DADVENTURE: Sorry, Coach

Being a coach is a tough way to make a paycheck.  I've watched a lot of them up close in my dozen years of living on a boarding school campus, so I know.  Long hot afternoons on the practice fields, long weekends on the road for games, buses, hotel rooms.  And the unavoidable reality of the won/loss record.  Then there are the parents.  Total nightmare, even for college coaches these days.

It only took me two seasons as the head coach of the Baylor Red Raiders 8th grade football team to realize that I did not have the stuff to be a coach.

I'm feeling appreciative of coaches because I just finished watching a scrappy, underdog tennis team from the University of Texas come within a few points of being National Champions.  The Bulldogs of Georgia were just a bit too strong.  The Longhorns made a great run, but I wonder how head coach Michael Center must feel right now.  Having brought those kids so close to such a huge accomplishment.  Given all the sacrifices.

Our sons will celebrate their birthdays together at a combined bash on Friday.  I hope to have the chance to congratulate Coach on the best finish in the history of Texas men's tennis.  Then we'll watch the kids goof in wading pool in my back yard.

I'm also thinking about coaches because I was a bit of a jerk to one this week.  My son has made the transition from recreational to club soccer.  Tryouts and more tryouts and information sessions, and more meetings, and a BIG OLD BILL, and I'm grousing to myself about specialization, and over-training and the commodification of sport.  So when I get called to yet another hour-long orientation to be told about ordering $250 dollars worth of uniforms, I lost patience.

I'm hoping the coach didn't notice, but I excused myself mid-orientation, grabbed my kid and headed for the door.  When Bubba asked why we were leaving early I said in a stage whisper, "Because mom will wonder why we've been gone so long."

I hope coach didn't hear, because he's clearly a committed and decent guy, out to help kids become better soccer players.  If I have qualms about club sports, then I have a clear course of action -- pull the kid out.  It's conceivable that I'm just fighting the tape here.  Resisting the idea that my kid is getting old enough for athletics to be taken seriously.

I'm not going to change the realities of club athletics and specialization, and I'm not going to keep my kid from growing up, so I might as well show all the respect I can muster for those people riding the pine, teaching on a ball field.

Thanks, Coach, sorry if parents are sometimes a pain in the ass.

Clay Nichols, Family Correspondent:
Clay's column, Dadventure, published twice monthly to Gather Essentials: Family, is a sure-fire guide to raising flawless, perfectly behaved, and always obedient children.  Yeah, right.
 
Clay is the co-author of Filmmaking for Teens: Pulling Off Your Shorts, an award-winning playwright, and the Chief Creative Officer at DadLabs.com, a fatherhood website.