MY DAD WORKS
AS MY DAD WORKS a medieval massager across the arch of my foot, he reminds me that long before there was any gold-medal glory or immortalized Hollywood moment, as in the movie Miracle, Rob McClanahan was a solid two-way forward at the University of Minnesota and one of the best all-around players in the country. The St. Paul native had smooth offensive skills but was also a determined and hardworking defensive player. In his three seasons at Minnesota, McClanahan had 108 points in just 121 games and led the team to an NCAA championship in the 1978–79 season.
“He didn’t shy away from the physical work and would give a hit or take a hit to make a play,” my dad says, his appreciation for McClanahan’s game clear. Despitehis impressive stats and leadership at Minnesota, however, McClanahan wasn’t immune to Brooks’s verbal skewers and mind games.
“I remember when I was a freshman and we lost to Lake Superior State,” Mc- Clanahan says with a laugh. Digging into his memory of his playing days at the University of Minnesota, he can only look back in amazement because of the occa- sional absurdity of the situation. “For three days straight all we did was Herbies. During that time, my teammate Tommy Vannelli said as we were skating, ‘Don’t let this bastard beat you.’ And he kept repeating it. ‘Don’t let this bastard beat you.’ For three days straight all we did was Herbies.”
Herbies are a now-notorious skating drill in which players start on the end goal line and skate to the blue line and back, then to the red line and back, then to the far blue line and back, and then finally to the far goal line and back. The drills are torturous and, of course, nicknamed after their most famous practitioner. But the brutal down-and-backs were only the beginning of Brooks’s conditioning. His men- tal drills were just as exhausting.
“There was always a goal. He always had a way of putting the carrot out there,” says Buzz Schneider, a talented and high-scoring forward from Babbitt, Minnesota, who played for Brooks at the University of Minnesota and was a key member of the famous Conehead Line on the 1980 Olympic team. “Herb would always say, ‘Yeah, you did that great, but . . . BUT . . .’ ”
If a Gopher hockey player was rewarded with playing time, he knew it could just as easily be taken away in an instant, and that created a never-ending teeter-totter of emotions. Complacency was Brooks’s enemy; he never wanted his players to relax and stay content. He wanted them to always keep working and always strive to get better. He achieved this by alternating his praise and punishment, tearing them down after victories, praising them after defeats, and skating them unmercifully after success. It fostered an atmosphere in which the players gave constant, steady physical effort to survive the turbulent mind games.
“The players never knew where they stood,” my dad says. He takes a brief pause from massaging my foot and lets out a small snort of exhaustion. Then he says, “The players were on the edge. They never knew whether they did a good job or they didn’t. Win or lose, you couldn’t tell.”
According to McClanahan, even walking into the locker room for practice was nerve-racking, because Brooks changed the players’ lines all the time. The players never knew where they were going to play or if they were going to play at all.
“We’d go to practice, and the jerseys were in different colors for the lines. He’d have different lines and change the lines constantly,” McClanahan says. “You never knew where you stood.”
DEEP DOWN, BROOKS CARED deeply for his players. He just hardly showed it.
“Brooks was a real smartass,” my dad says. “He’d walk by a player and say things like, ‘You’re playing worse and worse every day, and right now, you’re play- ing so bad it looks like the middle of next week.’ ” These comments were all by de- sign, though. One of the most critical aspects of Brooks’s success was that he was a master motivator. He knew that every player on the roster, no matter where he came from, no matter his background, had his own unique point of motivation buried deep inside. It was Brooks’s job to push that button, to get inside the player and motivate him so that he fulfilled his ultimate potential.
“Herbie never did anything without a purpose. Everything had a purpose, and that was the one thing he was a master at,” McClanahan says. “In those days, he held all the leverage. And ice time was the leverage. If you wanted to play, you had to suck it up and do whatever it took. Nothing was ever given.”
All the players had to abide—or else. Whether you were an all-American scoring machine or a fourth-line tough guy didn’t matter to Brooks. He expected every play- er to come to the rink with a hard hat and a lunch pail regardless of his talent or pedigree. Some players had a hard time with that. The University of Minnesota rou- tinely got the top players in the state every year. Most of these players had been the big men on campus in their respective corners of the state and were used to the privilege of being a star on their little pond, and that meant lots of accolades and ice time. But they learned quickly that Brooks wasn’t their friend and there were no more free handouts. He was their coach and teacher, and nothing more.
“There was always a certain wall between the players and Herb,” my dad says. “They never came over toward him and he never went over there. Brooks used a few whipping boys to send a message to the team.”
As the collegiate seasons progressed, Brooks conducted an ongoing experiment to find out which players were tough enough mentally to withstand his abuse. He
was weeding them out, one comment at a time, mentally picking at them to see who would rise and who would fall. And my dad was there the whole time, a crucial set of eyes and ears for Brooks’s mad-scientist experiments.
“He had the ability to turn things on and off like no tomorrow,” my dad says, still in disbelief at the aura Brooks created in the locker room. “Sometimes after he reamed a guy I would get a nod from Herbie, and I’d know that he wanted me to check on the player. He wanted to know how a player handled it after he yelled at them. . . . I’d check in with the player, see how he was doing, and give Herbie an update.”
When Brooks would find those players who were hardy enough to withstand his mind games, he’d use them to send messages to the rest of the team. He’d pub- licly harangue a specific guy on the bench or in the locker room for not playing hard enough, telling them they need to back-check more or play tougher on the walls. That gave the entire team something to think about.
0 comments: