Published: October 13, 2008 09:50 am            

Teaching life lessons

Coach uses athletics to teach work ethic, achievement

JOSHUA — Brad Clanton was 80-31 with two state championships in nine years as head coach at Happy Hill Farm, a former six-man football powerhouse in Glen Rose.

Because of the makeup of Happy Hill, a boarding school for emotionally disadvantaged youths, he was far more.

“According to paperwork, I was athletic director,” he said. “As for what I did every day, I was coach, counselor, psychologist and father figure.”

His job is different at Joshua Christian Academy, where Clanton is in his second year as six-man head coach. So is his life.

“At the Farm, we taught personal achievement through situational lessons. At the Farm, kids would have breakthroughs when they finally saw things without the aid of outside influences. There was nobody to say, ‘See, I told you so.’

“When you can get kids to see what they’re able to do without outside involvement, they start to believe in themselves. That’s the thing we’re trying to get across at Joshua Christian, but it’s different.

“Over here, the family environment is so much better and stronger. You want the parent involvement here. But the kids still have to learn to do things on their own.”

Happy Hill, founded by Ed Shipman in the 1970s, molds children from different backgrounds and cultures. No two kids at Happy Hill are alike, but virtually all have one thing in common, lack of positive parental influence.

“Something bad happened in order for mom or dad to drop the kid off there and ask for help,” Clanton said. “In the normal family environment, you have ups and downs. Every family does. But when you get to the point that somebody else has to help you raise your child, something bad is going on.”

At Happy Hill, Clanton taught lessons through athletics, win or lose.

“But it wasn’t all athletics. It was work ethic. It was discipline. If I said to show up in shorts and a shirt, you showed up in shorts and a shirt. We’re pushing work ethic at Joshua Christian. We teach that when you work for things, good things will happen.”

Happy Hill students learn early the value of accountability ... to their elders and peers, finally to themselves.

“Even though parents and guardians have a big role in the kid growing up, the kid at some point has to be held accountable,” Clanton said. “That’s not just for the bad. It’s for the good and bad. And you have to set up structure. Kids need structure no matter where you are.”

At Joshua Christian, he’s leading and instructing children. At Happy Hill, he was often raising them.

“You do it with patience,” Clanton said. “You try to get the kids to explain what their goals are. If you can get a kid to honestly say what he wants out of life, you can help direct him. A lot of times, they give you false answers, and you’ll know that right off the bat when they do that.

“Some kids are more motivated toward college than others. A kid who is really motivated toward college is the easiest one to help direct.”

The greatest example of a Happy Hill success was a boy who had been adopted by an American family from a Russian orphanage.

“The parents here were somewhat embarrassed because he couldn’t speak English,” Clanton said. “Instead of helping him learn English, they put him at Happy Hill. Now, he’s about to graduate from TCU with two degrees.”

Another, more sensitive case involved the son of a parent who expected more than the boy could deliver.

“God had blessed the parent with incredible intelligence,” Clanton said. “But he couldn’t understand that his son was a regular kid. He was a great kid who worked hard, did everything he was asked to the best of his ability.”

Why are some parents unable to accept their children for who and what they are?

“I have no idea,” Clanton said. “Maybe it’s lack of direction. In my life, family is the most important thing. I want my kids to be better than I am. But by no means am I perfect.”

There were also failures at Happy Hill.

“You can’t reach every kid,” Clanton said. “Some kids understand how to jump through hoops, and some kids just aren’t going to do it. There were kids who graduated that we didn’t reach. They just understood they had to jump through the hoops to get a high school diploma so they could get out and go to work.”

Some students who didn’t figure to be successes turned out good as gold.

“Three brothers who did very well for me in football have served their country in Iraq,” Clanton said. “I think that’s a success. The youngest brother is still in Iraq. The older brothers now have good jobs in the natural gas industry. From where they were when they came to us at the Farm, that’s a success.”

Clanton learned volumes about six-man football at Happy Hill. He also learned about life, he said.

“I learned I have patience. I learned a lot of things about life I was ignorant about. I learned how people can be and are. I learned to take that with a grain of salt, make sure I’m doing the right thing and not worrying about anything else.”

When Happy Hill was winning state championships in 2002 and ’03 and going to a title game in ’04, it was succeeding because of a number of factors that include structure, accountability and raw talent.

“Why did we win? I probably won’t know that answer for another 15 or 20 years,” Clanton said. “It was the right place at the right time.”

Can Joshua Christian duplicate Happy Hill’s former football prosperity?

“Yes,” Clanton said. “When you put the program in place, the kids respond. When the kids start responding, people want to be part of the program. Our record this year is not good, but our team is better than it was last year.

“Our level of competition is coming up. That means our kids are going to get better, just by osmosis. I have to put the structure in place and be patient. The right people will show up at the right time, and we’ll be fine.”

The six-man game is foreign to Johnson County. It generally appeals to anybody who likes action-packed sports.

“It’s basketball on grass,” Clanton said. “You back-pick. You load zones. Offensively, you try to get your best athlete in an area where he has open field.”

Collisions are actually more common and more violent in six-man.

“People are worrying about their lead block, and they don’t see someone who’s had a 15- or 20-yard running start,” Clanton said. “There tend to be pretty big hits. We had some guys at the Farm who loved that concept. We’re working on it here. The physical play is getting a lot better.

“Last year, my first task was trying to teach the boys how to hit, what the violent side of the game was like so they wouldn’t be afraid to hit when they were on the field. At the Farm, it was like, ‘You mean I get to hit somebody and not get in trouble for it?’ Over here, it’s more, ‘I want to play football. Do I really have to hit?’ Yeah, you do.”

Clanton hasn’t changed his ideals with the change of address.

“You can see things in kids’ eyes when they’re struggling and wanting to talk to somebody,” Clanton said. “Kids are kids no matter where they are. They have the same feelings and frustrations. You celebrate the enjoyments with them. They also have to understand you’re going to be there for them when it’s tough.

“Sometimes, the hardest part is having to look the kid in the eye and tell him, ‘I love you, but no.’”

        

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