Music for the matches: High school athletes gain motivation from tunes

Josh Crowell has seen Louden Swain wrestle in the big match a few times. Swain was the central character -- played by Matthew Modine -- in the 1985 film "Vision Quest," a movie that married a high school sport to a piece of music like no other before or since.

At a dramatic point in the movie where Swain prepares for a showdown with an unbeaten, state-ranked wrestler named Shute, Red Ryder's "Lunatic Fringe" sets the mood.

The song became a prematch must in high school gyms throughout the country.

"It was kind of a big song when the movie first came out," said Crowell, who coaches the Central High School wrestling team. "That one is not played as much before matches unless a kid owns the movie or rents the movie. Back when I was in high school, we liked some of that kind of stuff. Lately, the kids have their own tastes and their own likes and dislikes."

Their music has changed but high school athletes still make a habit of turning to the tunes to find the right attitude before an important contest.

Jackson graduate Cody Rouse, a state champion wrestler this past winter, listened to Disturbed's "The Sickness" before his matches.

The St. Vincent football team jammed in the locker room to AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" on the way to a state title.

And the Notre Dame boys basketball team had senior guard Frankie Ellis providing some of his own rap before heading out of the locker room on its run to the final four.

"I think it's different for different individuals, but music can be a motivational tool," Jackson wrestling coach Steve Wachter said. "And it's different music for each individual. I'd say over half listen to something before they wrestle. I think most athletes do."

Added Crowell: "You can get better production, and it gets the kids in tune with what we're doing. Even the principal has music he likes to listen to when doing paperwork."

Various types of music can be used for different circumstances and sports. Some coaches allow it to be used in practices, many allow music or movies on personal media devices for road trips. Locker rooms may be filled with loud music before a game. And then there's music used in the gymnasium itself to fire up players and the crowd.

Tuning up in practice

Crowell's Central wrestling team may have the most pumpin' practices, and that's by design.

Crowell said the program's wish list for the move into the new high school was a stereo system for the wrestling room. At the same time, Crowell said, an older couple in the district was trying to find a new home for a system they had bought for a relative.

"It's top of the line," he said. "It has a five-CD changer and big speakers with woofers and tweeters. We were pretty lucky.

"During practice, music plays the whole time. It's a good motivating tool. At the beginning of the season, we have a rule that the closest guy to the stereo turns down the volume when I have to tell them something. Later in the season, when we're doing drills, and the kids pretty much know what we want them to do, we use hand signals and a whistle to get them to look up. The music is nonstop and the kids flow from one thing to another. If it was going to be a hindrance, we wouldn't do something like that."

Wachter also allows music at practices, though at a lower volume level and restricted to the end of the season.

"The last three weeks, I think it kind of relaxes the kids," Wachter said. "It puts a different light on our practice. It fights all the monotony of practice and the length of it and how hard it is."

Wachter and Crowell both said the difficult mental test their sport provides -- especially in practices -- is a good reason to utilize tools such as music.

"Wrestling has a different type of practice," Crowell said, "and we use anything we can to keep kids motivated to do the hard work, whether it's music or mixing up the practices with skills games."

Perhaps it's no coincidence the song associated with wrestling is called "Lunatic Fringe."

But music also can be found at basketball practices, sometimes for relaxation and sometimes for strategy.

Central boys basketball coach Derek McCord said music plays during open gym sessions when his players are working on their shooting skills. "They like shooting with music," he said, "it energizes them."

And both Scott County Central boys basketball coach David Heeb and Kelly girls coach Rod McQuerter have used sound systems to produce the type of crowd noise that can distract players in a game.

Sometimes music can set a more "mellow" practice mood. Notre Dame's Bryce Willen, who likes to listen to rap when he prepares for basketball games, prefers punk rock to practice for the pole vault, in which he won the Class 3 state title this spring.

"I pull my car down by the track and put in some punk rock -- nothing too hard, just some background music," Willen said. "With pole vaulting, the more I thought about it and got into it, it didn't work out as well so I just kind of relaxed and that worked better."

Tunes for the trip

But Willen's stereo system was playing something completely different on the drive to the gym during basketball season.

"I had a CD I played in the car on the way to every home game," Willen said. "That was just my thing. It was mostly kind of yelling; I wouldn't call it music. It was hard rock and stuff I wouldn't listen to except to get ready to play."

Willen said he would use mental imaging -- envisioning himself making big plays -- while listening to a soundtrack, most notably Eminem's "Till I Collapse."

Bus rides, however, have gotten quieter over the years, particularly with the advent of personal devices.

"I can remember in my playing days, we had the boom box," said Heeb, who graduated from Scott County Central in 1996.

Some coaches never allowed portable stereos for road trips, but those that do allow music are probably happy for a variety of reasons that most athletes now can keep it themselves.

"We have a rule that they can bring their own and keep it to themselves," Central swimming coach Dayna Powell said. "A few times, there's a song that might go with a team and we'll let them play that. A few years ago, one of my teams played James Taylor's 'Greatest Hits.' That was for the relaxing road trip kind of thing."

