Sometimes a soccer ball is just a soccer ball. This article applies to coaches in all Coupeville sports. (Jackie Saia photo)
Back it up and keep on moving.
One of my biggest irritants on this job is watching people invade the personal space of coaches before and during games.
Whether you’re a parent, a fan, a photographer, a writer, a student not involved in that particular sport — this is not about you or me.
There are other times and places to talk to these coaches, to badger them with stupid questions about things that have no direct connection to what their job entails.
These men and women are being paid (and not enough) to coach the children of Coupeville, to build positive programs, to win.
When they are sitting on a bench, or prowling the sideline, they are scouting, they are assessing, they are planning, they are doing their damn JOB.
They do not need you, or me, or anyone, to insert ourselves into that bubble and try to chat them up.
To ask about the warmup music, or why a parent hasn’t paid for a photo, or any of a million little items which can, and should, wait for a better time.
Invariably, our coaches — as solid a group as any in the region — will choose to be polite, to endure having their concentration broken by our inane chatter.
They shouldn’t have to make that choice.
At a professional game, if you invade the coaching space prior to a game, or at halftime, you would likely be ejected by large gentlemen wearing jackets that say security.
Maybe it’s time to treat Coupeville coaches the same.
Go eat your hot dog someplace else and let our coaches concentrate.
Stop getting in their way.
And stop parking in the slots that are supposed to be theirs, on the side of the gym looking at Prairie Center.
Have to walk a little further? Good.
If you wanted the prime parking slot, you should have applied for the job.
Write your questions down, and AFTER the game, AFTER they have had an appropriate time to speak to their athletes, if they so choose, then bring your concerns and ideas and side questions to them.
Unless they have personally asked you to do it in a different manner, or at a different time.
This is NOT about us.
Not about me, or you, and the faster we all accept that, the faster we embrace that, the faster we make life easier for our coaches.
The job is already a test of even the toughest person, and changes in social media, in accessibility, in everything that makes up the modern world, makes it tougher now than it was back in say, 1952.
You can’t scream too loudly, have to make sure everyone’s feelings are taken into account.
Certainly, can’t slam player’s football-helmet-wearing heads against locker room walls, leaving behind lil’ dents which last for decades.
And simmer down, Skippy. I get that the new imposed touchy-feely days are better in a lot of ways.
I’m not calling for heads to bounce off of walls.
Maybe for all cell phones to be taken away, and for our teens to return to working on farms in between games…
Give Bow Down to Cow Town even more meaning if opposing teams arrived to find old-school commitment had swept the prairie, and “Operation: Hoosiers” was in full effect.
But anyway, this is about the life of a coach in 2023, not my desire for Brad Sherman to embrace his inner Gene Hackman.
The point, and I probably have one if I focus, is coaching is not easy.
In any era, much less today.
So have some damn appreciation for those who make the commitment that the rest of us, sitting in the stands, and wandering the sidelines, don’t make.
And stop making their job harder!
When I walk into a gym or come to a ball field, if the coach says hello, I say it back and keep on moving.
If they choose to come over and talk to me during “their time,” fine. That’s THEIR choice.
If they don’t, I’m wearing my big boy shorts, so I hitch ’em up and leave that coach alone and let them do their job and talk to them at an appropriate time.
Some of you out there need to start doing the same.
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