Wednesday, September 5, 2001
A coach and a son
Phil and Cody Danaher show the pain of an early E-E score in this old photograph. Victory soon would follow.
By Richard Tijerina
Caller-Times
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George Tuley/Caller-Times file
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Calallen QB Cody Danaher (left) and coach Phil Danaher (right) react to an early E-E score during a 1991 playoff game.
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You are looking at two men, a father and his son, a coach and his quarterback, each lost in their own separate worlds. Phil and Cody Danaher couldn't be much closer than they are, and yet, at this moment, they couldn't be much further, either.
It is a little past 7:30 p.m., Nov. 22, 1991, on a crisp November night with a breeze blowing into Wildcat Stadium. And Phil Danaher, head coach at Calallen High School, and Cody Danaher, his oldest son and the team's senior quarterback, are trying to find answers. Quickly.
It is a Class 4A area playoff game, and Edcouch-Elsa - a Rio Grande Valley team not so far away from where Phil Danaher grew up playing high school ball in Harlingen - is doing the unthinkable. The Yellowjackets, which entered the game against the undefeated and state-ranked Wildcats with a 6-4 record, are putting the finishing touches on an 11-play, 76-yard drive to open the game.
Within moments of this photograph - a reflective, intimate moment between father and son snapped by Caller-Times staff photographer George Tuley - the score would become Yellowjackets 7, Wildcats 0.
This is Calallen, isn't it?
Danaher the coach is busy in thought. Did his team take a Valley team too lightly this week? What can he tell his players before they take the field on offense? Danaher the quarterback is busy, too, lost in X's and O's. Just get out there and move the ball, he's thinking, because the points will come.
There was, of course, little need to worry. Calallen rebounded from Edcouch-Elsa's surprising start and won with ease, 55-20.
This game, this moment, was just a blip in time for Phil and Cody Danaher, a second's worth of deep reflection caught on film in a 12-2 season full of high points.
Ray edged Calallen by two points in the season opener that fall, but the Wildcats rattled off game after game of impressive wins. Ten years later, you tend to forget the 34-20, 46-7, 50-0, 60-14, 63-14 and 52-7 victories.
"What is the old saying?" Phil Danaher said, "'A winner knows he can't lose. But a loser wonders if he can win.'"
Phil and Cody Danaher reunited recently in the Calallen coaching offices to reflect on the photograph. It was a time for the two of them to shed their father-son bond and talk again as a coach and quarterback. But it also was a time for them to forget for a moment that they were player and coach, and remember just how sweet it was to spend Friday nights in the fall with each other.
Calallen was there that night either to continue its steady progression from Corpus Christi-area power to state-semifinal fixture, or to fall from playoff grace for the first time to a team from the Rio Grande Valley.
Cody Danaher was there to complete his career as Phil Danaher's quarterback. When Cody was a baby, Phil one day found a pecan outside the Danaher home, took a black marker and carefully drew the seams of a football on it.
He then walked to Cody, playing in his crib, and placed the pecan in his son's hand. "Get used to the feel of this," the father said to the son.
Was that Edcouch-Elsa game really just 10 years ago? The time between that November night and now has rushed by for Cody Danaher, who graduated in 1992 and played football for the University of Texas, making his mark as a special teams player.
The last decade of Phil Danaher's life has been spent growing the Wildcats into a perennial state power. Calallen and the state semifinals go hand-in-hand now. It seems that only the opponents change.
Cody Danaher still lives in Austin, where he works as a financial consultant for an Austin investment firm specializing in retirement planning. He still plays football - flag football, anyway - and among his teammates are Colby Miller (who was on the field as a Calallen defensive tackle during that opening touchdown drive) and Wes Danaher, the youngest of Phil's sons.
Nov. 22, 1991 seems like an eternity ago. This was before Calallen's string of classic state semifinal games with La Marque. This was before Wes Danaher became one of the state's most prolific rushers ever. All there was at this moment was a coach, a quarterback and two defensive coaches in the background trying to figure out what was happening to the Calallen defense.
"There wasn't concern so much as disappointment, maybe," Phil Danaher said. "I know what I'm thinking right there. We've got to get down and get the momentum changed. They didn't get down. Our players on the sidelines were probably thinking in the back of their heads, 'Dadgummit. This is what coach was telling us.'"
Danaher had spent the week preaching a coach's favorite mantra: do not underestimate your opponent. It might have fallen on deaf ears.
"To an extent, we probably did take them lightly. They were from the Valley," Cody Danaher said.
"I cautioned you about that," Phil Danaher said.
And yet, here they were: father and son, faced with the prospect of their high school days together ending prematurely, just two weeks into the playoffs.
"I was just ready to get out on the field," Cody Danaher said. "I always knew we would score points. I never worried too much about the defense. You've got to understand. Playing here, you go into every single game thinking it's going to be a win."
It was Edcouch-Elsa quarterback Ricky Ochoa's touchdown pass to Armando Aguilar that sent the Wildcats into quick reality, just after this photograph. Even as the Yellowjacket faithful roared on the other half of Wildcat Stadium, Calallen players and coaches readied themselves.
Late in the first quarter, Calallen would tie the game on a 19-yard touchdown run from fullback Chester Bullard, who holds the distinction of wearing the No. 31 jersey the season before Wes Danaher inherited it.
From there, it was a flurry of Cody Danaher runs, Michael Booker gains and Calallen touchdowns. The Wildcats scored three times in the second quarter alone - including two touchdowns by Cody Danaher - and cruised into halftime with a 27-7 lead. The game basically ended in the second quarter.
That night against Edcouch-Elsa, Danaher transcended the role of high school quarterback and led with authority, smoothly guiding Calallen back from its early deficit. But it was Booker, coming back after missing the team's final three regular-season games, who received most of the headlines the next morning. A 243-yard rushing night in a playoff game will do that for you.
That all seems like a faraway result from Danaher and Danaher, side by side, early in the game. Wildcats players "didn't get down when Edcouch came out and scored that opening touchdown," Phil Danaher would say after the game. Ten years later, he still says that is true.
What you are seeing, father and son maintain, is concentration. Not panic.
A lot has happened to the four men in this photograph since that November night. Phil Danaher has become one of Texas' most successful high school coaches. Cody capped his Calallen career by playing for the Longhorns. Steve Campbell (on the right in the background) is still Phil Danaher's defensive coordinator, and Robert Carr (on the left), later left Calallen to become head coach at Robstown.
"I miss those years," Phil Danaher said. "There's not a bigger honor or more of a pleasure than working with your young kids. You've prepared them all their years to be football players. Then when they get there, it was a flash. They were gone. And the only thing from there on out is the memories."
Contact Sports Editor Richard Tijerina at 886-3745 or tijerinar@caller.com
