Belmont's Maddie Wright, right, gets a hug from teammate Hannah Harmeyer after the Bruins beat UT-Martin to win the Ohio Valley Conference women's basketball tournament in March in Evansville, Ind.When first-year University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football coach Rusty Wright begins his annual celebration of Father's Day, he'll probably have to do so without his daughter Maddie, who's busy working a Belmont University basketball camp this weekend in Nashville.
Not that Maddie - who's been a three-year standout for the Bruins after starring in high school at Boyd Buchanan - won't connect with her father by phone, greeting card or both.
"He's always been there for (my mother Kelley and me)," she said Friday night during a brief break at camp. "He's always uplifting us both. He's at every one of my games, despite his busy schedule. I think of somebody who's a role model when I think of my dad. It's always about us instead of him."
Until a few months ago, the only person Rusty consistently was viewed as being a father to was Maddie. But all that changed a bit when he became the Mocs' head coach in late December. He's now held responsible for the behavior, academic performance and athletic achievements of each of the 71 young men currently listed on the UTC football roster.
Mark Wiedmer"A father figure," he said this past week. "I hope that's what they see in me."
We have never needed fathers and father figures more. Recent U.S. Census Bureau studies show that more than one in four children now grow up without a father in the house. Those absences reportedly lead to a four times greater risk of poverty, a seven times greater risk of pregnancy in girls without a father in their lives and double the risk of childhood obesity.
And according to those same Census Bureau numbers, it's worse in the South, where the three states with the highest fatherless rates are Mississippi (36.2%), Louisiana (34.4%) and Alabama (30.7%).
Said Wright as he discussed how the young men he recruits and coaches have changed over the 25 years he's been a college coach: "It's changed a little. But kids are still kids. They still want discipline. But they're more opinionated now than when I was in college. And so many of them go through so much before they even get to college. The drugs, the violence, the gangs. It's heartbreaking."
He never experienced such things growing up in South Carolina. He had his own Rusty Wright, his father - "We keep it simple down here in the South," young Rusty said with a chuckle as he spoke of sharing his father's name - to raise him with old-fashioned values.
"I owe everything to my dad," he said. "I probably outgrew him height-wise when I was in the seventh or eighth grade. But he's a giant of a man. He would sometimes work three jobs when I was growing up. He'd just be coming home from the last one when I was getting up, but he'd always eat breakfast with me. I watched him and my grandfather build our house from the ground up. They even put in the road. Cleared trees. Everything. So he laid the foundation for me. He taught me to work and work hard. And he's always been the same guy. We still talk two or three times a week."
The same guy. As Maddie listed traits that stood out about her father she said, "Consistency and hard work."
That consistency and hard work is what made Wright the only choice in the eyes of so many former players to succeed Tom Arth as UTC's coach last December.
"We need discipline and structure more than ever in society," he said. "We have to hold these young men accountable. One of our jobs is to get 11 guys to be unselfish for 120 snaps a game while we're living in the most selfish society on earth."
You think you've heard it all before about what a coach faces. Listen to these three stories from Wright, and you might change your mind.
On a recruiting trip to Memphis one year as an assistant, he knocked on an apartment door while staring at the peephole that didn't look quite right.
"It was a bullet hole," Wright said.
Then there was the day a bookie called his office, though he won't say which school he was working for at the time.
"He said one of our players owed him a lot of money," Wright recalled. "I said that wasn't my problem. But in my head I'm thinking of legal issues, NCAA issues. That's not what any coach in any sport wants to hear. But we got the young man the help he needed, and I don't think he's ever gambled again."
Finally, on a recruiting trip to South Georgia, Wright entered the home of a young man who literally lived "in a one-room house. It was so bad that you could see dirt on the ground through the floorboards. Anyway, we'd been there for a bit and a family member walks in carrying a beaver he'd caught. That was going to be dinner that night."
Maddie will tell you about the time a few years ago when her father was a UTC assistant and he invited several players to their house for Thanksgiving dinner because they were in the playoffs and couldn't get home.
"He really works to build connections with his players," she said. "He cares about them as people, and he cares about their character."
As his father taught him all those years ago, it's what fathers and father figures are supposed to do.
Or as Wright said of his time with each Moc, "Hopefully, we get to watch them grow and become quality citizens, husbands and fathers, because we need folks who'll move this country in the right direction so that our grandkids will be able to enjoy it as we do now."
And with any luck, far more than 75% of those grandkids will have a father to guide them in the right direction for the entirety of their childhood and beyond.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.