Chain Gang Linked by Decades of Down & Distance
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
September 18, 2018
SCHOOLCRAFT — Skip Fox figures he and his buddies have the best seats in the house when it comes to Schoolcraft football.
And the four have had them for a combined 167 years.
Fox, Jeff Bell, David Krum and Dick Goldschmeding make up the chain gang for the Eagles’ home games, and boast tenures individually and working together that surely rank among the longest in Michigan for providing that gameday duty.
They work well together, an asset when it comes to games like Schoolcraft’s 49-48 double overtime win against Saugatuck last Friday.
Each has a specific job with Bell and Goldschmeding working the chains, Krum the clip and Fox the down box.
Do they lose focus during those long games?
“Never,” Bell said, as the others burst into laughter, with one chiming in: “Good answer.”
“We’re always consummate chain people,” Bell continued. “Never once have I been leaning on that stake and having Dick on the other end pull me along to get going.”
The camaraderie among the four is evident as they share memories.
Fox, who is in his 55th season working the chains, started on the sidelines after his 1964 graduation from Schoolcraft High School.
“When I started, it was a three-man crew,” he said. “We always invited somebody from the opposing team to be on the chains. Then they started changing some of the rules.
“At that time, we worked one half on the visitors’ side and one half on the home side. When the chains had to be opposite the press box, we started working the games all on one side.
“It’s always the opposing side, so we’ve heard a lot of opposing coaches over the years. We’ve learned a few new words.”
Bell, a 1966 Schoolcraft grad, joined the crew 51 years ago.
Before retiring, he was a middle school teacher in the district for 28 years and “doing that, you get to know all the kids so it was always fun to be down there watching the kids you knew.
“It’s different now (that he is retired). We kind of refer to the program all the time to make sure we know who’s who on the team.”
The gang has seen definite changes in the game over their tenure.
“We see a lot more conditioning and a lot more safety regulations,” Bell said. “The rules change and we try to keep up with that as much as possible.
“It’s a faster paced game than it was when we first started.”
Krum worked part-time on the chain gang from 1965 to 1970 while he attended Michigan State University and has been full-time the last 49 seasons.
One down side of the job, he said, is “Mother Nature. At times I wished we weren’t out there because we can’t leave. We’re stuck there rain or snow.”
Bell said weather seems to be one of the biggest changes over the years.
“At least half of the season we worked in Carhartts and snow was at least ankle deep,” he said. “Now we usually don’t see snow, but we get cold weather, mosquitoes, things like that.”
Krum really did have the best seat in the house to see his son, Dean, make an outstanding play several years ago.
“It was right in front of us in the end zone,” Krum said. “He knocked a pass down on the last play and we won the game. The whole crowd went crazy.
“I was in utter shock. I kept asking the guys, ‘He didn’t get a penalty, did he?’ It saved a two-pointer and we won the game by one.”
Krum is the one who protects the sideline.
“I’m the one who tells the coaches and players to please get back as we are going up and down,” he said. “You’ve got to talk to them all the time.”
Goldschmeding is the new guy on the crew.
A graduate of Portage Central High school, he moved to Schoolcraft 50 years ago and was recruited 12 years ago.
“We’ve been friends for a number of years, and they said they had an opening on the chain gang and would I be interested,” Goldschmeding said. “I fell for it hook, line and sinker.
“At the time I was assisting on the (Schoolcraft) sideline at football games, so I moved from one side of the field to the other.”
As an assistant coach, Goldschmeding said he was well aware of the guys working the chains across the field.
“I think every coach is aware of what is going on on the other side of the field because they have to be involved in every play,” he said. “They’re thinking two or three plays ahead all the time.”
One of the first things the crew does is meet with game officials to coordinate moves.
“When a first down is made, one of us will mark the spot and the other will extend the chain the full extent of the 10 yards,” Bell said. “We hold that position until the officials give us the nod.”
Sometimes the crew has to scamper down the field, which becomes time for Fox’s stand-in to appear.
“When they have a 40- or 50-yard run, David’s nephew (Blake Krum) takes over and runs down the field for me,” Fox said. “At age 72, I’m not that fast anymore.”
Bell said the crew’s goal is to go unnoticed.
“If you hold up the game, that’s real bad,” he said. “You want to do your job, and if you’re not noticed and nobody has anything to say about the chain gang, you’ve done your job. That’s pretty much the way it works.”
Fox said about the only downside of the job is not sitting with their wives at games.
“All our wives sit on the other side without us,” he said. “You’ve got to have understanding wives.”
Sideline service one of many school connections
For Fox, Schoolcraft football has been a generational thing.
He lettered in football all four years and added, “My oldest son (Matthew) was on the championship team in 1990 and my other son, Mark, made all-state on both offense and defense, which was a rarity.”
“I’ve got four grandsons, and they all played for Schoolcraft.”
He also served on the Schoolcraft Board of Education for 34 years.
Bell played basketball for the Eagles and his son, Ross, played on the MHSAA Division 6 champion football team in 2001.
Krum did not play sports, but was a sports enthusiast in school.
He spent 29½ years on the school board.
Although he wasn’t involved in Eagles sports as a student, Goldschmeding’s two sons, John and Josh, played football at Schoolcraft and he was involved in the Athletic Boosters. He also has grandchildren involved in Schoolcraft sports.
Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Schoolcraft's Jeff Bell, Skip Fox, David Krum, Dick Goldschmeding work the chains during a game this season. (Middle) Clockwise, from top left: Bell, Fox, Goldschmeding and Krum. (Below) From left, Goldschmeding, Bell and Krum meet with game officials. (Photos by Pam Shebest.)
