Keith Sickinger: Former Player is a Fan

    Each morning when he unfolds his Times-Dispatch, Keith Sickinger, like a lot of other guys, goes straight to the sports section. On Thursday, the T-D runs its prep page, and he loves to check out the district standings and pore over the individual statistics of local players, especially the guys he’s come to know at Collegiate.
    On Sept. 29, he noted that Russell Wilson still topped the area in passing and that five Cougars were among the leading receivers in Central Virginia. As he sat home nursing a bum left knee, he also read a piece on Mark Robinson, the football coach at Armstrong High School, and made a mental note to tell his wife Diane, a history teacher at Armstrong, when she returned that evening.
    What he didn’t spot until about 7:30 p.m. – actually, Diane spotted it first – was an entry atop the page under the heading, “Looking Back.”
    “She told me, ‘Hey, you’re in the newspaper too,’” he said.  “It was a surprise.  It brought back good memories.”
    A member of Collegiate’s physical plant staff since May 2001, Sickinger started three years at defensive end for Hermitage in the era when legendary coach Chester Fritz rarely kept 10th graders on the varsity much less played them.
    “His theory was that for every sophomore starter, you’re guaranteed a loss,” said Sickinger, who suited up for the first time just two years earlier at Brookland Junior High. “I wasn’t that much bigger than anyone else.  Definitely didn’t have the quickness.  I just loved playing football.  I guess he saw that.”
    His first varsity season, Sickinger, who went 6-0, 200, also did the place-kicking, served as backup center, and, after the fourth game, became the punter. He quickly established the reputation as a fierce competitor. So vital was his presence that, when he hustled to the bench to change from his square-toed kicking shoe into his regular one, the Panthers occasionally took a delay-of-game penalty rather than start the next defensive series without him.
    Once he became the starting center his second season, he rarely left the field except the two long weeks he spent on crutches after he injured his right ankle against TJ. The Panthers lost twice while he was out. After they fell to Henrico, Warriors coach John Brown went straight to Sickinger, shook his hand, and said, “We’d never have won if you weren’t on the sideline.”
    That experience gave added meaning to the TJ game the next fall. He felt he had something to prove. “It was a get-back game,” he said.  “They were a powerhouse.  There was great satisfaction when we won.”
    After the ’72 season, Sickinger was named to the News Leader’s All-Metro team as a defensive end. He accepted a scholarship to University of Richmond, played a season with former Collegiate stars Larry Shaw, Marvin Smith, Lewis Little, and John D. Call, then realized the time to move on had arrived.
    In the ensuing years, the diehard Washington Redskins supporter watched pro and college football on television and occasionally attended a UR game. He never set foot in a high school stadium. Then, he joined the staff at Collegiate, felt the excitement surrounding the program, and became a fan of prep football once again.
    “I don’t go to any other high school games,” he said last Saturday as he sat in the gazebo on the hill above the Grover Jones Field while the homecoming festivities swirled around him. “But I’ve been coming to Collegiate games since I’ve been here. I just like the atmosphere.”— Weldon Bradshaw