GLIAC IN THE NEWS:

Coaching helps Cullen Finnerty's father deal with son's death

 

Tim Finnerty leads his team in warm ups during a practice in August. The longtime assistant coach is taking over a Wayne program that hasn’t won a game on the field in its last 38 games, going back to 2009.
 

Jeff Seidel, Detroit Free Press Columnist 2:18 a.m. EDT September 17, 2014


 

           

They need each other.

The grieving coach needs this team as much as the team needs him.

So on an overcast afternoon, Tim Finnerty walks slowly to an offensive lineman. Finnerty limps slightly because of a torn meniscus in his knee — he is scheduled for surgery today — and he adjusts the lineman's stance and carefully demonstrates how to take a quick first step. Because that first step is crucial. It sets up everything.

Finnerty, 60, is the new head football coach at Wayne Memorial High School, a team that has lost 41 of its past 42 games, according to Michigan-Football.com.

Even though the Zebras are 0-3 this season, the practice is high-tempo and energetic. The coaching is constant and positive, focusing on the basics, and the players are working hard.
There is no quit, not for the players, and certainly not for the coach, who continues to struggle with a personal tragedy.

Finnerty's son Cullen died in May 2013, after he went missing in the woods in west Michigan. The death made national news.

For a year,Tim Finnerty tried to stay busy, doing things just to do things.
 

But at his core, Finnerty is a football coach. He has been coaching for 35 years, from youth leagues to high school, and he jumped at the chance to take over this program that has lost 15 straight dating to Sept. 28, 2012.

It is his first varsity head coaching job.

And in his first step, he pulled together a coaching staff filled with his former players, and he hired his oldest son, Timothy Finnerty Jr., to coach the offense.

"We both feel like Cullen had a hand in it," Timothy Finnerty Jr. said. "We both needed something to help cope with him not being here anymore."

A death in the woods

Cullen Finnerty was fishing on a river in west Michigan when he disappeared May 26, 2013. A search party was formed. His former coaches, teammates, friends and family looked through the woods and swamps near Baldwin until he was found two days later, not even a mile from where he had disappeared.

Cullen Finnerty was 30, married and the father of two young children.

An autopsy report showed he had died of pneumonia after swallowing his own vomit. But what happened to Cullen Finnerty in those woods still remains a mystery.

"The bottom line is, they really don't know," Tim Finnerty said.

Cullen Finnerty was taking oxycodone for a bad back, and he had Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease typically diagnosed in those with multiple past concussions. "They said he had CTE, but I don't think that's what killed him," Tim Finnerty said. "It's a mystery. It really is. I don't know. I dealt with the medical examiner for six to eight months after, and they were still doing research, trying to figure out what happened."

You could go crazy trying to figure out what happened to this strong young man, one of the most successful quarterbacks in college football history, a three-time Division II national champion at Grand Valley State.

"You don't ever get through it," Tim Finnerty said. "Every day, every moment, you feel sick all the time. It was the unimaginable. Who would ever think that somebody as big and strong and as good of shape as him would all of a sudden die in the woods?"

The Finnerty family even re-enacted Cullen's trip down the river in a pontoon boat, videotaping it and timing it.

"We re-enacted the whole thing," Tim Finnerty said. "We were trying to figure out what Cullen went through. We figured it took him 35 minutes to go from where he started to where he got out and pulled the boat up."

Tim Finnerty and his oldest son tried to stay busy. They tried to occupy their minds, but it was like meandering through the haze.

Eventually, they found their way back to the football field.

"I know this is where Cullen would want me to be," Tim Finnerty said. "Some people golf or fish. Football is what our family does."

Developing team pride

Now, the Finnertys are pouring all of their time and effort into the football program at Wayne, trying to change a culture of losing. "It starts with discipline, a lot of little things," said Tim Finnerty, who commutes to practice from Brighton. "A lot of the kids have never played football."

He is requiring his players to wear school colors at practice, trying to develop a team pride. "Last year, kids would miss all the time," Tim Finnerty said. "The principal was telling me a story. Last year, during one of their games, two of the players go off the bench during the game and went to the concession stand and got a couple of hot dogs."

He is trying to teach a new football mentality and mind-set. "They are already starting to realize they can do this and they can be successful," Tim Finnerty Jr. said. "It takes more than they thought to win a football game."

The whole program has undergone a face-lift. One of Finnerty's friends donated $10,000 to buy the team new varsity jerseys, and a parent donated $3,000 for new freshmen jerseys. They have remade a team room, installing new carpet.

But the first problem is just getting the players to practice.

"A lot of them are from single-parent families," Tim Finnerty said. "Getting to practice is a challenge. A lot of them walk."

One player couldn't attend practice because he had to babysit, so Finnerty set it up so that the babysitting happened at the field — one of the team managers watched the player's sibling — so the older brother could practice.

"These kids have it pretty bad," Tim Finnerty Jr. said. "A lot of these kids have a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that you don't know about."

So far, it has been a rough start to the season. Wayne has lost its first three games by a combined score of 160-27. And this week the Zebras play Canton, a perennial power.

"We are struggling to put points on the scoreboard," Tim Finnerty said. "But they are great kids, and we have kids still signing up for football, and they are still coming out to join the team."
Tim Finnerty is seeing progress, of the most important kind.

At the start of the year, one player was ineligible because of grades. "I told him school is first," Finnerty said. "Sit up front. Pay attention. Ask for help. And that's what he's done."
Last week, that player got a progress report. He had straight A's.
And that's the most encouraging step of all.