After the glory: Ten years and a tragedy later, the memories that sustain
Eric Driskell’s first official act after the professional break of a lifetime led to a panicked phone call from his wife. This is back in 2010, in the spring, before anyone knew if he was up to replacing his friend, before Driskell and the players he loved so much won it all, and way before Driskell’s sudden death from a brain aneurysm shook their worlds.
Before all that, Driskell needed to write a letter. He’d just been hired as Blue Valley High’s football coach, and it’s impossible to explain how much it meant. That was Driskell’s school. He arrived as a freshman in the fall of 1988, a basketball player whose body would soon grow into an offensive guard’s.
He blocked for Steve Rampy’s teams, a little intimidated at first, all-in quickly after that and eventually part of Blue Valley’s first state championship. Then he went to Baker, then a job with KCP&L before Rampy asked him back to help coach the sophomore linemen.
Driskell said yes, and being back at his old high school took his heart. No more designing power line towers. He needed to teach. So he went back to Baker for his teaching license, which is where he fell in love with Kari, and isn’t it crazy how many twists we see in a lifetime?
Anyway, the letter. Driskell worked so hard on it. The parents in the Touchdown Club knew him, of course. Most wanted him to get the job; some even lobbied for him. But this was the beginning of a new relationship. No longer a try-hard lineman, no longer the hometown kid who came back to be an assistant, no longer most known as the biology teacher who had a smile for everyone in the hallway.
Now, he was the head coach. The place where the buck stopped. And his introduction had to be perfect. It was, too, and when Kari saw it in her inbox she beamed with pride. Wrote back right away. Said the administration picked the right man, that she was so proud, that she loved him.
Two seconds later, the panic. Then the phone call, interrupting Eric’s class.
“Oh (shoot),” she told him. “It went out to everyone.”
These are the moments that persist. The tackles and touchdowns and wins are the conversation, but the other stuff is what makes it complete.
This is a story about what those memories feel like 10 years later, when the coaches are a little grayer and the players are now adults and the coach it all revolved around is gone.
This is a sad story, then. But also a happy one. Sort of like life.
The guy who could carry it on
The first pass of the first game pushed the quarterback’s mom to life’s brink. Kyle Zimmerman had never played in a varsity game before, which meant he’d never thrown a varsity pass before, and when it was caught Barb Zimmerman stood to scream and cheer for her boy. And then she went down.
Doctors think an irregular heartbeat collided with the euphoria of the moment. Cardiac arrest, then a rush to the defibrillator. Someone had moved the machine from inside to the press box that day, and thank God. She’s still here.
“To this day they don’t think she has any heart issues,” Kyle said.
Nobody expected much from Blue Valley High that year. They’d lost seven games the year before, and a load of seniors from that team. The quarterback was new. The coach was new. So, no. Nobody expected much. Nobody outside the program, anyway.
Blue Valley is one of those schools where football means more, where the faces change but the expectations don’t. So they sweated through summer workouts and worked off the template Rampy created, with some updates.
“He was the only guy who could carry on what we built there,” Rampy said.
Rampy was so intense he once exiled himself to coaching from the press box, because the kids weren’t responding and he couldn’t hide who he is. Driskell could yell, but he was also quicker to hug, and something about that subtle change and that specific group created magic.
“I don’t know that he ever met anybody that didn’t eventually end up liking him,” said Paul Brown, an assistant on that team who’d interviewed for the head job. “He just drew you in.”
Those things have a way of multiplying. Driskell trusted his players, who in turn trusted him. The linemen blocked with purpose, each boy knowing that if he missed he’d be the only one. Their coach had their back, and they wanted the same to be true in reverse.
Driskell was not about X’s and O’s. He understood schemes and play calling and all that but his genius was in finding time for everyone. His edge as a leader came from his players going harder than the guy on the other side. They did this together, and the best example may be from the state semifinal game against Gardner-Edgerton.
This was Bubba Starling’s senior year, and by then the future Kansas City Royals outfielder was something like a folk hero, the three-sport star who would choose $7.5 million as the fifth overall pick in the baseball draft over a scholarship to play quarterback at Nebraska.
Starling and Gardner beat Blue Valley by three touchdowns in the regular season, and the biggest crowd he’d ever seen came to watch the playoff rematch at Blue Valley. It felt like the state championship was on the line.
“It had that vibe to it,” Starling said.
Even all these years later Starling remembers the names of Blue Valley linebackers, and the fumbled punt that set up a score, and the stacked boxes that made it tough to run. He still wishes they threw the ball more that day.
“Best football game I’ve ever seen,” said Steve Foote, whose son Kevin played safety.
