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Iowa HS football coach shot and killed in the weight room

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Gutter, Jun 24, 2009.

  1. NoOneLikesUs

    NoOneLikesUs Active Member

    Sounds like a complete wack job. I would also be curious as to whether he used steroids when he played.
     
  2. D-3 Fan

    D-3 Fan Well-Known Member

    Shockey, I haven't had a chance to respond until now, but I wanted to reply to your quote above.

    The Beckers are not going anywhere, as long as the Thomas family says so. If the Thomases says pray for the Beckers, everyone in Parkersburg will pray and support the Beckers, regardless how they feel about Mark Becker. Lee Jenkins piece in SI confirmed what us locals have said about it from the start: his family did everything to get him help, even Coach T.

    Those who think the Beckers should leave are the ones who have never been in that town. I have and I have friends who lived and played there I talk to on a weekly basis.

    Punishing the family for the act of one is useless and it does not, under no circumstances, define a family as being messed-up.

    I vaguely remember Becker when he attended one semester at Wartburg College, my alma mater. I was the football team manager from '94-'98, where we had several kids from AP on the team.

    NoOneLikeUs, if Thomas knew that any one of his kids was using steroids, they would never, ever see one nanosecond of the field.

    It's clear that something snapped in Becker between the weekend in C.F. and Wednesday morning when he arrived at the barn (weight room).
     
  3. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    Well, glad to see the community is not painting the entire family with a broad brush. Gotta be terribly hard on them, too.
     
  4. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

    I read the Jenkins piece on the plane the other day and it doesn't go into how the kid was apprehended, whether he turned himself in, or what. Just that there was chaos.

    The stuff about the grass was good. I used to know a coach who was fanatical about picking crabgrass out of the field. It was like a Zen abstraction for him more than any kind of maintenance.
     
  5. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    SI piece also mentioned that Becker's younger is on current team.
     
  6. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

  7. Football_Bat

    Football_Bat Well-Known Member

    Insanity defense?
     
  8. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    Story didn't say, but it's got to be something along those lines. Everything previous to this pointed to a pretty open-and-shut case, IIRC.
     
  9. WS

    WS Member

    I hope the legal system does the right thing.
     
  10. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    Iowa doesn't have the death penalty.
     
  11. WS

    WS Member

    Damn, well, I'm sure he'll get nice meals every day for the rest of his life.
     
  12. D-3 Fan

    D-3 Fan Well-Known Member

    NY Times update on A-P. Shockey, I was right: the Thomases and everyone in town is supporting the Beckers as much as everyone is supporting the Thomases.

    That's the right thing to do.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21coach.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

    A few things: younger son Aaron left Class 3-A Union Community HS to be AD at A-P. Union was classy and understood that if Aaron wanted to head back, they would support him 150% to head back home. Older son Todd, is a financial planner in Cedar Falls, will move his family back to Parkersburg (he'll commute to CF for work).

    You know, being a life-long Iowan, there's something about living here that makes you stop and think about how we deal with things like tragedy. It's so easy for people to point fingers, meltdown, and do things out of emotion. I think us Iowans, in general, has done a pretty damn good job of taking care of each other with civility and grace amid bad things.

    For Parkersburg and A-P, they have lead by example, which makes them special in more ways than one.
     
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