Newspaper Page Text
High School
Sports Ai$C
Just Around
The Corner
August 4, 2021
®lft Aiuanre
Section B
Loran
Smith
Jon
Fabris
Jon Fabris is still coaching—this
time, however, it is akin to home
schooling since his instructional exper
tise is reserved exclusively for a most
valuable two-
r H^l some in his
By Loran Smith
some in
household —
sons Jack and
Michael.
“Fab,” as he is
known across
the college foot
ball landscape,
spent more
than 30 years in
coaching. He
had a brief foray
at the professional level with the Cleve
land Browns before coming to Georgia
with Mark Richt but realized the col
lege game was the best fit for him.
He knows what it is like to coach
in championship games with the Bull
dogs. More than likely, he can recite
the words to the fight songs of the
campuses where he has resided, which
would include Notre Dame, where he
was a 38-year-old graduate assistant.
The postman has delivered mail
to him in Atlanta, where he coached
at Georgia Tech; Pullman Washington
(Washington State); Manhattan, Kan
sas (twice at Kansas State); Columbia,
South Carolina (with Lou Holtz and
the Gamecocks); Ames Iowa (Iowa
State); Bloomington, Indiana (Indi
ana); Senatobia, Mississippi (North
west Mississippi Community College)
and nearby Gainesville, Georgia (Riv
erside Military Academy).
At every stop, his modus operandi
was to instill into every player the in
tensity at kickoff that characterized his
own coaching style. On the field, he
never let up, packing every ounce of en
ergy and detailed instruction possible.
First and always, he considered himself
a teacher in the historical tradition of
coaching. You highlight technique on
the field and you give more than a cur
sory high five to the moral, ethical and
give back tenets of the game. You go to
class. You pursue a degree.
With an historical bent and with a
deep and abiding passion for tradition,
he learned all about the schools where
he coached in his career. He probably
knows as much, perhaps more, about
the University of Georgia than many
who have spent their career working for
the institution.
Early on, his life took a peculiar
turn. He and his older brother, Robert,
were graduates of Starkville, Mississip
pi High, but both became football let-
termen at Ole Miss. That unusual and
unlikely circumstance can be easily ex
plained. Their father, Frank, coached
at Mississippi State before taking an
administrative position at UGA. How
ever, Mississippi State did not express
much interest in recruiting the Fabris
boys. Ole Miss did. Jon was a four
time letterman in Oxford, a three-year
starter at defensive back.
While playing for former Georgia
end, Ken Cooper, at Ole Miss, Robert
and Jon worked out in the summers
in Athens when they came home to
visit their parents. John Kasay even let
them work out with the Bulldog players
whom they would line up against in the
fall at Oxford.
Fab’s most celebrated player in Ath
ens obviously was Davey Pollack, Geor
gia’s three-time All-America defensive
Please see Loran page 3B
Indian Pitcher At
National Showcase
Photo by Mike Branch
Caden Spivey fired one in during the 2021 season of VHS Indian baseball,
Vidalia High Schhol Indian and
Notre Dame commit Caden Spivey is
participating in this week's East Coast
Pro Showcase at the Hoover Met
Complex in Hoover, Alabama. Created
in 1995, the invitation-only event is
"designed to evaluate and educate pro
spective players and parents in order
to attain their goal of an opportunity
to play professional baseball."
The Showcase is a nonprofit event
run by MLB Scouts, and according to
their website, "The ultimate purpose
of this Showcase is to provide a venue
for the premier youth baseball players
across the Eastern United States to
compete in a professional environ
ment. It also allows evaluation oppor
tunities for scouts from every Major
League Baseball organization."
Annually, between 80 and 110
players from the event are selected in
the MLB Rule 4 Draft. "We hope these
games and seminars will allow profes
sional scouts and all MLB personnel
to assist the players from this event to
fully understand what professional
baseball can offer at its highest level."
Spivey, who finished his junior
year at 7-2 on the mound with a .898
ERA and 80 strikeouts in 62 innings,
said he was excited and honored to
have the opportunity, "I'm honored to
be given the opportunity to showcase
my talents at such a prestigious event.
It's a great opportunity to get to know
the scouts on a personal level and hang
out with and compete against the top
high school players on the East Coast.
ECP has an incredible history, and I
can't wait to get out there and get to
it."
Jim Thorpe was a standout athlete across many professional sports. To this day he is the only person to win gold in both the
pentathlon and the decathlon in the same Olympics,
Who Was Jim Thorpe, Native
American Athlete And Olympian?
By Millie Perry
Contributing Writer
Jim Thorpe (May 28, 1888-March
28, 1953) is remembered as one of the
greatest athletes of all time. At the 1912
Olympics, Thorpe accomplished the
unprecedented feat of winning gold
medals in both the pentathlon and the
decathlon. His record-breaking scores
beat all of his rivals and remained un
broken for three decades.
Thorpe was born in Prague, Okla
homa, one of 11 children to parents of
Native American and European heri
tage. He grew up in a log farmhouse on
the Sac and Fox reservation, where his
family grew crops and raised livestock.
Even on the reservation, the Thor
pes adopted many customs of white
people. They wore standard American
clothing, spoke English at home, and
were Roman Catholics.
In 1894 at the age of 6, Jim Thor
pe and his twin brother were sent to
the reservation boarding school run
by the federal government 20 miles
away from their home. Indian students
were taught to live as white people
and were forbidden to speak their na
tive language. Jim Thorpe excelled at
all sports. When his twin brother died
at age 8, Thorpe ran away from school
and back home. When he was 10, his
parents sent him to Haskell Indian
Junior College in Lawrence, Kansas,
which operated on a military system,
with students wearing uniforms and
following a strict set of regulations.
When he was 13, his father had an
accident, and Thorpe ran away from
Haskell and returned home to help
out. Unfortunately, his mother died a
few months later, and not getting along
with his father, Thorpe left home and
went to Texas where he worked taming
wild horses, but he returned home af
ter a year. Then he enrolled in a nearby
public school, where he participated in
baseball and track and field and again
excelled at whatever sport he attempt
ed.
In 1904, when Thorpe was 16, a
representative from the Carlisle In
dian Industrial School in Pennsylvania
came to the Oklahoma Territory look
ing for American Indian students and
enrolled Thorpe in the trade school.
Not long after he'd begun his studies,
his father died. Thorpe went on to
excel in football, baseball, track and
lacrosse, and also dominated in hock
ey, handball, tennis, boxing and ball
room dancing. During his summers at
Carlisle, Thorpe was sent to live with
white families in order to learn white
customs. He earned his way working
as a gardener and farm worker. Like
other students, to earn money, Thor
pe worked two consecutive summers
(1910 and 1911) playing minor league
baseball in North Carolina.
In the fall of 1911, when Thorpe
returned to Carlisle, he earned rec
ognition as a first-team All-American
halfback. In 1912, he led Carlisle’s
football team to a 12-1-1 record. En
couraged by his coaches, he began
training for a spot on the U.S. Olym
pic team in track and field. Thorpe
qualified for both the pentathlon and
decathlon for the American team. The
24-year-old American Indian set sail
for the Olympics in Stockholm, Swe
den, in June 1912.
Although Thorpe’s parents were
both half Caucasian, he was raised as
a Native American. He accomplished
his athletic feats during a period of
racial inequality in the United States
and most of the world. It has often
been suggested that his Olympic med
als were stripped by the athletic of
ficials because of his ethnicity. At the
Please see Thorpe page 3B