Tommy Tice

Always a coach

If you missed sportswriter Rick Fires' column about the retirement of Huntsville football coach Tommy Tice, you not only overlooked a fine column, but a compelling overview of one of Arkansas' finest coaches of young men in the annals of our state.

I came to know Tommy and his outgoing and accomplished wife JoAnn years ago during the time he was leading the Harrison Golden Goblins from relative obscurity in Class AAAA football to the pinnacle of a 14-0 season and state championship in 1999.

We most often ran into each other at couples' golf tournaments in Harrison or at the outrageously enjoyable version in Berryville during the swelter of late July. Always one with a quip fired from that gleam in his eye, Tommy ragged me unmercifully after I consumed too much iced tea and agreed to karaoke Buddy Holly's classic rockabilly song "Oh Boy!" after dinner at one of the Berryville experiences.

As Fires pointed out, Tice leaves football after 53 years as either a player or coach and the second-winningest coach in state history with 289 victories, 160 losses and six ties. And while he'll remain in his native Huntsville as the school's athletic director, I know the man well enough to know his deeply caring heart will forever be down on the field motivating, encouraging, teasing and loving the players in a style all his own.

I fully expected he and JoAnn, a nurse with the Springdale School District, would return to Harrison when he left football. In fact, he's expressed that as more than a possibility several times when I've visited with him in recent years. But since completing their home on the golf course in Huntsville, I suspect he's replanted himself back home.

A year or so back, I wrote about Tommy's silent and longtime suffering with Crohn's disease before he decided to make it known in hopes of encouraging others with that painful and distressing digestive-tract disease to seek help. I admired him all the more for overcoming embarrassment to bring his experience to light.

To this day when I see the forever coach, I can predict Tommy will shout either one of two greetings with that wry smile and sideways glint: "Hey, it's my favorite newspaper columnist!" or "Why, it's Buddy Holly!"

I'll still just call the silver-haired man Coach since that's what he was born and destined to be.

What are the odds?

Speaking of golf, the cardiac surgeon wearing shorts and a golf cap bounded up stairs to the elevated tee for the 189-yard No. 3 hole at the Ledgestone Country Club in Branson. Dr. Steve Morrison, playing with partner Dr. Steve Neu in the club's annual spring classic scramble tournament, stopped at the top and pointed to a plaque embedded in a large stone.

It noted that Morrison had made consecutive holes-in-one here in June 1998.

My partner Jim Richiert and I looked at the green below us that seemed a half-mile distant. "Yep, it's true," he said. "Used a four iron the first day and went to a three iron on the second. The wind was a little stronger."

The pro at Ledgestone told me he's known people who've made more than one hole-in-one, but the good doctor was the only one he could recall to make one in each of two rounds on the same hole. "I just don't know what the odds would be against that happening."

Dr. Morrison, a congenial fellow who plays Ledgestone regularly these days, said a mathematician friend once estimated it at least "90 million to one" from 189 yards away.

On this day, the surgeon carved out a terrific chip and putt to save his team's par.

Come September

The woes of Benton County Sheriff Kelley Cradduck continue to fester after a specially appointed circuit judge set his trial date for Sept. 21.

Cradduck, who was defeated in the March primary and remains in office until year's end, is charged with felony tampering with a public record and a related misdemeanor tampering charge, accusing him of instructing his assistant to lie to Arkansas State Police investigators.

The felony charge accuses Cradduck of falsifying a payroll form for Gabriel Cox, a homeless man staying with Cradduck, that showed Cox working at the county jail a week before his actual start date. Cox was fired in January after he was charged with misdemeanor drug possession.

The sheriff whom I felt held so much promise for reforming and reinvigorating the Benton County sheriff's office has pleaded not guilty. We shall see how this oversized load of dirty laundry washes out when Cradduck's trial begins.

Meanwhile, at the risk of beating a now-familiar story into pulp, his case is one closest to a Shakespearean tragedy I've seen in over 45 years as a journalist. No one in the criminal-justice system of Northwest Arkansas wanted near it. After six Benton County circuit judges recused, Circuit Judge Randy Wright of the 8th Judicial District-North in Nevada and Hempstead counties finally was named to preside over the trial. Even a special prosecutor had to be appointed.

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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.

Editorial on 04/05/2016

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