FAYETTEVILLE — Ray Tanner became a champion in these eyes two years before his South Carolina Gamecocks seized their first national championship by winning the College World Series on Tuesday night.
Often it’s defeat, not victory, that takes the true measure of a man. Two years ago, Ray Tanner measured a champion under circumstances that would drive Mother Teresa to profanity.
Tanner’s 2008 Gamecocks were coming to Fayetteville for a three game SEC series with Dave Van Horn’s Arkansas Razorbacks.
The Columbia, S.C., paper needed a stringer to cover the series.
Luckily, the paper must have selected alphabetically. So A for Allen was summoned to cover the Gamecocks like an Arkansas beat writer covers the Hogs.
Starting with Jacob House’s game-ending grand slam, Arkansas swept the series 12-11, 6-3 and 4-2.
The stories, of course, were all Arkansas. Without me representing a South Carolina paper, Tanner would have been home free other than just a couple of questions.
Instead he followed three heartbreaking losses by fielding repeated South Carolina questions from an Arkansas writer he didn’t know.
After each game, Tanner sat glaring and speechless.
“Give me a minute,” he grunted.
The South Carolina coach took a breath so deep he appeared ready to explode. Then he exhaled. In calm detail Tanner explained everything Arkansas did right and everything his Gamecocks did wrong.
Thoughtfully and courteously, he answered every second-guess, what-if question that goes with the territory of close defeats.
An amazing display of class under duress, which SEC coaches expect win or lose from their current 14-year league dean.
If Arkansas couldn’t win the College World Series, there seemed no coach Van Horn and his retired Arkansas coaching predecessor, Norm DeBriyn, would rather see win it all than Ray Tanner.
“I am really excited for him,” Van Horn said Wednesday. “I sent him a couple of text messages, one after the game last night and I sent him one after they got into the best-of-3 championship series. He has answered both of them. He’s the veteran of our league. We have become really good friends.”
DeBriyn and Tanner played annually for six years upon Tanner’s 1997 South Carolina arrival through DeBriyn’s 2002 postseason retirement.
“A very good coach,” DeBriyn said. “And a very good person who does it the right way.”
TRIUMPH FROM TRAGEDY
Speaking of doing it the right way, the Brandon Burlsworth Foundation is starting Year 10 of doing good works while a scholarship is underway in Jonesboro honoringthe late Christy Rankin, a Jonesboro native and Lady Razorbacks tennis star of the 1980s and a longtime tennis teaching professional.
The Burlsworth Foundation honors the late Brandon Burlsworth, the Razorbacks football All-American who was killed in a 1999 automobile accident. Administered by Marty Burlsworth, Brandon’s brother, it includes the Burls Kids program that takes underprivileged children to Razorbacks games, football camps for the underprivileged and the Eyes of a Champion program that provides free eye exams and eyeglasses to underprivileged children.
The Christy Rankin Memorial Tennis Scholarship, administered by Barbara Weinstock at the Craighead County Community Foundation, will provide a college scholarship for a tennis athlete from theJonesboro area.
Website information on both projects can be obtained on search engines by requesting the Brandon Burlsworth Foundation or the Christy Rankin Memorial Tennis Scholarship.
Sports, Pages 20 on 07/03/2010