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Holy Wildcats!

Former superhero player Richard ''Batman'' Wood has more on his mind than a state title.

By SCOTT PURKS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 11, 2002

[Times photo: Dirk Shadd] Richard Wood believes in his Wharton players as much as he believes he deserves a coaching job in college or the pros.

TAMPA -- Wharton had just defeated Daytona Beach Mainland 30-3 in a state semifinal and coach Richard Wood, with tears welling, stood in the middle of his home field and said something that seemed unlikely.

"This was the greatest game of our lives, the kids' lives and my life," he said. "Truly, by far, the greatest."

But how could that be?

This was Richard Wood, who played in the NFL for 10 years, nine with the Bucs when they had one of the league's best defenses.

This was the linebacker who led New Jersey's Jefferson High to two state titles and a national title and was named an All-American.

This was the young man who went to the University of Southern California, where he won two national titles and was the only Trojan ever named All-America three times.

This was the renowned recruit, who when asked to introduce himself at USC's first meeting for freshmen, stood up and said, "I'm Batman from Gotham City."

It was a quote he came up with on the spur of the moment because he was one of the rare kids on the team from a big city on the East Coast (Elizabeth, N.J., just outside New York City).

Little did he know the nickname would stay with him forever.

Batman.

A name that raised his fame to legend.

So now -- after all that -- how could Batman stand there and say Wharton's Class 5A semifinal victory was his greatest game ever?

The frustration started when Wood's playing career ended in 1985.

Retirement dropped him from the limelight, out of the game he loved, and soon, he was almost out of money.

In the pros, Wood had agents and advisers handling his finances, which he believed were, "Safe and sound. I thought I was set up."

"As it turns out, I trusted the wrong people," he said. "They lost so much money I had to move my family (wife Karen, son Marlon, daughter Rachelle) to a smaller house and I had to go find a job.

"Any job to pay some bills and debts these guys had gotten me into."

[Times photo: Toni L. Sandys] In 1998, Wood took over as head coach at Wharton.

He bounced from job to job, always frustrated at being shut out from full-time positions with college or pro teams.

He went from part-time assistant at Tampa Catholic to owning a gas station ("Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week."). He sold cars and worked at a brewery.

From 1991-93, Wood was a Bucs defensive assistant and strength and conditioning coach. In 1994, he was an assistant with the Amsterdam Crusaders of the American Football Federation Netherlands before returning to Tampa as a security officer at Hillsborough County's Alternative Education Center.

In 1997, Wood went to Germany for one season to be an assistant coach for the Munich Cowboys, but said, "I couldn't stand being that far away from my family and kids, who were about to start high school.

"I decided I was going to be home during those crucial years."

So he returned and ended up at Wharton, where after one year as an assistant and the school's security officer, he became the head coach.

It wasn't coaching in the pros or college, which is where he still believes he belongs, a fact clearly spelled out at the top of his resume:

OBJECTIVE -- To serve as a football coach or in football operations at the college or professional level. Willing to relocate.

But, at least, he was a head coach, even if it was with one of the county's most hapless programs, which started one year earlier (1997) when the school opened.

"We were terrible," Wood said. "Weak, slow, didn't know what to do, didn't know how to get better, didn't believe in themselves, didn't believe they could win."

And so they lost.

The Wildcats' records the first five seasons were 1-9, 1-9, 2-8, 2-8 and 4-6, with the priority often nothing more than winning the Times Cup, a trophy given to the winner of the Wharton-Sickles game.

But Wood kept plugging away.

Work. Work. Work.

No matter how badly the Wildcats were beaten, Wood kept the team lifting weights while he obsessed over game tapes and drew up plays.

"He's in there breaking down tape at 1:30 in the morning because when he starts watching them I don't think he can stop," said Wharton assistant coach David Mitchell, who has worked at the school since it opened. "When you watch tape with him he gets that tunnel vision, and he'll see things that are amazing, little things like one step that a guy might make and we could take advantage of.

"Then he'll start writing down plays and it's like he can't write fast enough to keep up with his thoughts.

"His football knowledge amazes me. It truly does."

But still, despite what Wood brought to the table, how did the Wildcats survive all that losing?

Why did none of the players transfer to another school?

How, after winning 10 games in five years, did quarterback Ross Corcoran and running back/linebacker Larry Edwards have the gall to come up last spring, in total seriousness, and tell Batman, "We're going to the state championship game this year"?

Sure, Wharton had gotten better in 2001 when it won a school-record four games, but it also went 1-6 down the stretch, often getting pummelled.

"It's difficult to explain," said Edwards, one of 31 seniors who have almost all been together for four years. "I know it has something to do with coach Wood believing in us. He always had the faith in us and you could feel that. We kept working hard and we stayed together and we felt it.

"Maybe nobody else believed it, but we did. Coach Wood and all of us."

And now it has come to this.

Wharton is 13-1 and playing in Friday's Class 5A final against Pompano Beach Ely, also 13-1.

Now Batman, 49, is saying that Friday's game, "Is the biggest game in all of our lives. There really has never been a bigger game for me. Not in the NFL (he played in the 1979 NFC Championship Game after losing 26 in a row with the Bucs), college (two Rose Bowls) or anything else."

He admits he wants to move on to the NFL or to a college job, and if that opportunity arises, then he will evaluate it.

But he also says there will never be a group of young men who mean more to him than these Wharton Wildcats.

"We've been through so much together," he said, his eyes watering. "All that losing ... and these guys have stuck together, kept working toward a goal, and that makes me feel good because that's a difficult thing for kids to do in this day and age with so many distractions.

"What can I say? These kids are like my sons.

"I love them.

"And that's why this is the biggest game of my life."

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