By BOB DECKER
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MOUNTAIN LAKES - First ran into Doug Wilkins in the fall of 1958 on the football field at Roxbury High School ... have visual proof of it, too, on an old game film that has since been converted to tape.
Better to say that Doug Wilkins ran into me, though, because there it is in black and white as No. 65 knocks No. 40 flat on his butt.
The final score, however, was Morris Hills 7, Roxbury 6, and it was one of our best wins of a 9-0 season and the only loss his 7-1-1 team had all year.
I haven't let him forget about it since.
After Roxbury, Wilkins went on to Moravian College and four more years of football and, upon graduation, took a job as a teacher and assistant football coach at Mountain Lakes High School. Two years later he became the head football coach.
We talked Mountain Lakes High School football on Sunday evenings for the 10 years I worked at The Citizen newspaper - up until last year. We talked about the game the day before and he would help me put together a story for the paper. And we usually found time to talk about other stuff, too.
This past December, we talked Mountain Lakes football and stuff again after his Herd football team closed the season with a second consecutive state title, a second straight unbeaten season, and the team's 25th straight win over three seasons.
That game was a 48-7 victory over Butler for the North 1, Group 1 state sectional title and it was Wilkins' last game at the head football coach of The Herd.
On Wednesday, Feb. 3, Doug Wilkins announced to his football players that he was retiring from the only high school coaching job he ever had -- a job that lasted 46 seasons, the final 44 as head coach.
"I told the kids I have been playing this game for 54 years," Wilkins said with a laugh over the phone later that night. "Hey ... I'm old!"
Wilkins, who turns 68 in April, had considered retiring at the end of the 2009 season, an unbeaten season that ended with the sixth of his seven state titles.
"I really thought I was done last year ... it was close, but I stayed," Wilkins says. "But this year, after thinking about it since December, I just felt as if I could no longer reach within myself and pull out what it takes to go through another season.
"This past season was a gift ... and I just felt I didn't want to push it. It's time to do this."
Wilkins pushed it enough in the past 44 seasons to win those seven state titles (two at Giants Stadium) and finish with a career record of 328-105-5, making Wilkins the all-time winningest coach in Morris County and the fourth all-time winningest coach in the state.
He had four unbeaten seasons, 10 one-loss seasons and only four losing seasons - none since 1984. There were 22 conference titles along the way, too.
Wilkins has done all this while coaching at a Group 1 school, the smallest division in the state in numbers of 10th, 11th and 12th graders in the school.
Yet he had 63 players on his varsity squad this past season ... 99 in the program when you count his 36-man freshman squad. He has had varsity squads that number in the 60s the past few years and has always had between 45-55 sophomores, juniors and seniors on his varsity teams.
"The kids love their football here ... and we love to coach them," Wilkins says. "You know I'm going to miss the kids most -- the preparation, the practices, the film sessions, working with all the coaches I've had, the parents, the fans, the student, the administrators -- it was all good.
"But the kids were special and it will be the kids I miss the most."
If Wilkins' players were "special" to him, then his seniors were "extra special" because of the way he brought them up to their final seasons in high school football, seasons in which they were expected to have earned a coveted starting position. Wilkins' starting units have traditionally been two-platoon and senior-laden.
"We build from the top down ... we want our players to be ready by the time they reach their senior years," Wilkins explains. "We might lose a couple younger players along the way, players who thought maybe they should be seeing more playing time ... but I'd say we have kept more than we lost.
"The one common denominator of all our teams is that one day everybody will be a senior ... and we treat our seniors special."
But Wilkins' seniors have to perform, they don't have starting jobs handed to them after they complete their junior seasons.
"I tell the younger kids that they have to force us to play them more ... they have to show us they belong out on the field," Wilkins says. "They do that and they play.
"In our way of doing things, the tie goes to the senior ... even if it's a close call in favor of the younger player, we'll still bend and give it to the senior.
"A lot of coaches might go the other way to make sure the younger kid comes back ... but we appreciate the loyalty shown by our seniors and we reward them for it.
"At the end of the day, however, they all have to perform."
At the end of the day, it's the Mountain Lakes Homecoming Day games that seem to draw the biggest crowd of ex-players who come back to see their coach. They go to his practices ... they watch films again ... they attend meetings ... they talk about what they have done since they left him, about how much playing for him meant to them.
Wilkins says he won't walk completely away from the game as he still expects to "... talk with the guys who will run the program ... I'll help out as much as possible ... and then go from there ..."
And where is there?
"Don't really know yet," he says with a laugh. "Don't really know ... but I'm sure I'll figure it out."
Until he does, there's a game from a 1958 high school football game thatg he should see again. He'll laugh when No. 65 knocks No. 40 on his butt ... and I'll laugh at the final score.
And if we look extra hard - maybe even squint a little - at that old black-and-white tape, who can say there won't be a hint of blue and gold on No. 65 and and a touch scarlet and white on No. 40?
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(Bob Decker can be reached at deckbob@optonline.net)
