(Originally posted March 13, 2009)
It's been a while since I've had time to write here. Student teaching and finishing up the last of my schoolwork for my teaching certification has gotten in the way of everything I've tried to do lately (Sorry, Senator McCain. I was busy.)
But I've had some thoughts about a blog for a long time. I believe that time is linear, and that a chain of events is set in motion by a single choice.
In my case, that choice wasn't made by me. In 1985 I was a sixth grade wrestler for a local youth wrestling program that was run by a man named Pat Kelly. Coach Kelly was the wrestling coach for Sumner Junior High, and he developed his feeder programs by running off-season clinics where meatheads like myself could come and blow off some steam and get interested in the sport.
The next year I entered Sumner Junior High as a seventh grader. I can clearly remember walking into the school and seeing the mascot, a stuffed bobcat named "Scipio" after Scipio Africanus, the Roman who finally kicked Hannibal's ass. I can remember the confusion of trying to find my classes; how dark the gym was during first period PE because the sodium arc lights hadn't warmed up yet.
I can also remember that Coach Kelly's classroom was across from the gym's main entrance. As I headed to the hall juggling my notebooks and the papers that were handed out that day, he was standing in his classroom door. He beckoned to me and when I walked over to him he didn't waste any time with a preamble. "You should play football. You'd be a great guard."
I'd wrestled for this man. He'd chewed my ADD ass several times. I'd probably done more punishment pushups for screwing off at practice than anyone else in the history of his program, and yet he sought me out to tell me I should play football.
I don't have a clue what my next class was. I went straight to the office and called my mom at work. (This was in the days before every fourth grader was chained to a cellular tether.) I told her the words most moms don't want to hear, "I'm staying after school for football practice."
I won't lie to you. We sucked. Coach Kelly was a varsity coach and I was on the JV. We lost every game that year, and the year after, and the year after that. I was a sophomore before we ever won a game.
But football started to take on a sort of mythical significance in my mind. A sport I'd never understood (I learned to actually throw a football that year-- at age eleven.) slowly moved into the realm of the sport I'd ride a bike for fourteen miles to practice.
In 1992 I coached youth football for the first time. In 1993 I was busy flipping burgers because I'd dropped out of college and couldn't coach. In 1999 I returned to coaching in Kodiak, Alaska, where I tried not to interfere too much as my Lions obliterated everyone on the way to an undefeated season. I realized, in October of that year, as the Gatorade dried in the crack of my ass after the championship shower, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life coaching kids.
I went back to school. I got my first degree in 2004 and my second in 2007. At the moment I'm working on a teaching certificate, but I've been able to return to my home town and coach wrestling and football both while teaching at a middle school that was, ironically, our biggest rival when I was in junior high.
If life is a chain of events then my life was changed one day, by one man, who took the time from his day to coach me and make me better than I am, and then took more time to say just two simple sentences.
"You should play football. You'd be a great guard."
I am here now, because of that conversation.
It's the off-season right now, so while you're studying football and getting ready for next year, or maybe working on the other sports you might happen to coach, I want you to think about this: one man, ten seconds, changed my life. Every good thing that has happened to me in the last ten years happened because of the things I learned in football and wrestling. I made it through grueling boot camp-- because wrestling taught me not to quit or give up. I made it through college on the second try-- because football taught me that when you're knocked down you get back on your feet.
Pat Kelly is now the principal of Orting Middle School, down the road from where I live. He still has the same smile and the same blue eyes. Whenever we play Orting I like to seek him out and remind him, "Hey Coach, this is all your fault!"
Some of you might be thinking about giving it up. Your kids have moved on, or you just want more time with the family in the fall. After all, Dancing with the Stars is a damn fine show, and missing it every week because of football practice gets frustrating.
Before you head to eBay to offload your coaching library and take your cleats to Goodwill, consider this:
It's all your fault.
~D.
It's been a while since I've had time to write here. Student teaching and finishing up the last of my schoolwork for my teaching certification has gotten in the way of everything I've tried to do lately (Sorry, Senator McCain. I was busy.)
But I've had some thoughts about a blog for a long time. I believe that time is linear, and that a chain of events is set in motion by a single choice.
In my case, that choice wasn't made by me. In 1985 I was a sixth grade wrestler for a local youth wrestling program that was run by a man named Pat Kelly. Coach Kelly was the wrestling coach for Sumner Junior High, and he developed his feeder programs by running off-season clinics where meatheads like myself could come and blow off some steam and get interested in the sport.
The next year I entered Sumner Junior High as a seventh grader. I can clearly remember walking into the school and seeing the mascot, a stuffed bobcat named "Scipio" after Scipio Africanus, the Roman who finally kicked Hannibal's ass. I can remember the confusion of trying to find my classes; how dark the gym was during first period PE because the sodium arc lights hadn't warmed up yet.
I can also remember that Coach Kelly's classroom was across from the gym's main entrance. As I headed to the hall juggling my notebooks and the papers that were handed out that day, he was standing in his classroom door. He beckoned to me and when I walked over to him he didn't waste any time with a preamble. "You should play football. You'd be a great guard."
I'd wrestled for this man. He'd chewed my ADD ass several times. I'd probably done more punishment pushups for screwing off at practice than anyone else in the history of his program, and yet he sought me out to tell me I should play football.
I don't have a clue what my next class was. I went straight to the office and called my mom at work. (This was in the days before every fourth grader was chained to a cellular tether.) I told her the words most moms don't want to hear, "I'm staying after school for football practice."
I won't lie to you. We sucked. Coach Kelly was a varsity coach and I was on the JV. We lost every game that year, and the year after, and the year after that. I was a sophomore before we ever won a game.
But football started to take on a sort of mythical significance in my mind. A sport I'd never understood (I learned to actually throw a football that year-- at age eleven.) slowly moved into the realm of the sport I'd ride a bike for fourteen miles to practice.
In 1992 I coached youth football for the first time. In 1993 I was busy flipping burgers because I'd dropped out of college and couldn't coach. In 1999 I returned to coaching in Kodiak, Alaska, where I tried not to interfere too much as my Lions obliterated everyone on the way to an undefeated season. I realized, in October of that year, as the Gatorade dried in the crack of my ass after the championship shower, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life coaching kids.
I went back to school. I got my first degree in 2004 and my second in 2007. At the moment I'm working on a teaching certificate, but I've been able to return to my home town and coach wrestling and football both while teaching at a middle school that was, ironically, our biggest rival when I was in junior high.
If life is a chain of events then my life was changed one day, by one man, who took the time from his day to coach me and make me better than I am, and then took more time to say just two simple sentences.
"You should play football. You'd be a great guard."
I am here now, because of that conversation.
It's the off-season right now, so while you're studying football and getting ready for next year, or maybe working on the other sports you might happen to coach, I want you to think about this: one man, ten seconds, changed my life. Every good thing that has happened to me in the last ten years happened because of the things I learned in football and wrestling. I made it through grueling boot camp-- because wrestling taught me not to quit or give up. I made it through college on the second try-- because football taught me that when you're knocked down you get back on your feet.
Pat Kelly is now the principal of Orting Middle School, down the road from where I live. He still has the same smile and the same blue eyes. Whenever we play Orting I like to seek him out and remind him, "Hey Coach, this is all your fault!"
Some of you might be thinking about giving it up. Your kids have moved on, or you just want more time with the family in the fall. After all, Dancing with the Stars is a damn fine show, and missing it every week because of football practice gets frustrating.
Before you head to eBay to offload your coaching library and take your cleats to Goodwill, consider this:
It's all your fault.
~D.
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