Coupeville Sports

After a long run as Coupeville High School coaches, Amy and David King are still adjusting to “retirement.” (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

They finally got a real vacation.

When Coupeville High School girls basketball coaches David and Amy King resigned last winter, it brought at least a temporary end to their run as coach “lifers.”

The duo, who put in seven seasons with the CHS hoops program, had also worked with high school softball, baseball, and volleyball, as well as community programs and individual player coaching.

All told, the Kings had been coaching for close to two decades.

That meant celebrating their wedding anniversary at the gym – since it fell during basketball season – and juggling their coaching gigs with real-world jobs.

Now, they’re footless and fancy free (mostly), are coming off their first real vacation since 2001, and are adjusting to a new lifestyle.

As they marinate in a world of possibilities, they took a moment to reflect on life without a clipboard or basketball in hand.

Cause they may be free, but they can never really escape my emails.

So, straight from casa de King:

When we announced our coaching retirement at the end of this last season, it was amazing how many people asked us “how’s retirement?” within a few weeks of that retirement date.

We also had to tell them, we still have our day jobs…

In reality, when a season ends, we (we all know Amy does the majority of the work) take care of inventory, putting things away, turning in our paperwork and locking things up for the off-season.

For basketball, there is a good month between the season ending and the starting of planning for the Hoop-A-Holics fundraiser and team basketball camp.

This year, we still helped with the Hoop-A-Holics fundraiser – making sure the new coaches understood what needed to happen and in what time frame, and we still participated, as the weekend is a lot of fun.

We knew we had retired only because we didn’t have to harass our players and parents for participation and food.

It still didn’t sink in though. It still just felt normal, but with extra help.

Normally, basketball camp would be the week following Hoop-A-Holics.

So the time and effort that would normally go into planning which camp we were going to and getting all the players set to go, arranging transportation and lodging, fundraisers, etc., went into working on a personal vacation towards the end of the summer instead.

We missed going to the camp, but not necessarily all the planning and organization that goes into that week.

Team camp has always been a favorite activity for us, spending time away from the school with the players, working on the team bonding and playing against teams that we would not normally see.

It is so much fun to spend camp time getting to see the girls goofy and together outside of the school season, along with seeing where we need work once the season starts.

Having the incoming players get their feet wet with the returning players and of course them learning about us and us about them.

After camp, there is normally an off time as the gyms are closed for refinishing the floors; but, there is the weight room time and planning for open gyms we would be involved with.

This is probably the one area that we saw a difference.

In years past we would go to work, get off and either head to the gym or home and then to the gym.

This year it was work and to home. No more afternoons/evenings being disrupted by stopping what we were doing to head to the gym.

During summer, we typically would start to review drills to teach skills and what kind of offenses will we think about running during the season, etc.

So, this summer, that extra time has been put into creating a new garden area that deer and rabbits can’t get into, David getting more time on his tractor and making paths in the woods and just a lot of normal day-job work.

We really have been so busy, that we have not had time to miss open gyms.

For me personally (David) I miss the time spent evaluating our teams’ strengths and weaknesses, along with evaluating the teams in our leagues.

The coaching part and seeing growth in the players are high on my favorite things about coaching.

Right up there with that for me is the strategy side of things and providing the tendencies of our team and our opponents. Hours would be spent on this stuff.

So, how is retirement?

😊

We really don’t know yet. It really won’t hit us until October when we aren’t gearing up for the season.