Coach on a mission to pursue a dream
For Joshua Ragsdale, head football coach and athletic coordinator for Emmett J. Conrad High School, it’s never too late to pursue your dreams. That’s the message that he wants to convey in his journey of returning to karate to get a black belt—a journey that was put on pause when he was 11 years old.
“Hopefully I can show people that even at 44 years old, and having been out for 33 years, there are goals you can still meet,” he said. “For example, it’s never too late to get a degree, it’s never too late to start something like teaching if someone wants to do that.”
Getting to this place has been a few years in the making. Ragsdale and his father were taking karate classes, while he was growing up in Pleasant Grove and a student at B.H. Macon Elementary School. Later, during a conversation with members of his Conrad football team after football season, Ragsdale brought up how being in karate helped him with certain skills in playing and coaching football. One of his students asked him what level of belt he had reached, and Ragsdale said he had made it to blue belt. The student then challenged him and said that if one of the core values he taught in his football program was to finish, why didn’t he finish?
The core values that Ragsdale has for every day of the week and the football team include:
- Monday Energy—coming back from the weekend
- Tuesday Toughness—the toughest practice
- Wednesday Competition—compete in everything they do
- Thursday Family—the day before a game, “You get out of practice early, go have dinner with your family, sit down around the table, go to church, whatever you can do with your family.“
- Friday Finish—it’s game day.
Ragsdale mentioned that his student, Kymani W., who has since graduated, passed away last month, and Ragsdale spoke at his funeral. Losing his student was an eye-opener for Ragsdale, who decided to put his promise into practice.
“And he asked, ‘you don’t live out your core values?’ So I asked him what he meant, and he said that one of our team’s core values is to finish, and I hadn’t finished,” Ragsdale said. While he initially found his student’s reaction to be humorous, he also knew that there was a lot of truth to it.
He started thinking about how he could go back to it. The first thing Ragsdale thought about was his physical health. He knew that he was overweight and wanted to lose weight first.
“Our time on Earth is short, even if we live 100 years, it’s still short,” he said. “And so I asked myself, ‘Do I want to keep dying or do I want to keep living?’ As of today, I’m down 47 lbs.”
So Ragsdale decided it was time to show up to the Garland 9th Street Gym, which is run by a nonprofit organization of police officers and firefighters, where one of Ragsdale’s karate instructors from 1987 is still teaching. He said his teacher, David Vines, was probably around 18 years old when Ragsdale was 11, so coming back to the gym and being greeted by someone he looked up to as a child was a full circle moment for him.
“He was one of my idols growing up,” Ragsdale said. “Now, he treats me as one of his peers when he’s an eighth-degree black belt and has won many awards. He’s also a police officer.”
Ragsdale even went back to look for the gym bag he had as a child and found his old sparring gear, his belts, and the brochure of the last tournament he participated in on July 13, 1991.
Before committing himself to going into karate again, he showed up to observe, and everything he had previously learned as a preteen came flooding back, he said. He described himself as being the “Elf” character due to many of the students being significantly younger. Regardless, Ragsdale said that he’s learned a lot from these young leaders and he’s leading by example, as he does in his football program at Conrad.
So he paid his tuition, got his uniform, started taking the classes – and next thing he knew, he was competing in his first tournament in early August, where he won first place in kata, which is a series of moves while maintaining your form.
He also got second place in the men’s division in sparring. Just last weekend, he participated in his second tournament, where he competed against the state champion. He beat Ragsdale for the title match, but Ragsdale still came in second and said that the experience has not only made him healthier and happier, but that he is showing his students and peers that anything you set your mind to accomplish is possible.
While Ragsdale said that it may take him some time to get his brown belt and ultimately his black belt, he’s elated to be doing this. He’s also ranked in the top 10 in the state in his division, and hopes to qualify for the state tournament in December that will be held in Mesquite. This new endeavor has even inspired Ragsdale’s dad to possibly return to karate, as well.
For anyone wanting to pursue a lifelong dream, Ragsdale said it all comes down to this: “All you have to do is start.”
