand in a facility at which their granddaughters now frolic.
Even if the game they play is suspected in some circles of being a communist plot.
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: RAY COX STAFF Bill Brown with his granddaughters Katyby CNBDevens (left) and Kym Devens.