Death, drugs . . . and hope
Coach’s personal playbook focuses on kids’ well-being over wins in a town where suicides and opioids have taken a stunning toll
MADISON, IND.— An hour’s drive from Louisville, perched along the Ohio River, sits the prettiest little town.
Madison, population 12,000, has won awards for its beauty. Best Main Street. One of the top 20 romantic towns in Indiana. One of 12 distinctive destinations in the United States, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
It’s all a lovely distraction from an open secret. On a reporting trip in July, I learned this in the unlikeliest of places: at Horst’s Little Bakery Haus, a doughnut shop with just a few tables, not far from the river.
A waitress had overheard me interviewing someone at the bakery earlier, and asked if I was a journalist.
She checked over her shoulder to see if anyone was listening. There was an urgency in her whisper as she said: “I lost my son last month. He hung himself from a tree in our yard and shot himself in the head. I cut him down myself, with my own hands. So many suicides.” She wiped away tears. “We need your help,” she said. Madison, in southeastern Indiana, is at the centre of a drugtrafficking triangle connecting Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Louisville. It is battling life-ordeath problems.
The waitress at the bakery will tell you that. So will her only surviving son, who graduated from high school in May and talks about how he wanted to kill himself a few years ago. The bakery’s dishwasher will tell you a story, too. Her 26-year-old daughter died of multiple organ failure in 2015, after years of addiction. She left behind a drug-dependent infant.
Even the head football coach at Madison Consolidated High School knows that this town — like so many others across the country, in both rich and poor areas — is going through hell these days, pushed over the edge by a growing opioid problem that’s eating away at communities. The tourists who travel here see Madison’s antique shops and frequent its art, music, food and boat-racing festivals. But beneath all that are the crises that threaten to drag this town under: suicide, depression, child neglect, abuse and addiction to drugs.
“All of these problems go hand in hand,” said Tonya RubleRichter, executive director for the Southeastern Indiana Voices for Children, which trains court-appointed advocates for children and is based in Madison’s historic district.
“There’s definitely an underbelly, and people don’t want to address it,” she said of Madison. “We’re on fire here.” And dying. In 2016, the suicide rate in Jefferson County, a county of 32,000 people in which Madison is the biggest town, was 41.8 per100,000 residents. It was the highest suicide rate for any Indiana county, and more than twice the state average. Compared with the national rate, it’s a startling 3.2 times higher. The epidemic is heartwrenching, and it’s getting worse, said Rodney L. Nay, the Jefferson County coroner who runs Madison’s Morgan & Nay Funeral Centre. He said that from February 2017 to early November 2017, there were at least 15 confirmed suicides in Jefferson County, with many more suspected suicides from overdoses. That includes four suicides the week Madison hosted a suicide awareness walk and a high school administrator who killed himself just weeks after submitting a grant to increase suicide counseling.
“To help someone through a hard time just takes one person listening and providing hope,” Nay said. “So that’s what we’re trying to do.”
That’s what Patric Morrison, head football coach of the Madison Cubs, is trying to do.
Madison has had just two winning seasons in the past 25 years, yet Morrison — a Madison native who played for the team — still dreamed of coaching there. Going in, he knew there would be obstacles, including that Madison, with just under 1,000 students, plays in a conference with bigger schools.
Winning football games is not his top goal. During his speech to kick off last season, he explained why.
“I have this younger brother,” Morrison told his players between two-a-day practices. “He’s very athletic, very smart. He can show up for a test without even studying and get100 — somebody who had to be tripleteamed on the football field. I tried to keep him on the right track.”
The police called Patric Morrison the night before he interviewed for the Madison coaching job. “Just want to let you know that we arrested your brother,” the officer said. “We caught him with heroin.”
“There’s a whole correlation between him, and me getting this job,” Morrison told his players during that summer speech.
“Because of him, I’ve gained 60, 70 younger brothers, and I want to keep you from doing the things he did. “I want to save you from that.” Some Cubs players told me Morrison should be meaner. He could push them harder, make them run more hills. Morrison believes he has to be careful about how much he pushes his players because he’s afraid they’ll quit.
“I’d rather focus on the kids than the wins,” he told me, “because I see what can happen to kids who stray.”
He saw it with a player expected to be the starting quarterback. That player, the best athlete on the team, strayed.
“He could throw a ball with his left hand in a perfect spiral more than 30 yards farther than other guys would throw with their dominant hand,” said James Lee, an assistant coach and a Madison police officer.
The player stopped coming to practices. He was suspended from school, and later showed up on a missing-person report. A day before I met Morrison, the player had been escorted from school after being caught with pills.
“It’s crushing when you strike out with a player,” said Morrison. “If they have something else going on, like another activity, then it can be OK. But if they have nothing else, that’s what worries me. It’s the downtime that worries me.”
It’s a good thing that winning isn’t the only thing for the Madison Cubs because their prospects for it weren’t great last season. But a reminder of the true value of participating in sports — as defined by Morrison — showed up at practice in July.
Curry Morgan, a 2015 Madison graduate, had returned from college to visit. He wanted to thank his former coach. Morgan is a junior biology and neuroscience major at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, on an academic scholarship, with plans for medical school.
His father was out of his life by the time he was in kindergarten. His brother was addicted to pills and sold drugs. His mother died of liver disease two days before his senior year. The day of the funeral, Morrison ended practice early and dispatched buses of teammates so they could support Morgan.
“I was scared people would treat me differently because of my family circumstances, but coach Morrison, he wouldn’t let that happen,” Morgan said. “Sports is the reason I’m resilient. It’s the reason I’m where I am and not selling drugs right now.”
Madison is a swing-shift town where it’s not uncommon for parents to work two or more jobs. So if a child is looking for an available adult role model, a football coach — a Patric Morrison — can be a last, best hope.
On senior night of a1-9 season, the players gave speeches describing how the team had been their oasis.
“For two years in a row, my sister tried killing herself,” offensive lineman Chance Webster told teammates and coaches as he sobbed. “Because of football, I was able to get through life when I was really down. I just want to thank you guys.”
In the same week last fall in which Madison won a national award for being a “stellar community,” the Cubs played a first-round playoff game against Silver Creek High School, in Sellersburg, Ind., a suburb of Louisville. They lost to Silver Creek, 42-7. Under the field’s dimming lights and with chirping crickets in the distance, Morrison gave his season-ending speech.
“I am proud of every single one of you,” Morrison told his players. He addressed the seniors. “No matter where you go or what you do, I will always be a contact for you.”
Many of the seniors had been teammates since fourth grade. Now they were crying. The face of Webster, the lineman, was red, his body trembling. He struggled to gain enough composure to talk.
“I’m not crying because we lost, because it really doesn’t matter that we lost,” he said.
“I’m crying because it’s over.”
“I see what can happen to kids who stray.” PATRIC MORRISON FOOTBALL COACH AT MADISON CONSOLIDATED HIGH SCHOOL