Former Ferrum Coach Reflects on Football in Virginia
Hank Norton has seen football in the state steadily grow and evolve. He shares his long coaching career, and his love of fishing, prior to his induction today into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.
 

DELTAVILLE -- Hank Norton revels in Virginia's outdoor offerings and its history. His coaching career adds quite a bit to the football chapter of the latter.

With grandchildren strewn all the way from Ferrum to Northern Virginia, Norton and his wife, Lucy, enjoy a slow-paced lifestyle these days. He sat down at his spacious old home on the water in Deltaville this past week to look back, and he'll be in attendance today when he and others are inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in Portsmouth.

Norton, 78, retired as Ferrum's coach in 1993 and worked as a fishing guide for 10 years thereafter out of his Deltaville retirement home. He is a nature lover who equally enjoyed the mountains in the southwestern part of the state and the coast's waters, and had split his time between the two.

The Huntington, W.Va., native started his career as a teacher and coach at Powhatan High in 1954 and worked at just two places for a career record of 284-93-14.

Norton went 244-77-11 in 34 seasons at Ferrum between 1960 and 1993. His Panthers won four junior-college national championships and, after making the transition to NCAA Division III in 1985, appeared in those playoffs four times.

Norton coached 46 All-Americans at Ferrum, and 42 of his former players played professionally.

His career as a teacher and coach, first at Powhatan High School and later at Ferrum, was preceded by an Army assignment in Germany during the Korean War. His first season at Ferrum he was paid $3,700, and after the Panthers went undefeated, he got $4,000.

Norton started out teaching world history at Ferrum, but switched to fishing instruction when he became AD. He said his biggest reward has been seeing what his former players have become in life as adults.

Q: How much do you watch and keep up with football these days?

A: I watch football on television; that's the best seat in the house. I watch all college football. I love college football and I watch some professional football. College football would be my preference. I go to some of the Ferrum games every year.

Q: What drives you crazy about the modern game at any level?

A: I've seen it all, pretty much. When I came along they had leather helmets. There were no face masks. There were no mouthpieces. The goalposts were made of pipe. The game has changed so much. The equipment: The first helmet change was after World War II with the plastic helmets for the first time I'd ever seen them, which we called paratrooper helmets. The equipment got lighter with plastics, fiberglass or whatever. Of course the shoes then were leather, and the very best were kangaroo. When I first started coaching, the best shoes you could get were made of kangaroo. And now God knows how much a pair of hand-sewn kangaroo shoes would cost you. That would be out of the question now. To see the changes in equipment, the lane in basketball was six feet and if anybody dunked one, it probably would have drawn a crowd when I started. So, many changes in athletics since I began coaching.

Q: What has changed most since you stopped coaching?

A: Football has changed, pretty much in the last 20 years, when they legalized holding. For many years in the biggest part of my coaching career, if your hands were not in contact with your jersey when you were blocking, you were holding. Now the arms can be fully extended just as long as the hands are in the box and inside the shoulder pads. That's changed the game. Everybody's so much bigger. Players are bigger, and there are a lot of big people who are playing now that probably could not have played years ago because they were not athletic enough and couldn't do some things. Players were much smaller, but they couldn't hold. The biggest changes to me are that - they're all bigger and the zone block. I have lived through a great time in athletics and football. I remember the first T-formation. Everything was single-wing and double-wing. And then a guy named Clark Shaughnessy developed the T-formation. And then Tom Nugent developed the I-formation and that was the first I-formation. And then of course the pro formation, which spread the field out. And now people are really spreading the field out. People now throw the ball and some people throw it all the time. I was more of a run-oriented coach, but now the passing game dominates.

Q: How much have you enjoyed being retired?

A: When I retired, I had to really get myself away from football because I'd done that for 40 years and I love football. So when I came down here and retired here, I got my Coast Guard master's captain's license. I'm a lifetime fly fisherman. And I became an in-shore fishing guide for light tackle and fly fishing. I did that for 10 years and thoroughly enjoyed that, and I think that kept me from going crazy.

Q: Do you give (current Ferrum coach) Dave Davis advice?

A: You'd have to ask him that. That's why I had to get away from it - you want to tell people what to do and that's not good. Regardless of profession, it's a natural tendency to want to tell somebody something you think will help them. And I don't think there'll be any difference in a lawyer telling another lawyer, a doctor telling a doctor, or a writer telling a writer or anybody else. Somebody that has a lot of experience, sometimes people like that have a tendency to want to do that too much. So I try to stay away from that. If you ask him, he might tell you I bother him some. But I don't know.

Q: Do many people still contact you about football?

A: I still have some of that, especially references on people in coaching. I try to keep up with football. Anything that somebody writes about football, I try to get it. And I try to watch practices some. And I go to games and I watch television. I love football; football is my life. If you get into coaching for any other reason than you love it, you shouldn't do it - you'll never be successful. If you play for any other reason than you love to play, then you shouldn't play. You should do what you like to do, what you really enjoy, and you'll be more successful that way.

Q: Other than football, what have you spent the most time enjoying in your life?

A: Fly fishing, I'm a fly fisherman. I was never a great athlete, but if they had an all-state team for fly fishing, I might have been first-team.

Q: Do you ever think or dream about play-calling, practice, road trips, players or any of the other things that were part of your daily routine for so long?

A: I think about the past. I think about play-calling a little bit. Watching a game, I think about play-calling. I try to stay one play ahead. Automatically I think all coaches do, you almost stay a play ahead all the time: What are we going to do now? Football is a third-down game. That's what it amounts to: What are you going to do on third down, third and whatever? I think about things that I would do, and what I would differently and what they should do. I was in football and active over a great period of time, with many changes in football. VMI was the top collegiate team in the state when I went into coaching. (The state of) Virginia had never had a lot of great football teams that were nationally ranked. There had been some good teams, but no great teams. To see what's there today, to see teams in Virginia, like Virginia Tech and Virginia, ranked in the top 10. Virginia has always had great football players, especially in the Tidewater area. The 757 area code, as everybody talks about, that's the place where a lot of the great players have come from - this particular section of Virginia here. We had a lot at Ferrum from this area who were great players. But to see the football in Virginia reach a point where it's as good as anywhere in the country, and accepted as such.

Q: At Ferrum you were kind of far from the shore, so how did you keep up this fishing?

A: Ferrum is a beautiful place with a truly magnificent campus. This time of year, it's absolutely beautiful. There were native trout streams within 11 miles of the college. The Smith River, where the largest brown trout ever caught in the state was caught. I like to fly fish. I like to turkey hunt. I love the outdoors; I love wild things. It was a place that I never went to work a day in my life; I never felt like I was going to work. I had two jobs in my life, not counting guiding. I started coaching at Powhatan County High School. We had 130 in high school, (grades) eight through 12, girls and boys in 1954. To be able to coach in five different decades - '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s - and to see all these changes. But Ferrum was everything that I liked. It was an outdoor place, there were friendly people, we were fortunate enough to be successful early and so we got good support from the community. I never felt like I was going to work. I looked forward to getting up every morning. I had breakfast check for the football players every morning at 7:15. They had to be there or I ran them to the top of a mountain. (Laughing) I probably should be in the penitentiary. «