If you listen closely, you can still hear the voice of Duck Daugherty reverberating off the walls of the Oak Harbor High School weight room.

Burdon “Duck” Daugherty, who was a beloved head football coach at Oak Harbor High School from 1972 to 1988, died on  Thanksgiving Day.

Daugherty’s work dress included the stereotypical ball cap, polyester coaching pants and a shirt with the school logo silk-screened on the left chest. A whistle usually hung from his neck.

He had a handshake that would make a vice wince, a growl that would rattle a lion and a presence that would make a drill sergeant drop and do 10.

Daugherty, however, was no caricature.

“It didn’t matter if you were the star quarterback or the equipment manager, he made you feel important,” said Tim Shelley, who played for Daugherty in the early 1980s.

“I didn’t know anybody who didn’t enjoy playing for him.”

In high school, Daugherty was a team captain and all-state fullback at Hastings, Neb.; a teammate of legendary University of Nebraska football coach and athletic director Tom Osborne.

Daugherty received a scholarship to play football for Oklahoma A&M (later Oklahoma State University) in 1953. After graduation, he joined the Army and played football at Fort Campbell in Kentucky under General W.C. Westmoreland and received all-Army honors.

Daugherty then went into teaching and coaching and came to Oak Harbor in 1972 after turning perennial loser, Kennewick High School, into league champion.

In Oak Harbor, Daugherty, who retired from teaching in 1991, posted a 75-72-1 record, winning the league title in 1982 and earning the Wildcats’ first trip into the state playoffs.

“He was most proud of the 1977 season,” Daugherty’s son Jeff said. Because of budget cuts, Oak Harbor High School did not compete in fall sports in 1976. The following year, Oak Harbor moved from 2A to 3A and was picked to finish near the bottom of the of the standings in its first year in the Western Conference. With a depleted squad (some athletes left the area when sports were cut the previous year), Daugherty led Oak Harbor to an 8-1 record.

Jeff Daugherty’s fondest memories were tagging along to his dad’s practices and games.

“I really liked the halftime speeches where the spit and folding chairs would fly,” he said.

Enthusiasm and motivation were in Daugherty’s wheel house.

“He brought out the love of the game,” Shelley said.

Daugherty also wasn’t afraid to get his point across. One “discussion” with Shelley on the sidelines “almost brought my mom out of the stands.”

The players accepted Daugherty’s criticism because they knew no one was deeper in their corner, Shelley said.

Tom Mueller, one of Daugherty’s assistant coaches, said, “Duck had the ability to create great relationships with his team and, more importantly, individual relationships with players that lasted a lifetime.”

Daugherty understood that relationships were “more important than the X’s and O’s of the game,” Mueller added.

Those relationships went beyond the white lines of Memorial Stadium. In reality, Daugherty was the head coach of the entire OHHS student body, and the weight room was his domain.

He encouraged everyone — boys, girls, non-athletes, three-sport stars — to participate.

“He changed my life in more ways than he’ll ever know,” former student Guy Cochran said.

“Although it was tough to be a student in his weight-training class, I’m now deeply thankful for the discipline.”

Cochran worked for Daugherty in some of the coach’s outside-of-school activities.

“Digging ditches in freezing temperatures, hanging drywall, moving entire apartments full of furniture reminded me that I needed to get to college and learn a trade,” Cochran said. “I now hope to be able to coach people up with discipline and tough love as he did.”

In the weight room, Daugherty would push students “beyond hard,” Cochran said.

Daugherty would call students “pukes.”

The distasteful label, however, had a deeper meaning to Daugherty.

Daugherty’s mantra in the classroom was “If you vomit, you receive an ‘A.’”

Students’ affections for Daugherty were evident. After being driven to exhaustion, they would come back the next day with smiles on their faces and his voice in their hearts — ready to finish with their heads in a corner bucket once again.

They were willing to work to their outer limits, not because Daugherty required it, but because he inspired it.