Members of McCord's Central boys basketball team can listen to the bus radio following a victory, but the rides are quiet following defeats and en route to games.

"We like it to be quiet and focused," McCord said. "Each kid gets motivated in his own way before a game, as long as they're not disturbing anyone else. Most of the kids have headphones and some have DVD players. We can put the game tapes on DVDs and you might have a kid looking at that on the bus."

The Kelly softball team jammed the tunes on the bus ride from Benton to Columbia, where it won the Class 2 state softball championship in the fall. Coach Rhonda Ratledge still is trying to get Gretchen Wilson's "Redneck Woman" out of her head.

"They played a mix of stuff nonstop from the school all way to Columbia," Ratledge said. "We had a good bus driver. He put up with a lot."

The Hawks' musical tastes became as much a part of their ritual as putting on their gloves.

"We listened to the same CD before every game," said recent Kelly graduate Kelly Essner. "We were superstitious and we couldn't change the CD or the order of the songs."

Essner said she had forgotten what the team listened to, but when told Ratledge remembered "Redneck Woman," she said, "Yeah, we listened to that one a lot. That and 'Here for the Party,' too. Even Coach Rat got into it."

"You've got to have fun when you made it that far," Ratledge said.

Rockin' locker rooms

Athletes often listen to music in those final moments before game time, when they're gathered in the locker room before the final motivational speech. And that's the best time to rock.

Danny Rellergert, who was a senior on St. Vincent's Class 1 state championship football team last fall, said the Indians played AC/DC, Metallica and other hard rock in the locker room.

"Something to get you pumped up and yelling and screaming," he said.

Essner said the Kelly girls basketball team did likewise with rap music.

"We'd try to get pumped up and get everyone singing along and dancing," she said. "You have to get more pumped up for basketball [than softball]."

Willen said the Notre Dame boys basketball team made its own music.

"A lot of times toward the end of the season, a couple of guys would put down a beat and [senior guard] Frankie Ellis would always freestyle," Willen said, "and that would get everyone pumped up."

In an individual sport like wrestling, each athlete has a chance to get into his own zone. Rouse said he would listen to music about 10 or 15 minutes before his matches.

"Disturbed's 'The Sickness' is not bad to listen to before you wrestle," said Rouse, who won the Class 4 state championship at 152 pounds with a 52-0 record.

Show Time

And then there's the music that fills the gymnasium right before game time, firing up both athletes and fans.

One of the more interesting entrances was the Bell City boys basketball team's pregrame bagpipes in its state championship season of 2003-04.

"That group of seniors just liked the bagpipes," said Heeb, who coached the team to two championships. "They were real goofy, and they said they wanted to run out to bagpipes. It was their senior year and I told them they could do it. It was an inside joke because who would run out to bagpipes."

Heeb also remembers other schools' pregame routines from his playing days.

"Central played 'Eye of the Tiger' for years," Heeb said. "I used to love the Oran Eagles, when they had Nathan Seyer and Ryne Wood and that team ran out to something like AC/DC and the crowd went wild when they came out. It fit the personality of the team, and I thought that was pretty cool.

"It's part of the homecourt advantage, and it gets kids fired up."

Heeb, about to start his first year at Scott County Central, said he has put together some pregame music mixes in the past for his teams.

"I have editing stuff at home and we've mixed in some [radio] game calls," he said. "You can do some neat stuff with the technology that's out there."

Wachter said he has heard the Blue Springs wrestling matches feature individual mixes for each wrestler.

"I haven't been there but I've heard that's one of the best," Wachter said. "Each wrestler has his own individual music that they play for them when they go to the mat. One of the assistants burns CDs for them. Their gym has a good sound system. That's a pretty neat idea, and it really fires them up."

The Central coaches said their gym also has a good sound system, but it's not utilized for a fancy pregame show.

"I like it when our band is playing at our games," McCord said. "We have one of the top dance teams in the state, we have tremendous cheerleaders -- it all adds to the atmosphere."

Crowell, who also has heard of fancy wrestling intros from Tiger Classic participant CBC of Memphis, said there are a couple reasons Central doesn't blare music before each wrestling match in prematch ceremony.

"We could end up losing fans," he said. "There's some schools that do it, and we'd like to look into it, but we don't have the resources. I've been to [Chicago] Bulls and [St. Louis] Rams games and seen the mist and lasers, and it'd be neat to be at a high school that could do that, but we're at a school where kids are paying just to participate. It's hard to come out to a big production like that. Being a public school, we have budgets to deal with."

Still, it can be reassuring for an athlete to enter a contest to a piece of music that brings peace of mind. Powell thought back to a recent boys state swimming meet, when Central's boys 200-meter freestyle team earned all-state honors with a top-eight finish.

"They play music before each event when the swimmers come out," Powell said. "One year they played 'Star Wars' and Clay Schermann, who was on the 200 freestyle, was into 'Star Wars.' He said, 'I knew we were going to do well when I heard that come on.'"