MAROA, Ill. (AP) - The Maroa-Forsyth football team’s postgame huddle broke following the Trojans’ Week 9 win at Cerro Gordo-Bement and Brandon Owens-Price sprinted toward a man sitting on a golf stool holding a bag of candy.
“Hey Bubba,” Owens-Price said with a big smile on his face as he grabbed a Tootsie Roll Pop from a plastic grocery bag.
Ask someone to point out Larry Nix — the big guy with the gray beard on the sideline at every Maroa game — they’ll likely get a confused look. Ask them to point out “Bubba,” or “Candy Man,” and the light of recognition comes on.
Nix has been handing out candy — first Sour Balls, then later Tootsie Roll Pops, gum and an assortment of other sugary sweets — on Maroa’s sideline since Fred Thompson was the Trojans’ coach back in the 1970s. But his impact on the Trojans’ athletic programs goes way beyond that.
Health problems have recently made it more difficult for Nix to be at games and practices — he can’t see very well because of macular degeneration, and a combination of a bad back and a bad hip have made it hard for him to stand for long periods of time.
But Nix will be on the sideline for Maroa’s Class 2A second-round playoff game Saturday at Athens, and for years to come if it’s up to the 75-year-old Nix.
“He’s like a mascot there now,” former Maroa star and Kansas City Royals player Kevin Koslofski said of Nix. “All the kids love him. He has candy in his pockets all the time. He loves doing that stuff. They’ve kind of grandfathered him in things at the school and I’m really glad they allow him to do that. It means a lot to him just to be out there. It gives him something to look forward to.”
Nix is originally from the Oakley area, but graduated from Niantic. He married his wife Janet in 1970 and the moved to the house Janet’s family had lived in since 1910. The two still live there.
The Nixes never had children of their own, but always had an interest in supporting the Maroa youth — especially the athletes.
“I just like kids,” Nix told the Herald & Review in 1980 after he received an award for outstanding volunteer in the area of aid-welfare in the R.E.A.C.H. Recognition program. “I think sports are one way to straighten out kids who might have problems.”
Nix’s nephew Bill Henderson played for Maroa beginning in 1974 and Nix began helping out Thompson, though he’s quick to point out: “I’m not a coach.”
“He asked me to help because he didn’t like any other of the coaches that they gave him,” Nix said, laughing. “We had a crow’s nest on a pole behind the press box. I’d be on headphones down on the sideline and he’d give me the plays from up there to give to the kids. And if someone didn’t do something right, Fred would yell, ’Get a hold of him and shake him!’”
But shaking kids wasn’t part of Nix’s personality. He wanted to help them, and didn’t mind dipping into his pockets to do it.
“He was always really generous,” said John Hockaday, Maroa’s quarterback in the mid-70s. “He never told me this, but there were these team jackets all the players had — not letterman jackets, but they had our names on them. They were probably $30 or $40.
“My dad worked at GE at the time, but he’d gotten laid off, so I hadn’t even asked my mom and dad if I could have one. But then I showed up to school and there was one for me. It was supposed to be a secret, but I knew it was Bubba.”
But it wasn’t just the football team that experienced Nix’s time and generosity. Nix was a starter at track meets and helped coaches organize area track clinics. He helped construct a building at the old high school that included rest rooms, a storage area and concession stands. He also helped run sewer lines, put up lights at the practice football field and dugouts at the baseball field.
And that’s just scratching the surface.
Nix, who was a lineman for the Illinois Bell Telephone Co. for 35 years, decided in 1977 to start a girls area best track meet.
“I thought the girls had been slighted,” Nix told H&R Sports Editor Bob Fallstrom in 1977. “That’s why I wanted this meet. The boys have one. The girls needed one.”
Larry and Janet ran the meet for 14 years. It was also during that time that Nix’s neighbor’s son, Koslofski, got into high school and began playing sports.
“He would come over and eat supper with us at night, then his mom would call and say, ’Supper is ready,’ and he’d say, ’I have to go home and eat now,’” Nix said, laughing. “He never did get fat. I don’t know how he kept from it.”