Starling ran for 395 yards but the defining moment came late, with him on the sideline. Blue Valley led, and was melting the clock to minimize Starling’s chances. Gardner called timeout and Blue Valley’s players gathered around Driskell.
“Do you want to keep running it, or do you want to go for the throat?” he asked.
Driskell knew the answer, of course. He just wanted to hear them say it. The buy-in. The relationships. Getting his guys to play a little harder than the guy across. This was his genius.
GO FOR THE THROAT! they screamed.
The next snap, Zimmerman faked the handoff and threw deep to Jacob McDermott. Blue Valley’s receivers had beaten Gardner’s secondary consistently, and the play-action made it even easier. Touchdown, and eventually a 45-42 victory.
That was Driskell’s move, over and over and over again. Player empowerment. Coach-athlete partnerships. He did it again the next week, just before halftime of the state championship. He called timeout near the goal line and wasn’t sure what play to call.
“Why don’t you guys run that play you always run on Thursdays?” a lineman asked.
All season, as the defense did its day-before walkthroughs, the offense gathered on the other end of the field. It was informal, no coaches, just messing around. But they came up with this route, a double move where the receiver slants toward the middle of the field before pivoting out toward the sideline.
Driskell had no idea. He’d never seen the play run, but here they were, biggest game of the season, so why not?
“If you guys think it’ll work, yeah, let’s do it,” he said.
They did. It worked. And 90 minutes or so later they won 35-14, the game so secure that Driskell spent the last few minutes determined to avoid the Gatorade bath.
That night, the coaches smoked cigars, the parents celebrated over a few beers, and the players sat around a bonfire and talked about the happiest moment of most of their lives.
Ten years, gone like that.
“I miss those days when you don’t have any worries except talking about football,” Newell said.
A memory for Coach D
The memories are different now. Of course they are. How could it be any other way? Driskell collapsed while speaking at a coaches banquet. The aneurysm took his life, and shook a community. It changed lives.
By now, the guys from that team have grown into adults. Jobs. Responsibilities. Bills. Some are married, some are homeowners. Ten years. The memories can feel fresh, until you think of all that’s happened between then and now.
“I look at it as I’m glad we were able to give Coach D that memory of us for his first season,” Zimmerman said.
Theirs are the happiest memories. The night before games, the players got together for haircuts and movies. The dads got together at a sports bar. The night after, the spot was Coach’s or Freddie T’s. Foote remembers changing the chalk lettering on the back window of his car from “WIN STATE” to “WON STATE.”
A million snapshots like that, all of them pixels in a broader picture they made together. Happy memories, yes, but also memories that feel a little different with time.
Eric Driskell lived a big life. He loved his wife and daughters, worked a job that felt like a dream, and won five state championships as a player or coach at Blue Valley High. There is no telling how many kids live better lives with his help, from all-state linemen to AP biology students to backups who never played.
That was where Eric mattered. He made time for everyone, without consideration of what they could do for him. He always showed up, Kari said, under the Friday night lights and with a smile in the hallways. He did that intentionally, by the way. He told friends they could not know what a kid was going through at home, and which one needed that smile.
The world was a little better with Coach D in it, and it remains at least a little better with those memories. Ten years later, and the tears still come when Newell talks about his coach.
“You miss people when you can’t see them anymore, you know?” he said. “I never think back to that season without starting with him. It’s never, ‘Oh, that play,’ or, ‘Oh, that game.’ It’s always, ‘Oh, Coach D,’ and then something about a game.’”
Because he loved it
Rachel Driskell is 15 now. She goes forward now without her father but with football. That part stayed, the football. She loves it, at least in part because he loved it.
She went to Blue Valley last year, just like her dad dreamed. But it was too much. Those hallways were her father’s. He was supposed to be there with Rachel and her younger sister someday.
Eric is everywhere in that school — in every corner, Kari says — and it was too much for Rachel. So she’s at Blue Valley North now, a sophomore and a manager on the football team.
That was her idea, too. The football stayed, so when Rachel transferred she called the coach, who didn’t really have a spot for her but made one anyway. She does the clock, water, errands, whatever is needed.
BV North has a heck of a team this year, too — 7-2 and playing Derby for the Kansas Class 6A championship on Saturday. One more state championship game with a Driskell. Three Driskells, actually. Kari and her younger daughter will be there to support, along with the man Kari is dating.
Being a coach’s wife can be a full-time job, and one that Kari now calls “an old life.” This will be the first state championship she’s watched without Eric. She used to go as a wife, now she’ll be there as a mother.
The memories are forever. But life keeps moving on, too.
This story was originally published November 26, 2020 at 5:00 AM.