SACCO: Not a birthday for Pride’s Bell, just a win total

GREENVILLE

She looked like a soccer player herself. But soccer players don’t carry star-shaped Mylar balloons with “100” written on them. Right?

Nor do they wear baby blue, fluffy winter coats. Correct?

But Anne Bell deftly avoided shaking hands instead of defenders and split a pair of ball boys carrying bags to get to her goal. Finally she found him — Riverheads boys coach Dickie Bell — handed him the balloons and wrapped him up in a hug.

A big hug. A long hug. The kind of hug that only comes with 27 years of marriage (it will be 28 this June) and watching your husband reach a milestone.

It was a quiet moment on the Riverheads pitch amid the maelstrom of departing players and the girls team heading onto the field for their match against James River. It wasn’t until coach Bell’s Gladiators began to whoop it up about the public display of affection that the coach and his wife ended their embrace.

After the match, a 6-1 win over James River that pushed the Gladiators’ record to 5-0 on the season, all Bell wanted to talk about was his players. His team. The win.

All the players wanted to talk about was Bell and being part of the coach’s 100-win milestone at the high school.

“It’s exciting to hear about coach Bell getting 100 wins,” said junior Tate Burkholder, who scored twice in the win. “We love him. We’re glad he’s here. We’re just happy to be a part of it.”

Senior Ben Williams echoed the sentiment.

“Just glad to be a part of it,” he said.

Both Burkholder and Williams have been a part of it for a while. Burkholder — a jackrabbit-quick scoring threat — was shagging balls along the sidelines when he was in fourth grade and his brothers were playing for Bell.

“All the home games,” Burkholder said. “I loved every minute of it.”

These days, Burkholder is still shagging balls. But he’s not throwing them back onto the field, he’s corralling them as he heads toward the goal and blasting them into the net. He’s making a name for himself, Bell said.

“He’s an incredible kid,” he said. “Nobody works harder. Nobody plays harder.”

And nobody had to wait as long as Burkholder, who spent most of the preseason practice time on the basketball court with the Group A tournament-bound team.

“He walked off the court and onto the pitch with no practice,” Bell said, still holding onto those balloons. “And two hours later, he was good as anybody we had out there.”

Williams joined Burkholder with a pair of goals in the match, with Burkholder assisting on Williams’ first.

The pair came within an eyelash of hooking up again late in the second half when Williams’ dribbler beat the keeper but licked the left post.

“Tate gave me a beautiful pass, all credit to him,” Williams said. “It felt OK leaving my foot and I could see it beat the keeper. But it couldn’t beat that post.”

Anne Bell didn’t have to deal with any of that as she wound her way around players trying to find her husband. After seeing “100” on the balloons, the team had a little fun with it.

“Somebody asked it that was my age,” coach Bell said with a laugh.

Burkholder kept the joke going as long as he could.

“Happy 100th birthday, coach,” he shouted in the locker room hallway.

Or 100th win.

Whichever.