Stamp not about to surrender to cancer
LISBON -- Everyone who's ever played for legendary coach Gary Stamp has been required to memorize a classic poem called "It's All in the State of Your Mind."
Whether the team star or a reserve, if they couldn't recite the 24 lines word-for-word to the coach before the season started, they didn't dress for the game.
The hard-and-fast rule went for his own four children as well - sons Tait, Quinn, Shea and daughter Paige, each of them all-staters for their dad's Lisbon High School teams.
Over 42 years of coaching softball, baseball and football at 11 area high schools and a small college, Stamp instilled the lessons of those lines. "If you think you're beaten, you are, and if you think you'll lose, you've lost."
But, "Think that you can, and you will - it's all in the state of your mind."
Now, as the respected coach and teacher faces a life-threatening disease that was diagnosed just last month, the words of a simple poem take on new meaning.
"It's how I've always lived my life," says Stamp, 65, who has Stage IV lung cancer though he never smoked in his life.
"I have always been optimistic and hopeful. And I've never believed in upsets. The team that usually wins a game is the team that thinks they can win the game."
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