Last modified: Tuesday, December 4, 2007 12:47 AM EST GOBIS: D-R's Cute plays final round of coaching BY PETER GOBIS SUN CHRONICLE STAFF "Hey, Bill, three of your kids are in their underwear swimming in the brook!" ... or so the story goes some three decades ago when Wendy Cute was walking around the course at the Segregansett Country Club trying to find her husband, Bill, the coach of the Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High Falcons. "That was my first year coaching, we had a young team and we're playing Coyle-Cassidy on a blistering hot day," Bill Cute still chuckles to this day of the story. "When you are a young coach, you want to build a reputation and my wife finds me on the course and tells me that three of my guys are swimming in the pond." Cute's dad, Bill, Sr., was the pro at the Segregansett CC at the time, so he hurried into the clubhouse to retrieve a golf cart to set his Falcons straight and issue a bit of discipline. "There was no 50-percent rule back then to qualify for the state tournament and we were around .500 and playing out the string," added Cute. "I was out with the Coyle coaches playing a few holes and I hear that. Well, no punishment was severe enough." As the story goes, those Falcons were issued a one-match suspension. "But the strange thing is that a few of those guys are now some of my most loyal alums," said Cute, who orchestrates a Falcon golf alumni reunion every summer at the Rehoboth CC. "It's a nice way to link the past and the present and we always get anywhere from two to three dozen of my former guys out to play." Except that there won't be many more of Cute's former Falcons. That is because Cute handed in the keys to the golf cart, cleaned off his golf clubs - at least temporarily - removed his golf shoes and attested his final score card. After 35 years of coaching golf at Dighton-Rehoboth, more than coaching, nurturing young men in the game of life, too, Cute has made his last tour of the links representing the Falcons, resigning after better than three decades of afternoons on golf courses throughout southeastern Massachusetts and either driving or riding in a school bus. "We still laugh about that story about the kids in the pond to this day," chimed in Cute over the weekend. "The time is right, you have to pick the right moment to leave and I think that it's time." A Social Studies and American History instructor at D-R, Cute will be shutting the door to his classroom when the spring semester ends, too, another living legend believing that the time is now to walk down a different golf path. With that too will be his son Jimmy, a senior at D-R and member of the Falcon golf team, another reason why the timing is right to say good-bye. "That's the great thing about teaching, about the game of golf, each day is a brand new experience," said Cute, who would like to maintain his link to the game, perhaps, as a collegiate coach somewhere. "I have some goals, one of them to become either a men's or women's golf coach. We'll see what happens." What happened a generation or two ago was that Cute and his folks were living in East Providence and he was a sophomore, playing golf for the Townies and coached by the late Joe Sprague, a legend in Rhode Island golf. That one year changed Cute's life. East Providence won the state title that year, but the Cute family then packed its bags and headed to Rehoboth, where Bill Cute, Sr. could be closer to Segregansett. "That one year changed my life because Joe Sprague was the greatest coach. "It was not just about teaching kids the fundamentals of golf, it was his philosophy and I adopted it - chapter, line and verse into every one of my years coaching," said Cute. "He was a hard-liner and he told you what he wanted from you, what he expected from you - he always expected you to do your best, not just on the golf course, but also in the classroom. "And I remember to this day of a match we were playing against Barrington High down at the R.I. Country Club. Only four guys played in a match back then, so we were all in his car coming back after we won. "One of his rules was that he always wanted you to walk on the golf course with your head up, never with your head down. That really meant something about how you conducted yourself, how you represented the school, yourself. "So I'm in the back seat and I see the coach looking at the kid next to me telling him, scolding him about walking around with his head down. I knew right then that he (Sprague) was a very special individual." And Sprague's son, Joe, Jr., is the Executive Director for the Mass. Golf Association, its youth programs being based at the MGA Mamantapett course, formerly the Wading River Golf Course, in Norton. Cute then played golf during his junior and senior years at Dighton-Rehoboth High for Russ Latham and then went on to have a collegiate career at Ohio Wesleyan. During his tenure at D-R as the Falcons' head coach, Cute's teams won eight league titles and reached MIAA Divisional finals four times, having a runner-up finish in 1994. The Falcons have used the Crestwood CC as their home base of operations, while also spending some time at Segregansett and at Rehoboth for some practice sessions, for which Cute is most grateful for the relationships and cultivation of the game among youth. Now the game comes with user fees - $125 at D-R for example - and many of the Falcons who sign-up every year to play have a background in the game. "When I first started coaching, very few of the clubs had junior memberships," said Cute. "Now everybody does and these kids play all the time. "I remember that I had to beat the bushes just to get kids to come out for the team. The kids that I get now and in most of the programs throughout Southeastern Mass., they're all completely prepared, they've been playing youth tournaments all summer." Cute found himself, admittedly, a better coach when he stopped playing competitive golf. "When I first started I was concerned about the state of my own game and when I moved away from competing, I found that the game became more important - that's when coaching became my passion." Through the 1990's and into the new millennium, Cute hasn't noticed any deterioration in the commitment and devotion to the game by teenagers, by his Falcons. "No, not at all. Golfers come with egos too, just like some of the other sports. "We've had to set some people straight through the years and I never hesitated to do so. The golf course is a great place for kids to grow up on!" But, they just have to keep their pants on! PETER GOBIS can be reached at 508-236-0375 or at pgobis@thesunchronicle.com.