Just As It Seems to Me
BY LESLIE E. EDMONDS, 1931

Long, Long Ago—Hargiss Among the Ministry Students—Still Doing Good, Still Going Great Having More Fun—Chatter.

     Bill Hargiss, University of Kansas, began his twentieth year of coaching a week ago. It doesn't seem so very long ago but it's two decades, at that, since the former Emporia, Normal star -- yaps, they called 'em—went to College of Emporia after coaching at Marion high school. Since that first inter-collegiate venture Bill has coached every year but one when he was in the physical education department at Kansas University. He doesn't seem much older than the day he descended on C. of E., took a look at an unfenced, unmarked field, made a locker room of the Carnegie library basement and set to work -with as ornery a bunch of kids as ever attended a Presbyterian college whose founders had conceived it as a cradle for the ministry. He was just about as bald then and just about as stiff-legged. But Bill's infectious enthusiasm was to lift C. of E. out of the mire of defeat, was to start the little college on a trail of victory with collegiate honor, a trail it has seldom left since—and never for long. Bleak were the days on the hill and icy the water in the showers; the best of the backs bought their own shoes and the toughest of the tackles worked plenty for his board and room. Strict were the profs and few and spindly the substitutes. It was a swell place for a coach to find hard work and lots of it.
     So Bill started collegiate coaching, holding the team by its collective collar with one hand while he fended off the faculty with the other. He was soon the confidante of every man on the team, the buffer for their woes, the sharer of their joys. Almost at once he began helping his men and he's been helping them ever since. Possessed of broad understanding, tolerant to the point where he was often imposed on, willing to give just another minute, just another hour, just another day to the lowest sub on the team; coaching on the field for football and off the field for life. Bill made friends of his men in just the exact number now living.
     I don't suppose anyone would class Bill as a preacher. There weren't many preachers raised in the mining camps of Crawford county in those rough and ready days. Yet, I think, as nearly destitute as I am of belief that only those of clerical calling can do good for men, that he's probably been responsible for more men living lives that make them good husbands, fathers, neighbors and citizens than any other man I know. There are other coaches, veterans along with him, who have, perhaps, equaled his record. None has exceeded his. Gosh, how I hope there's a coach like him to handle Buddy Edmonds in 1940.