Hunter Davenport still remembers the first time he saw Adam Caine.
Slouched in a chair, Davenport heard "Sit up straight!" as the first words from his new Sequatchie County football coach.
It got his attention.
Success has blossomed since then. In Caine's first season the Indians ran off five straight wins. This year with a game at Upperman still to go in the regular season, they're 9-0.
Yet that first meeting in January 2015 likely will remain a part of Davenport's football memories - that and the innumerable bear-crawls from one end zone to the other and back again.
The way he and best friend and teammate Kyle Cates figure it, Caine was about discipline - instilling it while nurturing self-discipline. They figure since he arrived they have done four to five miles of bear-crawls.
The two linebackers, centerpieces of the Indians' defense, have fewer tackles this season - 70-plus apiece - than any of the three previous years they've started, yet they even boast about it.
"We have so many people doing their assignments now that there are fewer opportunities," said Cates, the team's middle linebacker and tight end.
"I used to do my own thing," running back/linebacker Davenport said. "We had talent but we didn't have discipline. Now we have discipline, and if we don't we're going to bear-crawl."
Caine calls the bear-crawl - hands and feet on the ground and moving as quickly as possible - the great equalizer.
It is also a great attention-grabber. Some have done as many as eight (1,600 yards).
It is excruciating and has forced some wannabes to walk away after just 50 yards, yet the crawls also have become a point of pride with the Indians.
"Last year we played 11 games, and in seven or eight of those we were doing it before the game," Caine said.
Those crawls are one of the things that have brought this team together. Unless they're hunting or fishing they talk about the previous Friday night, "and we try to figure out whether we're going to get griped out on Monday," Davenport said.
The "gripe-outs" and bear-crawls are fewer and further between this year, in part because the team is undefeated and ranked second in the state as it heads to Upperman.
"These guys have been through a lot with me, and they went through a lot before I got here," Caine said of his team's physical ability and mindset. "They're tough kids, and Kyle and Hunter are the toughest."
He added that this team is the closest he's had in 25 years and tough-minded enough now to take this season as far as it can.
"We started 5-0 last year and finished up 2-4 (in the last six). I didn't want to do that again, and I could see in their eyes they didn't want that, either," Caine said. "Last year's team didn't have the mental toughness to finish out."
This year's bunch, regardless of how close they are, almost blew it against neighbor and most-serious rival Bledsoe County. Yet they survived, realized they weren't good enough to slack off and haven't once glanced over their shoulders.
"I don't talk about goals," Caine said. "This group wanted to finish better than (7-4). Our whole focus was, 'OK, we're here but now we're going there.'"
With or without the bear-crawls.
Contact Ward Gossett at wgossett@timesfreepress.com or 423-886-4765. Follow him at Twitter.com/wardgossett.