Shawn's blogging. www.shawnfury.blogspot.com. Check out the new FAQ page. NFL.com writer Gregg Easterbrook labels Keeping the Faith a "must read" sports book. Read more Booklist gives positive review to Keeping the Faith. Read more Publishers Weekly calls Keeping the Faith a "heartfelt tale." Read review Keeping the Faith is now available on Kindle. Read more. Shawn's story on Mike and Matt Fasnacht appears in the February issue of Minnesota Monthly, which can be read here. Shawn's essay on home-state memories appears in the current Sports Scoop. Read More Shawn's story on high school basketball is in the current issue of Minnesota Basketball News. Read More The Daily News of Iron Mountain, Michigan, reviews book. Read review New Ulm Journal story features Trinity football team, discusses impact of book on school, team. Read more

Keepin’ the Faith

The absurdity of the score captured national attention. Rockford (Ill.) College 105, Trinity Bible College 0.

    Read it again, say it out loud and tell some friends. Most people who saw the score did.

    On Sept. 6, the Trinity football team, with fewer than 30 players in uniform, made the 735-mile drive from this southeastern North Dakota town to northern Illinois and came up 17 touchdowns and a field goal short. Rockford set the NCAA Division III record for points in a game, breaking the mark of 97 Concordia College of Moorhead scored in 1977.

    “It’s been the best publicity this school’s ever had,” says Trinity coach Rusty Bentley.

    Wait. Has poor ol’ Rusty, a lifelong Texan in his first year on the job, gone delusional after the beating? No, not when you figure out which final score Bentley and his Lions players are really concerned about.

    “Something coach Bentley talks to us all the time about is not letting our testimony get hindered,” Trinity senior offensive lineman Tim Rasmussen says. “That was the big focus (against Rockford), was just making sure that we were acting in a way that glorified God.”

    God and football, football and God. They’re the two things – with the order depending on the person – which brought many of the players to Trinity. And Bentley says God is the reason he moved his family “Thirteen hundred, 17-and-one-half miles” to the 307-student campus that has less than half the enrollment of any school it plays.

    “We prayed about it forever,” Bentley said of the decision to leave Waco, Texas, for Ellendale, population 1,559. “We weren’t going to just move up so daddy could play football. I could do that in Texas. We were praying for the right position and the right chemistry and it happened to be Trinity Bible College.”

    It just won’t be the right place to win for awhile.

    On this partly sunny Saturday afternoon, the Trinity Bible College Lions are playing their home opener against Haskell Indian Nations University (Kan.). The Lions have 24 players in uniform, though the roster has grown to 30.

    Two players joined the team after the 105-0 loss.

    Prior to the game, the loudspeakers blare the “Monday Night Football” theme and the “Rocky” soundtrack. Once the game starts, though, the good vibes last five minutes.

    Trinity quarterback Anthony Werner hits an open wide receiver in stride and deep on the team’s first possession, but the ball is dropped. The defense, supported by a crowd of 200, which includes a vocal minority of Trinity female students decked out in Lions garb, forces a Haskell punt. The fans are loving it, but the next time the Lions’ offense sees the ball it’s trailing 21-0.

    Haskell’s initial punt was fumbled and converted into a touchdown. The ensuing kickoff was fumbled and led to a TD. The next kickoff was squibbed toward the left sideline, examined by Trinity’s players and fallen on by a Haskell Fighting Indian. A few plays later, seven more points.

    “Did you see that, three Christmas presents right there we gave them,” Bentley says to a bystander. “I’m telling you, this is not a 105-0 team.”

    But for one day, it was.

‘105-0 meant nothing’

    It could have been worse. With 13:25 remaining in the third quarter, Rockford led Trinity 84-0. With six minutes left in the third it was 98-0.

    “The only way that game doesn’t get to that point is if we call it off or we take a knee on every play,” said Rockford coach Mike Hoskins, “and I wasn’t going to do that.”

    The Regents, who lost 23-3 to Wisconsin Lutheran the following week, had a safety, a kickoff return for a score and returned three interceptions for touchdowns.

    Running back Marcus Howard had 334 yards rushing and five touchdowns. The only two passes Rockford threw went for scores. Rockford had a 556 to 14 edge in total yards.

