By JIM STEELE

I remember back in the spring of 1976. The night was April 10 and the temperature was a very dew-covered 45 degrees at Mulberry Park. Gaines Mfg. was playing Brown Shoe Co. in the season opener of McKenzie's Babe Ruth season.

Brown Shoe was the top dog in the league year after year, coached by one Glenn Hayes. They were loaded and pegged to win the league title...again. I was playing for Gaines. I remember my spikes were soaked in dew out in left field that night. It was freezing. Brown Shoe ran up a 15-0 lead at some point. I recall they had a runner on third with the big lead and ran a squeeze play. Needless to say, Brown Shoe won that game handily that night.

I recall the next day at practice. We sat in the middle of the infield at the big field at Mulberry Park, which was the old Babe Ruth and high school field. Charles Holmes, our coach, a.k.a. Duckman, laid it out for us.

"Fellas," he said. "There's not much else I can say about last night except Brown Shoe just plain ol' beat the hell out of us and when it was 15 to nothing in the fifth inning, they ran the squeeze play just to rub it in."

We all had sort of a cathartic laugh about what Holmes said. And, there was method to his madness. Holmes put us at ease when he told us the obvious. But he also pointed out that there was a whole season left to play. We rebounded, went on a tear, had two pitchers, Kenny Franks and Wayne Hickman, throw no-hitters in successive games and we won five of the last six games to wrest the league title away from Brown Shoe.

That first night, we looked like a cross between the Bad News Bears and the Keystone Cops. But as the season progressed, we got better, played better and everyone stepped up. Yeah, maybe comparing our Babe Ruth triumph 33 seasons ago to what happened Thursday as Martin dismantled McKenzie in a middle school football scrimmage may be a bit like comparing Paris Hilton to Stephen Hawking.

But there is a larger point here.

What happened on the scrimmage field Thursday wasn't good, to be sure. Martin executed, used its speed, size and strength and had much success against a Rebel team that was inconsistent for much of the afternoon. What the Rebels have to realize is that Martin isn't a collection of scrubs. It is, consistently, one of the finest programs in West Tennessee and features a deep and seasoned squad.

Meanwhile, McKenzie has been buoyed over the past three seasons by veteran players with a lot of size, strength and speed. With that comes confidence. This year, McKenzie features a team that has a lot of youth, a lot of inexperience and a lot of apprehension. This team is still looking for parts of the puzzle.

This group has now been thrust into the leadership breach and now must be expected to produce and lead. It's a challenge this team must face. With this young and inexperienced squad, adversity will loiter a bit longer at the start than it has in the past. But as General R.R. Neyland once said, "When the breaks go against you, put on more steam."

The good thing about Thursday is that it's over. But it also is a good place to begin again. It's Aug. 7, Not Sept. 30. There is time for this team to learn, grow, gain confidence and improve. McKenzie will have 10 more practice dates with scrimmages included to find pieces of the puzzle, to build confidence, to improve and develop some heart and character, which is in the tradition of Rebel football.

The good thing about this scrimmage is that it was early and against a team that had already been practicing two weeks. How this team responds will go a long way in determining where this team will be playing in October...on the turf or on the hardwood. I'm confident that we'll see them still playing outdoor sports.

This was just a scrimmage against a good team. Scrimmages are classroom-type experiences. Let's hope the Rebs learn from this, feel good that they survived and get better. They won't see any teams any better the rest of the way than Martin and Inman. If they can negotiate those two teams and realize that they survived and had success, the Rebels will have a good year. That's what I'm banking on, just like that old Gaines team did 32 years ago.