Coaching more than football
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
It is days like these, when he flicks on CNN and glimpses U.S. jets streaking through the sky over Afghanistan, that Fisher DeBerry is reminded he holds one of the most unique jobs in college football.
Advertiser library photo • 1997
Every time he opens a newspaper to read that special operations forces are on the ground behind enemy lines, he understands why being the head coach at the Air Force Academy is a little different than most of the other 117 positions at the Division IA level.
Fisher DeBerry has been Air Force coach for 18 years.
"You don't always know which ones they might be, but you're sure some of your former players are over there in Afghanistan and you say a prayer for them every day," DeBerry said.
For 18 years now he's helped train Falcons to be the best football players they can be and a lot more, watching them leave the academy for missions in harm's way.
"We tell them that when they're here, they're part of a great team," DeBerry said. "And, when they leave, they're part of the best team in the world, the U.S. Air Force."
Even as the Falcons prepare to play the University of Hawai'i Saturday night at Aloha Stadium, some of DeBerry's seniors have been or will soon be getting their post-graduation assignments for flight school and special operations, among others.
"Though we haven't talked about it much, you know they are thinking about what's going on," DeBerry says. "They watch television — the upperclassmen can have televisions in their rooms. And they talk amongst themselves. They've got classmates, former teammates, out there, too."
Not long after the events of Sept. 11, the Falcons saw one of their team surgeons, former linebacker J.T. Tokish, called to duty.
Signs that the 17,000-acre academy isn't just another campus were all around the Falcons as they took the buses that would carry them to Denver International Airport for today's flight to Honolulu. If they have become used to the sight of the cemetery on the grounds or the B-52 by the North Gate, then the academywide lockdown and grim sentries toting M16s are reminders of the tenor of the times.
When DeBerry took over at the academy he sought an appropriate reminder of the mission he was helping to prepare the players for. So, above the door leading from the locker room to the practice field is a message borrowed from the pilots' room at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada: "Train the Way You Are Going to Fight."
Said DeBerry: "When your former players write and tell you something they learned from football has helped prepare them for what they have to do, then you feel like you've done your job."
