SACCO: With win No. 100 looming, business as usual for R’heads’ Bell

GREENVILLE

Dickie Bell didn’t need someone to come in his hole-in-the-wall office and tell the Riverheads boys soccer coach that he was one win away from 100 (though, someone did).

He figured, after all, that if you stay at a school for nine or 10 years and your program is fairly successful – and, yes, we’ll call four district titles and one state Final Four appearance “successful” – that, at some point, you’d reach the magic number.

And Monday, on the eve of what could be his 100th win when the Gladiators take the pitch tonight against James River in Greenville, it was business as usual for a guy who turns red in the face no more than five minutes into a match. Some call it being a hot head. Others call it being a rabble-rousing coach. For Bell, it’s just that kind of intensity that got him to where he is today and, more importantly to the 62-year-old, has put Gladiator soccer on the map.

“Every year I say I’m going to be a little calmer, a little gentler” he says, leaning back in his chair and brushing aside his salt-and-pepper hair (which is more salt than pepper these days). “But I’m just so competitive by nature.”

On the soccer pitch, it’s raised some eyebrows. But his razor’s-edge coaching style is all to protect the players that Bell credits for all 99 of his wins.

That’s just Bell.

That’s just soccer at Riverheads, a school known more for football than futbol. But the formula for the sport’s success at that dusty little school located a blown-tire roll away from Interstate 81 is no different than its shoulder-pad wearing big brother.

“The fun for me is being able to get those kids to come together as a team,” Bell says. “To try to get them to buy into what we’re doing.”

Bell, who moonlights as a Staunton city councilman, has always used sports as the proverbial life lesson. An extension, if you will, of the high school classroom. And, in high school, it’s not all about addition and subtraction and subject-verb agreement. Those four years are, after all, the most formative years of maturation. Bell relishes the opportunity to watch the players matriculate in front of his eyes.

Sports “is more a vehicle,” he says. “A means to an end. I want them to learn about teamwork. About having each other’s backs.”

Those things, he says, are what they’ll take from the experience when they can’t play soccer anymore.

What Bell has taken as he nears 100 are just as important.

In typical coach-speak, he says he remembers the losses more than the wins. Especially in the early years when, before that 2007 team broke through to the Group A Final Four in Radford, the team was a plastic spike away from coming together.

“When I stop to think back,” Bell says, sinking further into the back of his chair, “we were so close so many times. We really thought we were going to really get over the hump.”

They would. And that spark came in 2004, when Bell threw six freshmen into the fire, started them from the get-go and watched the growth begin.

“Those kids got focused once they got over the jitters, and they stayed focused for four years,” Bell says.

The culmination of that focus was the Final Four berth in 2007. Those Gladiators lost to eventual state champ Radford in the semifinals. But, if you talk to Bell, it sounds like they won the whole darn thing.

“We want them to be able to step between the lines with a healthy respect for the game and healthy respect for each other,” he says. “I never worry about the outcome. If you do all you can do, and you still lose, then what more can you ask for?”

Today’s game starts at 5:30 p.m. and, if the Gladiators pick up the win, just expect the same old Bell around 7 or so. His celebration, to say the least, could put Eeyore asleep.

“I’ll call you guys, tell you the score and then probably start thinking about Friday,” he says.

That’s called business as usual, right?

“Pretty much.”