By Dave Krider
MaxPreps.com
Sheridan (Ind.) football coach Bud Wright has been overcoming seemingly gigantic obstacles – mostly because of his size – during his entire life.
* As a 75-pound sixth grader in the Sheridan school system, he was allowed to try out for football by his parents “only if I didn’t use my size as an excuse (if it didn’t work out),” he told MaxPreps. Making it even more difficult, he had to play on a team dominated by seventh and eighth graders. He met that challenge head-on and later at Sheridan High he led the Blackhawks in tackles as a junior and senior – even though he was a mere 5-foot-4 and 138 pounds.
“I had to figure out ways to do things because of my size,” Wright conceded. “I learned how to get leverage.”
* He applied for his first head football coaching position at North Miami (Denver, Ind.) after serving there two years as an assistant. However, superintendent John Sinclair told him he “would never make it as a head coach. I didn’t accept it and that’s why I left.”
* After nine years as head coach at his alma mater, his job was on the line at a school board meeting due to three years of losing records. One man in particular, Harvey Evoy, stood up and spoke on his behalf. “As far as I know, Harvey saved my job,” Wright said humbly. The following year the Blackhawks posted a perfect 10-0 record and Wright has gone on to become an Indiana icon.
Even though sometimes mistaken for the bus driver or janitor, Bud Wright has become a giant in Indiana high school football. He is the No. 2 winner in Hoosier history with a sparkling 347-145-2 record in his 44th year as a head coach. The 67-year-old marvel trails only retired Jasper coach Jerry Brewer, who is tied for No. 12 in national history with 368 victories. He has coached a record (tie) nine state champions and should he win his fourth straight Class A title this fall, he would set one Indiana record and tie another.
In addition, he has been named Indiana Coach of the Year three times and is a member of the Indiana High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame.
Besides dogged determination to constantly overcome his size handicap, Wright was gifted with a near photographic memory, which has served him well over the years.
His brilliant success can further be explained by Dave Urban, a former high school teammate and one of Wright’s assistant coaches for 35 years. “Bud has a sense of command,” he noted. “There is something about his command that kids and coaches always have listened to him. The greatest thing is that he can evaluate talent and personalities and find their strength and weakness. He can design an offense and defense to adapt to their abilities. He’s very meticulous.
“He did it all when he was younger. Everybody contributed but he had the final word. One of the greatest things was the camaraderie. We spent a lot of time together. My oldest son (Jason Urban) always said he doesn’t treat everybody the same because they have different needs and personalities. His lack of height doesn’t reflect in his personality. Even if you get upset with him, you never get mad at him. He is very endearing.”
If a player wanted to raise coach Wright’s ire, all he had to do was to commit a turnover or make some other type of mistake. “If you rated emotions between touchdowns and mistakes,” Urban says, “I think mistakes would rate higher.”
Another former assistant, Ron Blotch, recalls a night when Wright’s emotions soared in a rather comical way. “He got excited and jumped in the air,” Blotch described. “He lost his balance and did a forward roll. He came out standing up in a linebacker’s position – just like he had planned it.”
A top flight cheerleader couldn’t have done it any better.
Blotch added that when he was on Wright’s coaching staff, “We had a blast. He lives football. I learned a lot from him that helped me in basketball. There isn’t a football coach alive who puts in as many hours as he does.”
Those long hours probably mean nothing to Bud Wright, because he grew up on a dairy farm near Sheridan and was used to doing chores before and after school every day. When he began playing football as a sixth grader, he was excused from some chores during the season, which was an added incentive.
Though he didn’t realize it at the time, he already was headed for coaching because he “just loved the game. I would sit and watch games (on television) and try to guess what play they were going to run next.”
Tradition also helped shape Wright’s thirst for football. Though Sheridan always has been a very small town, it has a great tradition, having initiated the sport in 1899. Many generations of the same families have carried the Sheridan banner proudly on the gridiron. A typical example would be that five members of the Zachery family have played quarterback for the Blackhawks.
