Caoch Dennis Roy Burns
As I was waiting on deck, my heart was racing out of control just like before the first time I stepped out onto the mat to wrestle under the mat light for the American High School Wrestling team. However, this was something different that somehow flowed from that experience decades before. I felt truly humbled to have been bequeathed the great honor of speaking to those who wrestled for Coach Dennis Burns at his celebration of life. I felt humbled because I was speaking to some who had come before me and had accomplished more on the mat and in life than me. I knew that Coach Burn’s wife< Karen had granted me a great privilege to have a moment on the program which included close friends and family. I had been asked to keep my remarks to five minutes, so I wrote a four-minute speech just in case I became emotional and lost focus midway. I was worried that I would have an anxiety induced asthma attack and not be able to speak, but when my name was called I gathered confidence from something Coach Burns used to tell me, “When you step out on the mat, you are ready.” I just needed to step to the podium. These are the words I set out to say:
‘To those who had the distinct privilege to be coached by Dennis Burns, I want to tell you a story about his most favoritess wrestler. In the interest of clarity and brevity, I am going to go ahead and tell you who that is. If you wrestled for coach Burns, you should know that at some point you were his favorite wrestler.
Some of you got that distinction in the practice room when he turned around and realized, “Dang that sucker’s still here; he didn’t quit." Some of you got that distinction when you made the sacrifice of cutting weight to give the team a stronger lineup. Some of you got that distinction just by fulfilling the assignment, “Don’t get pinned.” At the beginning of the next practice, he would comment, “Young so-and-so arched his back and counted the lights for a full minute, but he did not get pinned.” Some of you achieved favorite wrestler status by winning particularly difficult matches and bringing home hardware. Then DB would say, “One thing you got to like about young so-and-so is that when you send him to the well, he brings back water." I achieved most favorite wrestler status when I defeated the returning third in state to advance to the finals of the Clovis West tournament.
There was more to Dennis Burns being a good coach than just finding ways to build each individual in the room into a wrestler. Dennis Burns knew how to create a team ethos. That ethos was celebrating everyone making weight by saying, “Let’s go get som to eat.” That ethos was dual meets under the mat light. That ethos was camping out in the stands at tournaments calmly playing backgammon between rounds.” However, the ethos was most epitomized in the nine-minute match. Through nine minutes of physical torment, we daily reified our epistemology that we would outfight and outlast our opponents with every ounce of our being until the final second on the clock.
Even today, the nine-minute match is the gift that we take with us. I have got through some pretty challenging life and professional situations because I knew that I had the mental and physical capability of outlasting my opponent. At the end of his life Dennis Burns was a wrestler. Dennis burns went into hospice with the expectation that his final match would be over in hours and at most days. However, the wrestler in him stayed in the match. Each day became a match he won, whether winning meant having the first cup of coffee in a year, a nice meal with his wife, a conversation with his children, or a visit with former wrestlers.
The other things that made Dennis Burns a good coach is that his investment in you extended beyond the wrestling room. A few years ago, when coach Burns asked me to bring this with me to this service. (I held up the copper rose above) At the time that I made this, I oversaw a central laboratory for a national research study, but I was also producing and selling art in my spare time. Dennis was fascinated when I told him how I used chemicals in the lab to oxidize the wire on this copper rose to give it color. This was the other thing that made you his most favorite wrestler, seeing what you did in life with the tool of wrestling. In our conversations over the years, he mentioned the things you have gone on to become, how you used the strength, persistence and focus of a wrestler to build family, businesses and careers. He said, "the cream always rises to the top," and you have."
Added Remarks:
Below is the picture that showed on the screen as I spoke. What I had hoped to give to Karen to use was a picture of me with Dennis Burns. However, I know of only a few of those. When we got totether over the years, we seemed to regress to a time before cameras were on phones in our pockets, when he was my coach giving me a ride home from prarctice because I was intra-district transfer that lived three miles away from AHS at Mowry and Cherry Lane. I recall only a couple of times over the years that we took photos together, after Coach Preisendorph's memorial service, and a time when we met up with his close friend, and my high school football coach, algebra teacher, and construction foreman Skip Cain at Nation's for breakfast. Every time I think to search for those pictures, I paniic with the thought that I won't find them. Then I will feel an further sense of loss. Nonetheless, I think DB would have liked the use of this picture because he was proud that I continued to be a wrestler in college and beyond.
