My son Hunter & brother Matt Haniger (r) 2013.
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From my earliest memories on Nuthatch Lane in Sunnyvale, we played football. The neighborhood kids and my brothers (5) played every afternoon as we lined up on the asphalt between the parked cars and city trees. It wasn’t a question of how long or what the score was…it was the competition. The planning and street schemes of go long, turn on a dime in front of the 64 Rambler and “I’ll get it to you”. The successful pass, the spike after passing the street pole and imaginary goal line are forever etched in my childhood mind.
The pure fun of catching a ball, the trust my best friend Tom had in me that we could beat our older brothers (I don’t think we ever did…just gave them all they could handle) and the endless hours in the street... competing. I’ll never forget the Sunday morning we all finished our paper routes by 6:30 am and we started throwing the football around. So that led to a 3 on 3 contest interrupted by Mr. Broschott at about 7:15 a.m. that, "we were making to damn much noise". He didn’t understand… we played football!
A few years later (1971), I entered Mitty high school. With a year of Pop-Warner football under my belt, I thought I knew what to expect and wanted to be a running back. I listened to everything Coach Pete had to say and did my best to give every play, every move, every drill…100%. I wanted to play...I wanted to win.
We scrimmaged and learned the basics of an offense that allowed success if everyone did their job. We were blessed to have a 14-year-old named Paul Jones (CCS Player of the Year - 1974) at 6’, 180 lbs. playing fullback. He was the only one I didn’t like going up against in tackling drills because being 2”s and 35 lbs. lighter..."hurt". I remember the games when 2 or 3 defensive players would be hanging on him trying to take him down…and he just kept moving his knees for an extra yard.
We won our first WCAL championship (frosh) that year with a 6-0 record. The Varsity beat Bellarmine the night before at Buck Shaw stadium in front of 10,000 crazy fans and the name “Mitty” was finally on the map in the W.C.A.L. The pride in the school was immense and being on top of Bellarmine and St. Francis was the heart of competition. And we loved it!
As seniors, we ran through the W.C.A.L. undefeated and Champions (1974). We expected to win, we played hard, and everyone on the team contributed to the success. The camaraderie and fun we had winning, outweighed the sweat and pain of tough practices and total commitment to be the best. Coach Demonner reminded us daily that, “you either get worse…or you get better, because nothing stays the same”.
The compelling reason to play football is not the individual accomplishments often “hyped” by the media, or the scholarship awarded to the best athlete on the team. Those accolades can be fleeting at best, as we have all seen the results of “promise” drop off and never be fulfilled. No… The reason to play football is to comprehend the system and organization required to accomplish a goal. There is no difference between the total team effort of a last-minute drive to win the game and a business pulling all its resources together to make the 4th quarter profits a reality.
Football and Business require leadership, a knowledge of personnel, management (coach) that is competent and goal oriented, the ability to recover from perceived injuries or setbacks by making tough decisions, the enthusiasm to overcome obstacles, to know what the score is and what it takes to change it, when to play offense and when to play defense, to challenge your team and not forget to celebrate the victories no matter how great or small.
Football teaches the individual, the necessary skill to do their job in concert with 10 others. The essence of teamwork and the appreciation of a teammates effort to make the team better. Football also allows the undeveloped athlete to work harder in the weight room, study longer in the film room, to fulfill the definition of good luck… And become a starter who contributes to the success of the team.
” Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” – Seneca
Or as a former President says it… "I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." - Thomas Jefferson
And as Jim Rohn explained to me in 1989…LUCK = Learning Under Correct Knowledge.
Having played and photographed 100’s of games… I’ve seen superior teams with great athletes lose and smaller teams with great teamwork win. You have seen it also. It’s called momentum. And when a team on the field or in the boardroom, seizes momentum…the competition doesn’t stand a chance.
I don’t expect your son to go pro or make the winning catch in a Super Bowl. I just don’t want them to miss the opportunity to learn life skills they will take to the job and conquer life with. I do expect once they have played the game, to transfer the organizational skills and effort into real life experience by motivating, leading and transforming the environment they work in. I expect them to recover from personal or financial injuries because football proved to them that pain is temporary and brotherhood of teammates working for a common goal is forever.