Koslofski spent a lot of nights at the Nix home.
“I was never one to turn down a free meal,” Koslofski said, laughing. “They did more for me during my high school years than I could ever thank them for. Bubba would always find things for me to do around the house and pay me a few bucks an hour, things like that.
“Now that I’m in the position of working with kids myself, I try to help out with coats and shoes and things like that if they need them — pay forward what they did for me.”
Koslofski also credited the Nixes for helping develop into the player that was drafted by the Kansas City Royals in 1984.
“Janet worked at the bank of Maroa, and we cleaned out an old room upstairs and put a batting cage and stadium lights in there,” Koslofski said. “Bubba would feed balls in the machine and Janet would set up a video camera and we’d go up there several nights a week. People in the bank would be complaining the next day about having dust on their desk because it would knock quite a bit loose.”
Koslofski told Fallstrom in 1986 those hitting sessions and the videos helped make him into a player good enough to get drafted by a major league team.
“The video tape convinced me I had a battling flaw — I was hitting off a stiff front leg that caused my body to jump up and my head to move,” Koslofski said in 1986. “I’ve kicked that habit.”
Nix was on the Maroa sideline handing out candy and taking pictures on and off between the years after Thompson retired in 1985 and Josh Jostes began coaching the team in 2000. But the relationship between Jostes and Nix got off to a rocky start.
“I kind of knew who he was — he was someone I’d noticed in the background,” Jostes said of his first two years as Maroa coach. “We weren’t very good, and I think at first when he talked to me he was trying to see what the new guy was all about.
“I remember one of our early conversations came after I’d ordered new uniforms. I’d handed out some numbers that had been retired, but I didn’t even know we had retired numbers. But I could tell he wasn’t very happy about it.”
But the relationship improved after Jostes brought on Hockaday as an assistant. Nix was one of the first people Hockaday thought of.
“John told me, ’You’re coming out there with us,’” Nix said.
“Bubba and I went back a long way,” Hockaday said. “When I got there, it opened the door for him to get back out there on the sideline.”
A year later, Maroa began a run of playoff appearances that reached 12 this year. In that time, Nix has had a sideline view of one of the state’s most successful programs. Hockaday described Nix as part of the inner circle and integral to the team as someone helps build up kids’ confidence if they’ve had a bad day in a game or practice, though Nix scoffs at that.
“I’m just a cheerleader,” Nix said.
But Jostes said calling Nix “just a cheerleader” isn’t doing him justice. After the early disagreement, Nix and Jostes have grown close.
“You can’t have too many people like him around, supporting the kids and picking them up,” Jostes said. “And he still does a lot. We have those big signs in the archway the players walk through — he had those built and put in. Every year he buys our skill kids towels with their numbers on it. He spoils the kids.”
Recently, Nix’s health has kept him from being as active with the team as he was in the past. Jostes said Nix attended every practice for 10 years, but hasn’t been to many this year. And he also hasn’t taken pictures this year.
“I can’t hardly see to take the pictures anymore — everything’s blurry out on the field,” Nix said. “And my back’s been out until August. At first it was my sciatic nerve, then I fell and hurt my other hip. Now I have to get it straightened out.
“But this won’t be my last year. No. I’m going to stay out here as long as I can — as long as Josh is here, for sure. And whoever comes along after him, if they’re a good coach I’ll go with them, too.”
Jostes said he hopes he never has to coach at Maroa without Nix on the sideline.
“I’ve really missed him at practice — I used to start every practice with a sucker and a handful of gum,” Jostes said, laughing. “During games, as soon as we go on defense Bubba brings me a cold bottle of Gatorade.
“He’s just such a great supporter of not only us, but all the teams at Maroa. I just absolutely love having him around.”
Hockaday no longer coaches at Maroa, but at games he always makes sure to search out Nix.
“When I think of Trojan football, he’s one of the first people I think of,” Hockaday said. “He’s just a really great guy.”
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Source: (Decatur) Herald & Review, https://bit.ly/1kHJUtb
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Information from: Herald & Review, https://www.herald-review.com
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