By Al Quartemont, Special to the Message
PINEVILLE – LC football coach Dennis Dunn remembers well the first time he met Bill McCartney.
The encounter with the man who led Colorado to a National Championship in football in 1990 and would eventually start the Christian ministry, Promise Keepers, came in February 1992, when Dunn and his assistant coaching staff at Evangel High School of Shreveport made a trip to Boulder, Colo.
[img_assist|nid=6122|title=Coach Bill McCartney, Founder of Promise Keepers|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=82|height=100]“Coach McCartney took us to his house and said ‘Guys, I want to show you my room,’” Dunn recalled. “So we thought he was taking us to his trophy room. But we walked through that room and went into a small, unassuming room facing the Rocky Mountains. It had a plate glass window and a kneeler in front of that window. He said, ‘Men, this is where I meet Almighty God every morning. God has shown me he’s going to fill Boulder Stadium with 50,000 men who are going to go back to their homes and be the fathers and husbands God has called them to be.’”
Six months later, Boulder Stadium was filled with 50,000 men and the Promise Keepers ministry was underway.
On Friday, March 5, the Louisiana College Campus will be touched in its own way by the Promise Keepers founder. Coach McCartney has been tapped to headline the third annual Wildcat Football Celebration. The event was started three years ago as a way to raise money for the LC football program – specifically money for equipment and the construction of a new stadium.
Phase one of the stadium is complete. Phase two, which is to start as soon as the funding is finalized, will see the enclosure of the stands on the LC side of the field – a structure that will include a visitors locker room, bathrooms, a press box, suites and a new concession stand. Dunn said he would like to see the work on that phase to begin right away.
The final phase is to include a three-story athletic training center. It will be home to the LC football team with lockers, coaches’ offices, meeting rooms and classrooms, as well as serve as the home of the Masters in Athletic Training program. The timetable for that phase is much less certain right now.
But what is certain is the fact that McCartney will again be a big-name drawing card for the celebration. The first year saw former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden and current San Diego Chargers running back Jacob Hester as the headliners. Last year, it was John Curtis High School Coach J.T. Curtis. In McCartney, Dunn will bring in a man whose passion and purpose in life are similar to his own.
“It’s an awesome opportunity not only for us as a college, but as a community in general to open our arms to someone with his kind of vision, this kind of heart for God,” Dunn said. “I think it will go hand in hand with our mission.”
There will be two opportunities to hear Coach McCartney. The first will be a $250 per person dinner at LC’s Granberry Conference center at 5:30 p.m. March 5. Each ticket will give people the chance to meet Coach McCartney and have a photo taken with him as well as get an autographed football and an autographed copy of MCartney’s new book, Two Minute Warning.
Following the dinner, the Wildcat Football Celebration will start at Guinn Auditorium at 7 p.m. Coach McCartney will be the featured speaker in a $10/person event that will also include LC football players and the 2009 highlight film.
For more information and for tickets, call LC’s Office of Institutional Advancement, (318) 487-7003 or visit the LC website at www.lacollege.edu.