During the winter months as the football field was rejuvenating, the field would be covered with straw. Right before spring, the straw would be burned off. It was 1978, spring practice started and we began playing on the newly burned field. It was the first few weeks of spring practice and all the players started complaining about being sore and starting to hurt. Coach Branson had all of the belly aching from the players he could take and called us all over to the home stand bench and sat us down to have one of his many mental toughness talks. After about 15 to 20 minute of his mental toughness speech, we broke off the bench and started running to do some hitting drills and this is when the screaming started – and I mean screaming. Coach Wheaton starting screaming “A bee has flown into my eye and the stinger is still in there!” Coach Branson runs to the rescue, bends Coach Wheaton over and looks into his eye to get out the stinger. However it wasn’t a stinger but was a little piece of ash from the burnt straw stirred up by the players had blown into Coach Wheaton’s eye. Branson came unglued about just giving his speech to the players and having Wheaton panic. It was just another day at practice and one of the many Coach Wheaton hypochondriac stories.
Article by Ronnie Woody and Randy Rose