A quiet confidence has always been factor in Jarrett's success


By CHRIS HOBBS
Record Sports Editor

NEWTON - From the time he started playing sports and becoming one of the guys, the people who came into contact with a young Dale Jarrett could see the trait that eventually carried him to fame.

"When I use the word confident, I can't use it without saying quiet confidence," said Don Patrick, Jarrett's head football coach in 1974 at Newton-Conover High. "He had that little sports savvy about him.

"He was one of those out there doing his job and you didn't realize how well until you saw the final statistics and saw what he had done.

"He was determined to be successful and didn't go about it in any flashy way."

Thirty-four years later, as those who played along side him on teams or helped him get his foot in racing's door look back, they say they remember a guy they knew would succeed.

"The secret to his success is that he's just a battler," said Jimmy Newsome, who competed against Jarrett for the starting quarterback job at Newton-Conover in 1974 and later played an instrumental role in Jarrett driving a race car for the first time. "He's a champion and champions don't quit. Even when times would get tough and people would tell you to quit, he just refused to lose."

Johnny Cansler of Morganton remembers all the times he and Jarrett passed a football back and forth on the sidelines and never seemed to tire.

Patrick thinks Cansler, 51, and a transportation specialist for the Burke County schools, caught every touchdown pass Jarrett threw, seven or eight, in 1974.

Jarrett led Newton-Conover to an 8-2 record and a share of the old Southern District 7 title with Maiden in the league's first season as a 3A conference.

"I bet we did that (toss footballs) 100 times a day," Cansler said. "It was the work ethic. You could just tell he was going to stand out. I knew he would stick with racing and something good would come out of it."

Although it took years for Jarrett to find consistent success in racing, Newsome knew it would come eventually.

Newsome, who runs the family tire business in North Newton, was about 10 when he first heard about this Jarrett kid with the fierce competitive nature.

"I can remember hearing about Dale being the QB of one of four Devils midget league teams in Newton," said Newsome, now 51. "He always had the attitude, as far as athletics were concerned, that he was king of the hill.

"He was not a braggart, but he had that persona that he wasn't going to be beat. He was very competitive."

What Jarrett was not, Patrick says, was loud or demanding. He didn't expect things to be different for him because his father, Ned, was a well-known race car driver and community figure.

"I first met him Dale in a football meeting," said Patrick, who came to Newton-Conover from Wilkes Central to be head football coach for Jarrett's senior season. "He really was not an attention seeker.

"That's one of the things that stood out. He never tried to ride the coattails of being Ned Jarrett's son. I wouldn't have known it if someone hadn't told me. He did not want fanfare.

"An ego? Never saw it, never heard it."

But Jarrett's hard-nosed approach to football was easy to see. He has a scar on his chin that he says everyone thinks he got from racing. Actually, it comes from the facemask of an East Lincoln player that hit Jarrett, a safety, squarely on the jaw when the Red Devils were on a goal-line stand.

And Jarrett confirms that the story told nowadays about his helmet cracking open from the impact of a hard collision with Maiden's star running back, the late Mackie Rhinehardt, is true.

Whether stopping a running back or keeping Jeff Gordon in the rear view mirror over the final few laps of a NASCAR race, Jarrett's competitive juices flow.

"He's done well," Cansler said. "And back then, you knew he could."

Patrick said Jarrett had athletic skills that were better than many people realized, and that Jarrett eventually proved everyone wrong who had one lingering question about him so many years ago.

"I've laughed about saying that the only thing that kept him from being absolutely amazing was his (lack of) speed," said Patrick. "And now he makes his living based on speed."