    “When I first heard (the final), I said, ‘Wow,’” said Trinity Bible College President Dennis Niles. “Coach Bentley had every reason to just drag back to Ellendale, that had to be a long trip. But the next day, he was looking for a silver lining in there.”

    The check-for-a-typo final score, coupled with the name of the losing school, provided plenty of comic fodder for outsiders. It was like airline food for a rookie standup comedian. Trinity Bible College used “its parting of the Red Sea defense,” wrote Reggie Hayes of the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel.

    “You’d have thought Trinity Bible would at least have had a prayer,” read a college football roundup in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

    And isn’t there some irony in here somewhere, what with Christians, Lions and a slaughter?

    Even Bobby Bowden got a laugh out of it. Yeah, that Bobby Bowden. Florida State University legend. Second-winningest coach in Division I-A history.

    “People say, ‘Did you know Bobby Bowden?’” Bentley said. “No.

    “He’s recognized in the coaching world as a preacher in coaching clothes. My Bible says I’m supposed to call on my Christian brothers when I need their help so I called the biggest brother I could find – Bobby Bowden.”

    So after the 105-0 loss Bentley rang him up in Tallahassee, Fla., left a message and told Bowden he needed to call back “today.”

    Bowden complied with Bentley’s demand and less than an hour later left a message of his own. Once they finally hooked up, Bentley said Bowden “laughed about it. A hundredand-five to nothing meant absolutely nothing to him. Absolutely nothing. He said, ‘Really? That’s no big deal.’”

    The pair talked for about 15 minutes, two people completely unfamiliar with each other’s coaching worlds but bonded at least by profession and faith.

    What advice did Bowden, owner of 336 career victories, offer?

    “He said, ‘You teach them to block and you teach them to tackle and you don’t lose your faith.’”

    Only one of those will be easy for Bentley.

Building a program

    He’s got the type of Texas drawl Midwestern folks love to impersonate. His voice, when raised, would have come in handy as a lookout at the Alamo.

    Bentley affectionately calls Ellendale “Mayberry,” but only when he’s not calling it perfect. An ordained minister, two of his proudest office possessions are a pair of photos taken at a Dallas dinner in 1985. One shows Bentley with Billy Graham, the other with the late and legendary Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry.

    The 40-year-old Bentley and his wife, Sage, have four children – the oldest 4 and the youngest 4 months. He credits his wife, a “fulltime momma,” for keeping his spirits up after the Rockford game. It’s a role she’ll have to play many more times.

    “If I was told I had to win this year, I’d be panicking,” Bentley said. “I’m not told I have to win in any year. I’m told I’m supposed to develop the program. I’m not building a team just for this year, I’m building the program.”

    President Niles seconded that sentiment.

    “We’re rebuilding this football team from the absolute ground up,” he said. “I think we’ve got a guy out there who knows what he wants to do. He knows he has a mountain to climb.”

    It wasn’t always like this. Trinity won three games in 1999, four the next year, peaked with five in 2001 but went 0-9 last year.

    Coach Jesse Godding left in May of 2002 for a position at Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie, Texas. The timing hindered the school’s effort to find a replacement. Jeff Hedrick filled in on an interim basis but struggled with a roster that had fewer than 20 players by the end of year.

    Derrick DeBoef was the team’s quarterback the last four seasons and is a co-offensive coordinator this year. DeBoef has been through what Trinity considers its glory years, played through one winless season and accepts more could come.

    “It gets frustrating at times, but something we focused on last year was to focus on guys taking advantage of the year they have for experience and learning,” he said. “I see coach Bentley taking the program another step. Even though we may be losing 105-0, 60-0, we still see the program beginning to grow.”

    That growing has to start with an increase in the number and quality of players. Only six players are back from last year’s team, including Rasmussen, a 315-pound lineman. Freshman Scott Rasmussen, Tim’s 300-pound little brother, was a standout in high school. Senior Marcus Montana was a top kick returner in the conference last year.

    Others are simply familiar with the general themes of football.

    “I had a kid come off the field after the Rockford game and say, ‘Golly, I played more today than I did my whole high school career,’” Bentley said with a chuckle. “You have to start all the way back with the fundamentals. ... Your first reaction is, they should know these things. Anybody that watches TV should. But you know what? They don’t. And I can’t say they should because I didn’t get hired to help kids remember what they were taught. I got hired to teach kids.”