Wright played running back and linebacker during most of his Sheridan career, but he switched to quarterback as a senior and threw nine touchdown passes. He also paced the Blackhawks in tackles for the second consecutive year.
“He had a very strong upper body from living on a farm and was a very punishing tackler,” Dave Urban stressed.
Wright also made his presence felt off the field, serving as National Honor Society president and senior class vice president.
He graduated in 1959 and nearly attended Purdue University with the goal of becoming an engineer or veterinarian. However, three weeks before school started, he switched to Ball State. The sudden change can best be described as the lure of another football season and his desire to walk on to the team at Ball State. He was a reserve for two years – at 142 pounds – and made the traveling team as a sophomore. More importantly, he decided to become a teacher and coach, partly because his mother always had expressed a desire that he would go into education.
After graduating from Ball State in 1963, Wright spent two years as assistant football coach at North Miami. Then he took his first head football job at Mount Ayr (now part of the North Newton system) in northwest Indiana. His first team – converting from 8-man to 11-man football – posted a 1-4 record with just 17 players.
In the fall of 1966 he returned home triumphantly as head football coach at Sheridan. “I gave a lot of thought to it,” he admitted. “A lot of people advised me not to come back to my hometown.”
Once entrenched, however, Wright began to employ things which he had taken from his former high school coach, Bob Day, and his brother-in-law, Roland Inskeep, who also was a high school coach. “I probably got more from him (Bob Day),” he pointed out. “I learned how to handle kids and a lot of x’s and o’s. From Roland, I learned philosophy and a lot of my defensive thoughts.
“I also learned a lot of how to handle kids from our principal (Larry Hobbs). Put it all together and I came up with how to do things. I don’t have very many rules. My basic rule is do what’s right (on and off the field.).
“My original plan was to teach and coach about 10 years and then go to law school. But I got involved and enjoyed what I was doing. Just the love of the game itself kept me in it.”
Interestingly, the Blackhawks had not achieved a winning record since Wright’s senior year when they were 6-3-1. Even though his first-year record was 5-4, Wright insisted, “I thought we should have done better. We had a good group of kids, but they just didn’t know how to win.”
In 1969, what Wright considers “my first real good team” posted an 8-2 record. His 1975 team posted a 10-0 record, but was denied a berth in the three-class, point-system state playoffs. That still is one of his greatest disappointments. The next year Sheridan was 9-1 and, ironically, did make the playoffs, but lost in the second round to southern power Lawrenceburg.
The year 1980 also stands out in Wright’s mind because his team went undefeated and captured its first Class A state title. The 1980’s, in fact, were extremely good to coach Wright and the community as they hung four state-championship banners during that decade. It was a period during which Wright started coaching his own sons and also the era of the great Brett Law, whose name still is plastered all over the national record book.
Wright’s oldest son, Kevin, was a sophomore on that 1980 state champion. During his four years, the Blackhawks lost a combined four games. However, he broke his arm both as a junior and senior. He described his father’s attitude toward injuries as “old school – you get a band-aid and rub some dirt on it.”
On one occasion, though, his arm was badly disfigured. “He knew I was really hurt,” Kevin noted. “He said, ‘It’s going to be OK. The ambulance is on the way.’ That was the first time I ever saw him show emotion on the field. He’s a tough son of a gun.
How tough is Bud Wright? Well, Kevin admits that once as a senior, “I knew a whole lot more at 18 than at 26. I mouthed off. He’s 5-4 and I’m 5-11. He grabbed me and started shaking me. That was the last time I ever mouthed off to him.
“He grew up on a farm – it’s the whole Abe Lincoln story. He’s only not been in Sheridan for three years. His ability to get along with kids is as good now at it ever was.”
As Kevin grew older, he came to admire his father more and more. “He’ll drive long distances to go to clinics,” he pointed out. “He’s always looking to get better. He drove to Minnesota in the middle of the winter. He told me, ‘If I can get one thing to make me better, it’ll be worth it.’ ’’
In 2005 Sheridan and Indianapolis Warren Central both won state titles. It marked the first time in Hoosier history that a father and son won state titles in the same year. Kevin Wright was the head coach at Warren Central. In fact, he compiled a 71-12 record with three Class 5A state championships in six years.