Oakridge 3-Sport Star Potts Applying Lessons to 'Second Chapter' in Sales
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
July 20, 2023
Jamie Potts put a major strain on his feet and ankles for many years.
Potts was constantly twisting and contorting in cleats and sneakers as a three-sport standout at Muskegon Oakridge and later as a rare two-sport star at Grand Valley State University, where he is still listed in the school’s football and baseball record books.
So it’s fitting that the 30-yeaar-old Potts is now helping to heal feet and ankles as a medical device salesman for Stryker.
“It’s a very competitive, fast-paced job and lifestyle,” said Potts, who graduated from Oakridge in 2011.
“I am very thankful for that because there is a huge void there. When you put so much of your time and energy into it, transitioning out of competitive sports is difficult.”
Potts is the youngest of four boys, so he practically grew up in the bleachers at Oakridge. By the time he got to high school, he fell effortlessly into the rhythm of football in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring – all while maintaining a 4.1 GPA, good for fifth overall in his class.
Potts did everything on the football field at Oakridge, as a 6-foot-3, 200-pound dual-threat quarterback. As a senior, he rushed for 1,561 yards and 24 touchdowns and threw for 696 yards and 10 TDs – along with totaling 64 tackles and successfully booting 9-of-13 field goal attempts.
“He was a fantastic high school athlete and one of the best athletes to ever come out of Oakridge,” said former Eagles coach Jack Schugars, the all-time winningest high school coach in the Muskegon area who is now the special teams coordinator at Ferris State. “He was a tremendous leader and the epitome of a role model for younger kids.”
Potts was a solid, if not spectacular, basketball player, known as a defensive specialist who wasn’t afraid to guard anybody.
Then in the spring, he was back to all-state status in baseball as an outfielder, batting .584 his senior year with six home runs, 38 RBIs and 34 stolen bases.
That meant it was decision time when it came to college – would it be football or baseball?
Potts received several Division I offers, including from Central Michigan University for football and Oakland University for baseball.
But it was Division II Grand Valley, particularly then-assistant coach Matt Yoches (now the director of football operations at Miami of Ohio) that floated the possibility of playing both sports – a very rare feat at the DII level.
Potts made the GVSU coaches look like geniuses. He was a four-year starter at tight end and receiver, finishing his career second all-time for the Lakers in TD receptions (35) and third in career receptions (169). In baseball, he finished with 241 career hits, the fifth-most in school history at the time.
“People told me that playing both in Division II wasn’t realistic,” said Potts, who now lives on the east side of the state in Fenton, with his 1-year-old daughter, Brooklyn. “But I wanted to give it a shot and I think I did all right with it. Growing up in Oakridge, my life was all about sports, so it prepared me.”
Potts was drafted by the Texas Rangers shortly after his senior collegiate baseball season in 2015 and played that summer for Class A Spokane (Wash.), batting .217 with four home runs in 57 games. He missed training camp and the first two games of the 2015 football season, but returned to help the Lakers to the DII Semifinals his senior year.
He prepared to resume his baseball career and left in late February for the Rangers spring training complex in Surprise, Ariz., before announcing his retirement in March with a long and heartfelt Facebook post, which concluded:
“My best advice I can give is that you should always chase your dreams until your heart says it’s time to stop,” Potts wrote. “No matter how far out of reach you think it is or how old you are, you can do it with enough hard work and preparation.”
Potts, who completed his degree in allied health sciences with a minor in psychology during the Lakers’ 2015 football run, then had to shift gears and find his place in the “real world,” outside of competitive sports.
Potts said Oakridge, in addition to being a hard-working sports community, also did a mighty fine job preparing him and his three older brothers, sons of Tom and Kathy Potts, for life after athletics. Oldest brother Chris is an engineer, Andy works as a logistics manager and Aaron is an orthopedic surgeon.
It was actually Aaron who pointed him in the direction of medical device sales. He went through five interviews shortly after his retirement before landing his first job in the field at Arthrex in Grand Rapids, before moving on to Kalamazoo-headquartered Stryker last year.
“A big part of my job is being in the operating room with the surgeons and making sure that everything is working,” explained Potts, who is part of a six-member team which covers much of eastern Michigan. “It’s very intense, very much like the feel of a close game. No doubt all of those years of sports help me every day.”
But Potts could not leave sports behind completely after his baseball retirement.
He was back in Muskegon in the spring of 2016 and attended a Muskegon Ironmen indoor football game. He spoke with team owner TJ Williams, who Potts used to watch playing for Oakridge as a kid, and a few weeks later, he was in an Ironmen uniform.
Potts played two years with the Ironmen as a receiver, linebacker and kicker.
“It was a lot of fun, really, getting to play in front of fans in Muskegon again,” said Potts. “The worst part was the walls. I’ve never experienced getting tackled into walls before and, I tell you, that takes some getting used to.”
More recently, Potts helped out last month as a coach at Schugars’ kicking camp at Oakridge, getting him back on the turf at Russell Erickson Stadium, where the field is now known as Jack Schugars Field.
“I’m happy to be a role model for kids,” said Potts. “You learn so many life lessons from playing sports. It really gets you ready for the second chapter of life.”
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PHOTOS (Top) Jamie Potts runs the offense for Muskegon Oakridge as a senior in 2010, and now. (Middle) Potts, second from left, is advancing in his career in medical device sales. (Photos courtesy of Jamie Potts.)