    Freshman Robert Parish is one player who does know some things about football. A Washington native, Parish attempted to walkon to the Washington State football team, but eventually arrived at Trinity. He’s a 215-pound linebacker and offensive lineman. If you’re at Trinity, you’re playing both sides of the ball.

    Parish suffered an ankle injury with five minutes remaining in the game against Haskell. After spending a few minutes on the ground, Parish limped over to the sideline, had his ankle re-taped and trotted back to the field. His team trailed by 53 points.

    “We just never let things get us down,” Parish said. “(Before coming to Trinity) I’d just pray little prayers. I was like, ‘God, if you ever want me to play football again, I’d really like that.’ Now I come here and I play every play, every game, nonstop. So be careful what you ask for or you’re going to get it in abundance.”

    Bentley’s long-range goals include eventually fielding a roster of about 50 players. But he’s going to have to find them from a limited pool of resources. Private Christian schools are the primary source for recruits. At bigger schools, Bentley won’t be looking for the same things as other coaches.

    “First and foremost is the spirituality aspect, that’s the most important thing in a recruit. ... I’m not going to get their ones and I’m not going to get many twos,” Bentley said of schools’ first and second-string units. “But the kids that still want to play ball and don’t know about the opportunity they have to play ball, that’s the ones we can get to Trinity.”

    Sometimes, they’ll get them a decade after high school.

A second chance

    The last time Anthony Werner played organized football, George Bush was president. The elder George Bush.

    This year he’s the starting freshman quarterback for the Trinity Bible College Lions. Werner, who turns 30 Monday, is playing with a cracked ankle, a sore knee, a banged-up shoulder and a bounced-around soul.

    A native of Fairbanks, Alaska, Werner has been wandering the country since leaving high school in 1993. He was homeless for a spell in Denver, where his only possession was his BMX bike. He won numerous racing titles and kept the bike clutched to his body while sleeping to keep it from being stolen.

    Werner says he learned to read six or eight months ago. The school he attended in Alaska “pushed him through the system.”

    “I got a speed reading CD on how to speed read from a crack head,” Werner said nonchalantly. “He burnt me a disc of it. I went and worked on speed reading for like six minutes a day ... and that gave me the confidence.”

    Werner admits classes are tough because of his reading level. He’s currently taking developmental English, Christian thought, freshman seminar, chapel class, psychology of coaching and health and fitness.

    “Everybody is so awesome here, it’s like something out of a storybook,” Werner said. “No matter what happens, I’m going to give it 110 (percent). Classes get too hard, I can’t read good enough, I just can’t make the cut, that’s one thing. But there’s no quit.”

    It’s an attitude that will also come in handy on the football field. Trinity uses the passoriented West Coast offense, a system reliant on timing and a fleet of receivers. They are two resources in short supply for the Lions.

    Werner usually starts from the shotgun formation and is almost always under pressure. The inevitable chucks downfield, and inevitable incompletions and interceptions, do nothing to dim Werner’s enthusiasm.

    “The Lord’s just blessed me to come out here, ’cause I can’t throw very good, I’m not very fast, but I just try really hard,” he said. “I just really came out, showing these kids you have to cherish every play and play it like it’s your last because you’re not promised tomorrow.”

    Which helps put 105-0 in perspective.

    “We’re down 86-to-zip and I’m still running up and down the sideline like a little kid,” Werner said of the Rockford game. “Even the hecklers that were cursing at us the whole time were like, ‘Wow, look at that guy.’”

    The enthusiasm was there against Haskell, too, even in the final minutes of a 60-0 loss.

    Bentley told his team after the defeat that they had improved. Sixty-to-zero, sure, but that’s 45 points better than last time. They’re going to get better each game, Bentley told them, and the players agreed with a collective “Yes, sir.”

    Saturday, Westminster dealt the Lions a 62-6 defeat to drop them to 0-3, though the Lions accomplished one of their goals: a score. But the future is what Bentley is looking at. He and the Lions believe a prophecy can guide them. This one’s not from God, but from Bobby Bowden. “(Bowden) said this year we’ll lose some big ball games. Next year we’ll lose a little in some ball games. In the third year we’ll win some ball games. He said, that fourth year, look out because it will be our day.”