Kevin was a 26-year-old assistant coach at Indianapolis North Central when Bud urged him to apply for a head job at Frankfort. He recalled, “I had a brand new convertible and an apartment where a bunch of single people (girls) lived. It was the first time I had money in my pocket. I was just having fun and did not want to be a head coach. I finally gave in.”
Today Kevin is an assistant coach at his college alma mater, Western Kentucky, and has his father’s persistence to thank for it. In fact, one brother, Kent, is head coach at Lebanon (Ind.) and another brother, Travis, is an assistant coach at Sheridan. A sister, Cheri, ran the Sheridan Youth Football League for many years and has had two sons play for her father. Another sister, Lana, also has had a son play for her father. Bud also has tutored several nephews.
As a fourth grader, Cheri was all fired up to play in a youth football league. “We wanted to enroll her and got in the car,” Bud recalled. “Then her mom came running out and said she wasn’t going to allow her to play.” So Cheri had to settle for being a cheerleader.
Sheridan football truly is – and always has been – a family affair.
“I enjoyed coaching my kids very much,” Wright says fondly. “They were good athletes and all three were on state championship teams. I probably was harder on them than others. But my wife and I put no pressure on our kids to become coaches and teachers.”
And now for the Brett Law Era. The powerful running back starred for the Blackhawks from 1986-89 and he still holds the national record with 453 points in one season (1988). He also ranks No. 2 in points per game for one season (32.4), No. 3 in career points (952), No. 4 in touchdown in one season (66) and No. 5 in career touchdowns (141).
During his junior year, Law averaged just 16.5 carries during the regular season and 22 during the state playoffs. Wright estimates that had he allowed his superstar to carry at least 30 times per game he would have “set out-of-sight records.”
Law told MaxPreps, “One of his biggest attributes was how to get through to certain individuals. He couldn’t use the same approach to all players. For me personally, I was very self-motivated. He didn’t have to say a whole lot to me. There was no yelling and he didn’t have to tell me twice. That’s one thing I really appreciated.
“I have great admiration for his dedication to the game. He has a knack of getting a lot done with the resources he’s had. His love and passion for the game always has been there. Over the years he’s become an icon in Sheridan and the state of Indiana.”
Over the years Wright considered taking another job on at least four occasions, two of them in Illinois, but he always stayed true to his roots. He won two more titles in the 90’s and briefly considered retirement in 2002. However, he’s now going stronger than ever with titles in 2005-06-07. The Blackhawks’ winning streak reached 44 in 2008 before a 37-7 loss to unbeaten Class 3A West Lafayette.
He continues to have great success with his “I-type wing” offense and 5-2 defense. He emphasizes a “mistake-free” style. “I strive for perfection,” he stressed. “You can never not try for it.”
When Wright took over at Sheridan in 1966, the town population was around 2,000 with 345 in grades 9-12. Today the town population stands at 2,800 and the school has 385 students. His biggest turnout was 88 in 1989. This year he has 65 on the varsity. He admits he would love to platoon, but he still wins with “iron men.” His unbeaten 1984 champs, for example, had nine players who started both ways.
As he heads toward a possible record fourth consecutive state championship, Wright can’t be faulted for eyeing another major milestone – becoming the No. 1 winner in Indiana football history.
The Blackhawks will return most of their top linemen next year, but will have to rebuild the offensive skill positions. A good sophomore class and an outstanding freshman class will add depth.
Bud Wright loves to fish, but before he does it full-time, he has some more football games to win. “Right now I plan to coach as long as I enjoy it,” he emphasizes. “My health is pretty good and I’m still loving it.”
Sheridan football fans wouldn’t want it any other way, because there’s another generation eagerly waiting in the wings to be tutored by the Hoosier legend. When the coaching giant finally does retire with a fistful of state records, no one will remember that he stood only 5-foot-4.
