When an athlete gets hurt or plays through an injury, the conversation is about their strength and road to recovery, never about the doctors who aid in the rehabilitation process.

Richmond Sharbrough, a Holly Bluff resident, had his hand in the Warren County dirt for more than 50 years. He served as the St. Aloysius football team doctor from 1972-78, was an anesthesiologist at Mercy Hospital for 35 years, and was an integral part of the early success of the Vicksburg High golf team and the Vicksburg Swim Association.

He was honored for that work this football season, when St. Aloysius honored him — and all of its other team doctors throughout the years — during halftime of its game on Oct. 23 against Riverfield Academy.

Sharbrough and the other doctors were presented with framed team jackets. Sharbrough, who suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on one side of his body, rolled onto the sideline in a wheelchair to receive the honor.

“It was fine. I couldn’t go out in the middle of the field with the rest of them because I was in this wheelchair and am paralyzed on the left side,” Sharbrough said. “I’m not sure a lot of the people knew who I was or where I was until they took the picture.”

Sharbrough became St. Al’s team doctor after seeing a player get hurt at a Warren Central game.

“There wasn’t anybody to go out there and look at him, so on Monday I went over there and volunteered,” Sharbrough said. “They had a doctor but he was a Seventh-day Adventist and they go to church Friday night so he never could be at the football games.”

While serving as the team doctor, Sharbrough said he didn’t see anything more severe than broken collarbones and dislocated shoulders. He would occasionally take a player’s helmet to sideline them and prevent further injury.

Sometimes, though, players were in better shape than they let on.

In Sharbrough’s first game with the team, the Flashes had no timeouts remaining with 15 seconds left in the fourth quarter when a player went down with an apparent injury. After checking to see what was wrong, Sharbrough found out it was a hoax to get an injury timeout and stop the clock.

Outside the gridiron, Sharbrough coached the Vicksburg High golf team to the Big 8 Conference tournament, but lost to Meridian. He knew his team couldn’t beat Meridian, but used it as a barometer to see what his players needed to work on.

Sharbrough was also an early influence in the Vicksburg Swim Association. The team didn’t have a coach for the first year but Sharbrough reached out to James “Doc” Counsilman, who coached a winning Indiana swim team. Counsilman sent Sharbrough a copy of the book he’d written, and Sharbrough coached his team from what he read.

“Richmond would take that book and go up along the pool reading that book and telling the swimmers about their stroke and immediately they became a lot better. They started calling Richmond ‘Doc Counsilman,’ because that was the book where he got it from,” said Joan Bailey, Sharbrough’s ex-wife.