Title doesn’t compare

HARRISONBURG, Va. – The Matthews family home has the trappings one would expect from a successful college football head coach who has just won a national championship.

There’s the silver Cadillac CTS in the driveway, the gorgeous view across the Shenandoah Valley, wide leather couches, a big-screen television and a tall Christmas tree laden with sparkling lights and handmade decorations.

Mickey Matthews guided his James Madison University team to the NCAA Division I-AA championship Dec. 17, but he’s had little time to appreciate the biggest win in his 26-year college coaching career.

Four days before Christmas, the 51-year-old coach is still at his office working on recruiting while wife Kay shows visitors around their light-filled home.

On closer inspection, the Christmas tree decorations map the long road this football family has traveled to this season of triumph and hope.

Small, stuffed bears are scattered among the branches, each one wearing a tiny sweater with the initials of a school where Matthews has coached: Southwest Texas State, Texas Christian, Houston, Texas-El Paso, West Texas State, Kansas State, Marshall and Georgia.

A bigger bear wears the purple and gold of James Madison.

Just inside the front door is a small, framed calligraphy that reads: “We interrupt this marriage to bring you the football season.”

On the east wall is a large color photograph of daughter Meredith Anne, 26, who is in the sunny kitchen showing her mom a selection of designs for T-shirts heralding the school’s national championship before heading back to work at a Harrisonburg printing company.

A living room table holds a large photo of son Clayton in his high school uniform, his strong right arm cocked back with a ball ready for flight.

The photo is from the season he led his team to a 1998 Georgia state championship.

Then Clayton rolls into the room in his wheelchair.

Having a child injured in an auto accident is every parent’s nightmare. Having that happen twice is almost incomprehensible.

On Aug. 3, 2003, Clayton damaged his spinal cord when he crashed his car near Harrisonburg. His lower body and legs were paralyzed, but he retained head, neck and shoulder movement as well as use of his arms, wrists and fingers.

Doctors in the United States told the family that his condition was irreversible, but they refused to accept that prognosis. He went through experimental stem-cell replacement therapy at a clinic in Monterrey, Mexico, and was making progress.

But April 12 this year, while 22-year-old Clayton was returning from a medical appointment with his mother at the wheel, their car spun out of control on rain-slick Interstate 64 and crashed.

Clayton’s spinal cord was damaged again. He underwent a seven-hour operation and two months of intensive care and emerged with a significant decline in his fine motor skills. He could no longer navigate unaided in his wheelchair.

“We were at the bottom, with the same child in intensive care twice in eight months,” said Matthews, filling a leather chair in his living room. “Winning the national championship was a great thing for my career. But you can’t compare a national championship – which is really nothing more than a football game – to the crisis we have had in our family.”

The second crash wasn’t the family’s only recent heartbreaking event. The coach’s father and mother died in the last two years, and Kay’s mother was diagnosed with cancer this year.

“We learned that endurance was one of our family’s greatest strengths,” Kay said. “We had to keep the same focus that Mickey demands on the field from his players and coaches. There is no separation between our family life and our football life.”

For Matthews, the real reward was clear: “Getting Clayton out of the hospital was our family’s greatest accomplishment this year.”

Field intensity

While Kay was caring for Clayton, including resuming monthly visits to the stem-cell clinic in Mexico, the Dukes were becoming competitive. They had made the Division I-AA playoffs in Matthews’ first season at the school, but not in the last four.

However, an opening-game 17-0 defeat of Atlantic 10 Conference favorite Villanova started the buzz. A 45-10 loss to Division I-A nationally ranked West Virginia only convinced Matthews that his team was on the verge of a big season.

“I really was impressed that our guys were upset, even though they held them scoreless for the first quarter,” he said. “They took the loss personally.”

The Dukes tied with William & Mary and Delaware for the Atlantic 10 championship, but William & Mary got the league’s automatic NCAA playoff invitation through the tiebreaker system. The Dukes ended up playing all tournament games away from home.

“From Thanksgiving on, he worked from 5 a.m. to at least 11 p.m. every single day,” Kay said of her husband. “The players had to live in hotels most of the time because we were always on the road.”

Matthews refused to let his players or staff lose their one-play-at-a-time focus. That’s a lesson he learned at Marshall, where he was defensive coordinator for a team that went to the Division I-AA championship game four times in the early ‘90s but won only once.

In last weekend’s championship game against Montana, Matthews was concentrating so hard on the field that he didn’t know his moment of glory was at hand. Late in the fourth quarter, the Dukes were ahead 48-34, but Montana was constantly threatening.

“I looked up and saw about 15 photographers around me,” he said. “It was only then that I realized we had won the national championship.”

For Kay, the game was also a revelation.

“I had never been on the sidelines before; I always sit in the stands,” she said. “Until the end of the national championship game, I never really understood what was happening in Mickey’s life.

“It dawned on me that this wasn’t just another game. We’ve always tried to not get caught up in all the hullabaloo, to always keep things normal. But when Mickey’s hands flew up in the air, I felt a tremendous wave of pride flow through me.”

Mark Gale, associate head coach at Marshall who worked with Matthews at the Huntington, W.Va. school, was moved while watching the game on TV.

“When I noticed in the second half that Clayton was on the sideline smiling, I was just extremely happy for them,” Gale told the Huntington Herald-Dispatch. “I don’t think people really understand the sacrifices made day in and day out by families of football coaches. I missed a Christmas pageant last night. I’ve missed basketball games and a kindergarten graduation.

“Everybody can talk about what they’ve missed, but there’s nothing like when I saw Mickey turn around and stroke Clayton’s arm.”

A family tradition

Clayton said that ability to stubbornly maintain focus despite emotional and physical chaos “must be a genetic thing.”

Clayton played for his father for two seasons at James Madison before a back injury suffered while weightlifting ended his playing career. He came into school with this year’s seniors, most of who will graduate in June.

“All those guys out there are my best friends,” he said. “I was with them 24 hours a day for two years. There was a lot of joy in that.”

He was able to return to school this fall and completed four classes despite his second spinal injury.

Clayton also assists the coaching staff in organizing and analyzing digital video and spotting from the press box.

“I will be a coach,” he said. “All my life I’ve seen myself as a coach. I knew more about coaching before I ever played football.”

Clayton’s emphatic resolve causes his father to slip from the moment to some rare speculation.

“We’ve never handled losing real well as a family,” Matthews said. “We will not accept this as the status quo. Clayton and I have had some golf matches that are legendary. We will not stop until we get him playing 18 holes of golf.”

Then he adds, to lighten the mood, “So I can correct his putting stroke.”

Christmas wishes

Later this week the family finally will get the time to savor their victories on and off the field. Clayton and his parents are headed to Dallas for his Christmas present: seeing his beloved Dallas Cowboys play the Washington Redskins on Sunday.

After the game, he and Kay will head to Mexico for another round of stem-cell therapy. While in Dallas, they’ll have Christmas dinner with Kay’s parents.

“This is our opportunity to celebrate the life that we still have,” she said. “My Christmas wish, and I know it isn’t possible, would be for Mickey’s dad to be alive to see that his son won the national championship. He would be so proud.”

The coach said his major wish is for a cure for paralysis.

“Before this happened to Clayton, I had no opinion about stem-cell research,” he said. “But when it happens to your child, your perspective changes fast.”

Clayton leans back in his wheelchair and ponders the months he’s spent in hospitals, retracing every painful step he thought he had left behind.

“My wish is for calmness,” said the blue-eyed son. “For simplicity.”