ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 24, 1997 TAG: 9701240057
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
TYPE: COMMENTARY
SOURCE: RAY COX
Winter has been getting on my nerves lately.
Not to be a sissy about this or anything, but it was 1 degree when I went to work the other morning. Tolerating the intolerable just isn't me.
So it was that I was delighted this week to receive correspondence with the sunny return address of Deerfield Beach, Fla.
The package was from our old buddy Roger Davidson, the former Christiansburg High football and baseball coach exiled to a life of the endless bake in the south Florida sun.
A telephone call established the worst. Roger Davidson, known to his cronies back home in Pulaski as ``Sheep,'' had become smug from watching too many tropical sunsets.
``Been cold up there?'' he was saying as he sat his office at Deerfield Beach High. ``It's been cool here too lately. Today, for example, it isn't more than 74 degrees.''
Made me want to hammer him with his own bottle of sunscreen. Imagine how his buddy from Charlottesville, newspaperman Jerry Ratcliffe, felt the other day when he chatted on the phone with Davidson.
``I was talking to him and I say, `Hold on, what's that sound?''' Davidson said. ``And he goes, `What sound?' And I say, `Oh, never mind. That was just my air conditioner kicking in.'''
Nice guy. Bet Davidson is the type who dangles that last piece of sirloin steak in front of his pet dog before devouring the morsel as the unfortunate beast looks on stricken with doggie heartbreak.
Well, you have to keep telling yourself, if Davidson at age 47 with 27 years of coaching under his belt is a little smug, then he's entitled to be.
``This is one great place to work,'' he said. ``I love it. I don't want to be anywhere else.''
Davidson is the head baseball coach at Deerfield Beach High, an institution of more than 2,000 students, which places it among the largest high schools in Florida. The local School Board spends lavishly - ``Our facilities are second to none,'' Davidson said - the boosters are attentive and easy to get along with, and the athletes keep coming. He expects more than 40 to try out for the junior varsity this year and that many more to come out for varsity. He had an outfielder drafted by the Orioles last year. No wonder he likes it in these parts.
He's not just sitting back and watching the palm trees nod in the breeze as he takes a break from hitting fungoes, though. The high school team plays close to 30 games per year and they never miss a day of practice for snow or sleet.
In fact, they don't miss a day of practice for anything. So carefully do Davidson and his aides maintain the high school baseball field and so meticulous is its design, that it can take a South Florida spring deluge and be playable within an hour.
Recently, Davidson and Deerfield Beach were twice presented with awards for the excellence of their facilities. The one that came from the manufacturers of Turface, an infield surface additive, cited Deerfield Beach's diamond as the best among 86 entries nationwide.
The high school's athletic director gave much of the credit for the awards to the coach.
``The man is out here at 9 o'clock in the morning with a cigar in his mouth sitting on a tractor cutting the grass,'' Bill Caruso was quoted as saying in local press accounts. ``You really can't appreciate the beauty of the facility until you see it first hand.''
Davidson has always been a stickler for a nice field. Christiansburg's field never looked better than it did in the days of his administration.
``The times I spent at Christiansburg were good times,'' he said. ``I worked for good people and I had good people who were athletes for me.''
Davidson has other reasons to be feeling good about life. One of them is his son, 6-foot-4, 285-pound Brad, a redshirt freshman center at Florida A&M. Brad is happy and doing well with his schoolwork. He does have one problem.
``The kid wants to be a coach,'' his proud father said. ``I said to him, Oh, no! You've lived with a coach all your life. Haven't you learned anything yet? He said, 'I've had a good example.'''
Davidson visits back home regularly - his father still lives across the street from Calfee Park in Pulaski. There's one part of life in these precincts that he doesn't miss as badly.
``The top of the pay scale down here isn't what it was back in Christiansburg,'' he said. ``Not even close.''
LENGTH: Medium: 82 linesby CNB