Chaffee celebrates 25-year anniversary of state title

Mick Wessel, the only football coach in Chaffee history to lead the Red Devils to the state playoffs, used to do almost anything to motivate his team to earn a victory.

Wessel, the Red Devils head coach from 1978 to 1993, told his players before one game in the 1980s that if they were to win he would eat a worm at the next practice.

"I've done some crazy things in my life, and eating a worm on the 50-yard line was one of them," Wessel said.

Wessel led the Red Devils to their only three postseason berths in 1978, 1979 and 1983. The 1983 team won the Missouri Class 1 state title.

During the span when Wessel's Red Devils appeared in three playoffs in six years, he had three other well-known local coaches on his staff who joined him in rebuilding and rejuvenating the Chaffee program that had posted a 7-48 record from 1970 to 1975.

Larry Cleair, who is now the track and cross country coach at Saxony Lutheran; Rick Chastain, who later became head football coach at Perryville High School and now serves as athletic director at Cairo High School in Cairo, Ill.; and Terry Glenzy, Chaffee's athletic director and track coach, all were on Wessel's staff.

The 1983 team will be honored in a 25-year anniversary ceremony before Chaffee's 7 p.m. homecoming game tonight against East Prairie.

Coach Mick Wessel of the 1983 Chaffee football team riding on a float along with his players during the Chaffee homecoming parade.

Wessel, Glenzy, Cleair and Chastain became good friends during the late 1970s and early 1980s while helping to turn around the Chaffee program.

They said the 1983 team always will be important to them because it was not nearly the most physical or athletic team they coached, but it used intelligence and guts to win.

The coaches took their work seriously, but also had fun along the way. They said the years were some of the best times they had in their careers.

"I really do miss the camaraderie because you don't see those types of thing in today's coaching staffs," Chastain said.

Rebuilding the program

Glenzy was the first of the four coaches to arrive at Chaffee.

He began teaching, serving as head track coach and working as assistant football coach at the school in 1967 after graduating from Southeast Missouri Sate.

Glenzy, who played football for Southeast until suffering a career-ending knee injury his sophomore year, was promoted to head football coach at Chaffee in 1970.

Glenzy remained in that position until the end of the 1972 season, when he said the school board decided to find someone else to lead the team.

The Red Devils were 3-24 during the stretch when Glenzy was coach.

Glenzy admitted those were difficult years, but he decided to remain with the football team as an assistant coach in 1973. Wessel joined Glenzy's staff after graduating from Southeast in January of 1971, but he did not return in 1973, a year when the the Red Devils posted an 0-9 record.

After the winless 1973 season, the school again searched for a new coach and was able to hire Charlie Vickery.

All the coaches pointed to the 1974 season as when the rebuilding process began.

It was then that the coaching staff added a junior high school football program to prepare seventh and eighth graders for high school football.

Vickery also was able to get Glenzy and Wessel to join his staff.

"I think when we got him [Vickery], it changed everything." Glenzy said.

Glenzy said Vickery and Wessel started holding junior high practices before school and varsity practices after school.

"That was the beginning of the turnaround," Wessel said.

Wessel also said better athletes started to come through the program.

"We went for a period of six, seven or eight years there where we had some good athletes come through," Wessel said. "And at a 1A school, that's very, very important."

After Vickery went 4-15 overall in his first two seasons, he led Chaffee to an 8-2 campaign in 1976 and a 4-5 record in 1977.

However, Vickery left to accept the head coaching position at Sikeston after the 1977 season, and the Red Devils again were without a coach.

But Vickery left Chaffee in good shape. The 1978 team had several seniors who had started since their freshman seasons, and having a junior high program was turning out better and more prepared football players.

Four of a kind

Wessel was promoted to head coach upon Vickery's departure.

The coaching staff added two new members over the next two years in Cleair, who joined in 1978, and Chastain, who joined in 1979.

Glenzy was the defensive coordinator. Chastain and Wessel were co-offensive coordinators, with Chastain calling plays and Wessel working with the offensive line.

Cleair helped out with the defensive line, special teams and led conditioning drills. Cleair and Chastain also began working with the junior high team before school.

"He let his assistants coach," Glenzy said about Wessel. "You were given a job and it was yours, and you could coach."

Shawn Spies, a lineman from the 1983 squad, said it is fascinating how the coaching staff operated. He said Wessel not only bonded the staff by allowing them to coach their positions, but also brought the staff together when important decisions needed to be made.

Tony Dalton was added to the coaching staff in 1983. Dalton, a volunteer assistant who coached at Chaffee only that one year, had played for Wessel in the late 1970s.

He was one of the best players to ever go through Chaffee and played his college football at the University of Mississippi.

Chastain said the coaches would hang out after games, spend time at Wessel's house watching game film and often played practical jokes on one another.

Chastain said there was a great deal of fun, like the time he hid Glenzy's football shoes. The next day, Chastain walked into the office and found his own football shoes nailed to his desk.

"We were always, all of us, doing something in a jovial way to each other," Chastain said. "That's what built the chemistry that we had. And we had great chemistry.

