A football practice gone horribly wrong

Probably the high point of McCook Football Coach Russ Sautter’s illustrious career was the winning of the Nebraska High School All=Class football championship, with his 1946 MHS team. Since McCook was near the bottom of the Class A schools in enrollment, Russ Sautter was much acclaimed in coaching circles for his ability to pull off such a feat.

In 1947 Coach Sautter’s football genius was called into question. With a squad greatly depleted by graduation, Sautter’s ‘47 McCook team failed to win a single game that year. 1947 turned out to be a major rebuilding year for Coach Sautter and his young Bisons.

1948 showed promise that MHS was on the way back to football prominence. Coach Sautter, always the stern taskmaster, was pleased with the progress of this Bison team. From time to time Howard Fletcher and Dick Drake, from the ‘46 team would lend a hand at practice, to offer pointers on technique and give encouragement to the younger players.

There was an August 24, 1948, evening practice, before school had officially begun. It was hot, the players were tired, and Coach Sautter exhorted the team to move quickly to one end of the field for a lecture before heading for the showers. Any laggards were singled out by the rest of the team, and they became the focal point for a “dog-pile”. Richard Klein, a sophomore member of the ‘48 team that year recalled that “dog-piling” was a custom that had long been a practice, not just with the McCook team, but generally with teams throughout the state. One player was “it”, and all the others would jump on him, and the entire squad would end up in a giant pile of arms and legs---the “dog-pile.”. It could serve as a celebration, or to serve as a lesson to a laggard, to not be so slow. Players felt it was something that they needed to do to prove their manhood.

Janet Fletcher, Howard’s widow, remembered that Howard never did like the practice of “dogpiling”. He tolerated it, but felt it served no good purpose. Coach Sauter hated it. He felt it was a dangerous custom and a waste of valuable practice time. But it was a McCook tradition, and he did not outlaw it.

But the “dog-pile” at the August, 1948 practice, was the last one at McCook. When the bodies cleared away from the pile, there was one boy who did not get up. Ted Sloniker, a junior, and a center on the team, was not the laggard that had caused the “dog-pile”, but he was a part of the mix of bodies. When the last man crawled away, Ted still lay on the ground. He was unable to move. A doctor was summoned, but by the time he arrived, Ted was dead. His neck had been broken in the scuffle.

Ted had an older brother, Earl, who had played football for McCook, and Ted had dreamed of being a member of the team from the time he was very small, when he attended Earl’s games with his father. During football season, after Ted started to school, the little boys of the neighborhood used the Sloniker back yard for their football field. When Ted was at the age of 8 and 9 years, the family lived across the alley from the McKillip family. Leo McKillip, being older in years was always the coach for the younger boys. Ted loved those pickup neighborhood games.

Ted had narrowly escaped death on three other occasions before his fatal accident. At 14 months of age, he got into a bottle of pills, which were coated with chocolate, and ate almost an entire bottle. Quick work by a physician saved his life.

At age 4 Ted was cited as a childhood hero. He showed great presence of mind when his mother was knocked unconscious by an oil heater explosion in their home. Despite being burned around his head and neck, Ted stomped out a box of flaming matches, which dropped from the hands of his mother as she fell, preventing her clothing and the house from catching fire.

At age nine Ted underwent a mastoid operation on his right ear. The operation seemed successful, but soon after he was stricken with an infection of some kind, and for weeks the family despaired for his life, while his doctors tried one treatment after another. Finally, they hit upon a medication that worked and put him on a long path of recovery.

Perhaps Ted’s close brushes with death gave him an insight to the after-life. From his obituary, “He said many times, ‘When your number is up, it was up, and it made no difference where you were, or how old you are…’ “He would tell us when we felt badly because someone had departed this life, that we should not feel sad. The one who had departed was more fortunate than we who are living because you just begin to live when you die.”

Ted had looked forward to the new school year in 1948. “He would swell with pride when his class of 1950 was mentioned, saying it was a swell group of kids, and largest class so far in the history of McCook. As Ted prepared to leave home for practice on that fateful Monday evening he remarked to his parents, “Life is just beginning again, now that school, and all the activities are starting.” Instead, life ended abruptly for sixteen-year-old Ted, at 8:45 p.m. that evening, August 24, 1948.

The entire McCook community mourned Ted’s death. His family was devastated. Ted was well liked by his fellow students and his teachers, and his death had a very unsettling effect on the football team. But Coach Sautter was affected by Ted’s death as much as anyone.

Coach Sautter, a truly good man, and a fine coach, had done so much for so many individuals, on and off the playing field. He was looked up to by so many but had failed to prevent this tragedy. He did not talk much about the event, but at the end of the school year, at the very height of his coaching career, Russ Sautter resigned from coaching and teaching and entered the insurance business in McCook.

Dick Drake, who remained a close friend of Mr. Sautter to the end of his life, said that Ted Sloniker’s death took something out of Sautter. No one held Coach Sautter in any way responsible, but after that evening practice, Sautter no longer had his zest for coaching and the teaching. Sadly, the senseless dog-piling incident had not only snuffed out the life of one young football player, but also caused McCook High School and the coaching profession to lose a fine teacher, an exceptional role model for young men, and an outstanding coach.