I have a few distinct memories of Coach Malone who came to Diana my Junior year. That first year was tough every senior but Joel Stanley and Alan Dale Brown quit. We only won three games but those practices laid the foundation for future success. I can remember coach Malone getting on me and Len Jones for getting whipped inside during a game in some pretty colorful language. We disagreed with him for course. He came up to me Monday morning after watching the film over the weekend and said he was wrong it was one of the linebackers. I think that is what made him a great coach he would tell you when he was wrong. The best in game coaching I ever saw was at half time of the Waskom game my senior year. He gathered the offensive line up and ask what was going on? Waskom ran a split six but they were not lining up the way we expected. He went through the process of explaining again how to count the guys so we knew who to block. Another great story during my senior year happened at half time of the Harleton game. I think we score 22 points in the first quarter and scored nothing in the second. At half time we gathered behind the end zone (Back then Harleton did not have visiting dressing rooms) Coach Malone began his half time speech by throwing the cooler. He proceeded to tell us in some pretty colorful ways how he felt about our effort that night. It was an incredible display that got everyone’s attention as only he could do. We beat Harleton 56 to nothing and spent a lot of the fourth quarter letting people try to kick a field goal so as not to run the score up too bad. For baseball I have several stories but I will limit myself to a couple of stories. I was lucky to be on his first district championship team in Diana ( we should have been regional champs but that is another story). My senior year we started off poorly, we had lost more than we won. After losing two straight at the Gilmer tournament in a game coach Malone and Mark Trull were kicked out of by my recollection. He drove us home and when he pulled up behind the field house he was really down. He was right it appeared we could not hit, pitch, or catch. I told him we were better than we had shown so far and things would get better. The best part of that story is we started an 18 game win streak pretty soon after. Last story in my day the coach did not call the pitches. I threw what I wanted to throw. But in our first playoff game that changed. In the fourth or fifth inning coach Malone hollered at me to throw a curve ball. I ignored him so he Hollered again, again I ignored him. Not sure when I finally threw a curve but the guy ripped it to left field. Huge explosion commotion in the dugout. We got the next batter out and he met me before I got off the field. He put his arm around my shoulders and we started walking toward third base where he was going. He said I guess if you can hear me the batter can hear me. When I got back to the dugout there were some wet guys just past the dugout. Coach Malone had thrown the water cooler over Len Jones, and Mark Blakely and not sure who else. I asked them what they said when that cooler flew over their heads and they said nothing, which made me laugh. I ran in to him several times over the years. He was always as friendly as if it had only been a day since I saw him, although he did confuse me for Mark Trull one night at the outback. It was a great honor to play for someone as passionate as him, and he certainly taught me I could do more than I realized.