"[Wessel[']s] personality, behind the scenes, was, 'We're going to have a lot of fun as a coaching staff,'" Chastain added.

Yet the staff did expect a great deal out of their players.

Eric Glastetter, an offensive lineman and linebacker from the 1983 team, described the whole coaching staff as being very hard-nosed.

Spies recalled one time during a game against Portageville in 1983 that someone in the Red Devils' offensive huddle called a timeout because the player thought the team needed a rest. Wessel and the staff were displeased with the reasoning for the timeout and let the players know.

"They ran our butts off because we called a timeout," Spies said.

Glenzy said Wessel was a vocal coach, unlike Vickery who had a more laid-back approach.

"Mick was strict," Spies said. "Mick had my helmet yanked a lot and butt kicked. But after a while he was there for you."

The 1983 team

The coaching staff, anchored by Wessel, led the 1978 Chaffee team to the semifinals of the state playoffs. The 1979 team reached sectionals.

"We should have won the state in '78," Cleair said. "We just had one game ... where kids who don't normally make any mistakes were making mistakes."

After Chaffee earned its first two-playoff berths, it missed the playoffs in 1980, 1981 and 1982 with a combined record of 8-20.

Coaches said expectations were not high entering the 1983 season. The team had graduated many starters from the previous year.

Coaches said the 1983 team wasn't as physical and talented as the teams in 1978 and 1979. It had just three players who weighed more than 200 pounds.

But the coaches said the 1983 team was the smartest they had.

That factor certainly made coaching fun for Wessel, Chastain, Cleair and Glenzy, who were able to teach the players sophisticated plays on both sides of the ball.

"They were true student-athletes," Wessel said.

The players were intellegent in the classroom and on the field. They listened to the coaches and wanted to learn everything they could about the game.

"They were the smartest," Cleair said. "You had kids who could make defensive adjustments without a coaching having to tell them how to adjust to a different offensive set. It was fun coaching them because you didn't just have to hammer everything into them."

Coaches said the players always knew what they were doing and usually were in the correct spots.

Glenzy said his 1983 defense had at least 40 looks to use against opposing offenses. And Glastetter said Wessel and Chastain taught the offense how to react to certain defenses and change blocking schemes when they got to the line.

"We made calls at the line on our own depending on what the defense was lined up," Glastetter said. "They [the coaches] made it to where you had to know the game."

The intricate Chaffee defense recorded five straight shutouts from Week 5 to Week 9.

"I think we had 12 or 13 different defenses we'd be in," Spies said. "We'd be in a 5-3, 6-5. And there would be five different things in a 5-3 [Glenzy] had set up."

The coaches said another aspect of the 1983 team was their toughness. Wessel said everyone wanted to be on the field.

Wessel said two key players returned quickly from surgeries that year.

The coaches said they had players who did not have blazing speed, but they worked hard and learned how to get open for a reception.

Cleair said one of his favorite memories from the title game was when fullback David Rhoda injured his ankle but continued to play.

"There was just no doubt about it," Cleair said. "David was going to get into that game. ... And that's the kind of kids we had. They were willing to do whatever it took."

Cleair said having those type of players allowed the coaching staff to remain confident in its decisions. Cleair said he remembers one fourth-down play in the championship game in which the coaching staff did not hestitate in going for the first down. The coaches were confident the players would get the first down.

Far from glorious

The 1983 team lost two of its first three games. But the two losses were to strong teams -- Malden, which finished the season 7-3, and Portageville, which finished 8-2 and earned a trip to the state playoffs.

Chaffee won its final seven regular-season games, including a 6-0 victory against rival Scott City and an 8-6 triumph against St. Vincent to earn a trip to the state playoffs.

The Red Devils posted an 18-0 win over Appleton City in the quarterfinals, then defeated Adrain 14-10 in the semifinals to set up a meeting with Norborne in the Show Me Bowl.

In the title game, Norborne led 7-6 late in the fourth quarter, but Glastetter blocked a punt. Chaffee got good field position and drove for the winning touchdown with less than 2 minutes remaining. Chaffee won 13-7.

"We always found a way to win, and that's what we did in that game," Wessel said.

The epilogue

Chaffee began to struggle after the 1983 season. It has posted just four winning seasons since.

Chastain stayed with the program until 1985, when he headed to Perryville.

Cleair remained with the program through 1999, before enrolling in the master's program at Southeast, where he earned a graduate degree in mathematics.

Both Wessel and Glenzy stopped coaching football after the 1993 season. Glenzy returned a few years ago as an assistant when Vickery returned as head coach.

Wessel also worked as an assistant under Vickery two seasons ago. Wessel went 37-61 from 1984 to 1993.

Wessel and Cleair occasionally return to watch Chaffee play. Wessel said he could think of no better school than Chaffee to win Southeast Missouri's next state title.

But the coaches and players from 1983 know that season was one of a kind.

"What we had was special," Chastain said. "No matter how many championships are won in Southeast Missouri, or how many great achievements are made, you can never take away what we had at Chaffee. And that was tremendous."