Football teaches life. Even when you fumble…your encouraged to jump on the ball.
Daniel Haniger
Class of 1975
The pure fun of catching a ball, the trust my best friend Tom had in me that we could beat our older brothers (I don’t think we ever did…just gave them all they could handle) and the endless hours in the street... competing. I’ll never forget the Sunday morning we all finished our paper routes by 6:30 am and we started throwing the football around. So that led to a 3 on 3 contest interrupted by Mr. Broschott at about 7:15 a.m. that, "we were making to damn much noise". He didn’t understand… we played football!
A few years later (1971), I entered Mitty high school. With a year of Pop-Warner football under my belt, I thought I knew what to expect and wanted to be a running back. I listened to everything Coach Pete had to say and did my best to give every play, every move, every drill…100%. I wanted to play...I wanted to win.
We scrimmaged and learned the basics of an offense that allowed success if everyone did their job. We were blessed to have a 14-year-old named Paul Jones (CCS Player of the Year - 1974) at 6’, 180 lbs. playing fullback. He was the only one I didn’t like going up against in tackling drills because being 2”s and 35 lbs. lighter..."hurt". I remember the games when 2 or 3 defensive players would be hanging on him trying to take him down…and he just kept moving his knees for an extra yard.
We won our first WCAL championship (frosh) that year with a 6-0 record. The Varsity beat Bellarmine the night before at Buck Shaw stadium in front of 10,000 crazy fans and the name “Mitty” was finally on the map in the W.C.A.L. The pride in the school was immense and being on top of Bellarmine and St. Francis was the heart of competition. And we loved it!
As seniors, we ran through the W.C.A.L. undefeated and Champions (1974). We expected to win, we played hard, and everyone on the team contributed to the success. The camaraderie and fun we had winning, outweighed the sweat and pain of tough practices and total commitment to be the best. Coach Demonner reminded us daily that, “you either get worse…or you get better, because nothing stays the same”.
The compelling reason to play football is not the individual accomplishments often “hyped” by the media, or the scholarship awarded to the best athlete on the team. Those accolades can be fleeting at best, as we have all seen the results of “promise” drop off and never be fulfilled. No… The reason to play football is to comprehend the system and organization required to accomplish a goal. There is no difference between the total team effort of a last-minute drive to win the game and a business pulling all its resources together to make the 4th quarter profits a reality.
Football and Business require leadership, a knowledge of personnel, management (coach) that is competent and goal oriented, the ability to recover from perceived injuries or setbacks by making tough decisions, the enthusiasm to overcome obstacles, to know what the score is and what it takes to change it, when to play offense and when to play defense, to challenge your team and not forget to celebrate the victories no matter how great or small.
Football teaches the individual, the necessary skill to do their job in concert with 10 others. The essence of teamwork and the appreciation of a teammates effort to make the team better. Football also allows the undeveloped athlete to work harder in the weight room, study longer in the film room, to fulfill the definition of good luck… And become a starter who contributes to the success of the team.
” Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” – Seneca
Or as a former President says it… "I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." - Thomas Jefferson
And as Jim Rohn explained to me in 1989…LUCK = Learning Under Correct Knowledge.
Having played and photographed 100’s of games… I’ve seen superior teams with great athletes lose and smaller teams with great teamwork win. You have seen it also. It’s called momentum. And when a team on the field or in the boardroom, seizes momentum…the competition doesn’t stand a chance.
I don’t expect your son to go pro or make the winning catch in a Super Bowl. I just don’t want them to miss the opportunity to learn life skills they will take to the job and conquer life with. I do expect once they have played the game, to transfer the organizational skills and effort into real life experience by motivating, leading and transforming the environment they work in. I expect them to recover from personal or financial injuries because football proved to them that pain is temporary and brotherhood of teammates working for a common goal is forever.
Football teaches life. Even when you fumble…your encouraged to jump on the ball.
Daniel Haniger
Class of 1975
******************** Tom Brady - Angus Reid - Nolan Bellerose - Jeff Scurran - Kelsey Pharris ********************