The First Several Years (And Being the Weird Guy)

Two particular memories stuck with me from my first week in the coaching profession. The first occurred when walking into my first coaches meeting, and there wasn’t much to it. 

I was hired, humbly, as the Dumas Junior High C-Team offensive coordinator. Nobody on the staff knew me, as I was hired by the AD while the head coach was out of town. I spent my first year in education as a teacher only, but jumped at the chance to take a job with coaching attached (for reasons I will expound upon later). I was thus feeling significantly insecure but also exhilarated, as I felt a sense of something like relief that I was finally part of a Texas High School Football program, even if at the lowest rung. I was happy to have any role, and had a pristine notebook in hand, ready to digest the offensive scheme that I would be calling, even if in a simplified context at the Junior High. 

As I approached the door of the field house, the varsity quarterbacks coach was walking toward me from his car. I held the door for him and he gave me the  obligatory

“Mornin’ Coach.” I found myself taken aback. I had never been called “Coach” before. It was the first of countless thousands of times, and it marked a major change in my life. I wasn’t merely a football enthusiast anymore; I was part of the fraternity of coaches. I don’t remember much about the meeting itself, and as it turned out, by the time the season started, due to another new coach making a bad impression, I wound up calling 7th grade defense rather than C-Team offense. Still, it  serves as a kind of Rubicon moment in my journey. Since that day, my relationship to football became something else entirely.

The second of the two memories that is, for whatever reason, embedded in my memory is the first night of our summer coaches retreat a month or so later. The whole football staff, high school and junior high alike, drove up to Colorado for the weekend. The plan was to talk ball and plan fall camp during the morning, and have some fun in the afternoons and, most definitely, have fun in the evenings.

We arrived at the cabin in the evening, after an enjoyable 3-hour drive in a van with the junior high staff. The varsity coaches shared two vehicles at the front of the convoy. Once we got settled, the party games started, the Texas Country music played, (not at all my jam, but I digress) and the good times rolled. Looking back now, I see that it was a really great atmosphere; passionate professional coaches enjoying each other’s company, competing entirely too hard in party games, and living in the moment, relishing the fact that they were able to do what they loved for a living, basking in the anticipation of another football season. 

But I did not see it that way at the time. 

I remember texting my wife and telling her how utterly out of place I felt. Prior to coaching, football was a passion of mine, but so were other pursuits and interests (again, more on that later). I felt in the moment that with these men, who I barely knew and had been nothing but welcoming to me, I had very little in common. I simply felt a disconnect. Retrospect shows that feeling invalid, as I had great conversations with that staff on any number of issues dear to me in the following two years. Still, it was exceptionally hard that night in the mild Colorado evening not to feel as if I was indeed a stranger in a strange land; a guy that simply did not fit in with this group of coaches, who had a lingo, nomenclature, and general social attitude all their own. It was as much a professional orientation as it was a time of curious human observation for me. But the disconnected feeling  remained, at least for that first night. The way I felt is still vivid, as is that first interaction outside the field house. But it was that alienation that made the biggest impression.

To reiterate, that feeling significantly dissipated over my two years at that first job. I worked under a head coach in Chad Dunnam (as of this writing the head coach at Amarillo High School) that made me fall in love with defense and scheme, guided me into the profession, and showed me what it meant to earn your way in the profession. I did laundry at 2am after road games, uploaded film after the rest of the staff had long been gone, conducted 7th grade practice with a glorious 6:30AM start time, and pulled the brutal back-to-back road trips of junior high and varsity games. I worked varsity two-a-days, junior high camp, and freshmen camp, usually all at once in the blistering dry August heat. And I ate it up. I couldn’t get enough, even when the work days pushed 20 hours (due to away game travel time and my own 45-minute commute home from Dumas to Amarillo). But beyond all that, the staff there respected me, mentored me, held me accountable, and taught me to do everything with pride (though I know full well my inexperience, manner of communication, and unique background gave them all more than a few laughs at my expense). Working inside a well-run, successful program was invaluable. As those two years went on, I got hungrier and hungrier. I still remember texting my wife once during pregame for a contest against Lubbock High at PlainsCapital Park (as of this writing, still the best venue and press box in West Texas). I was filming the game, but was spending pregame in the upper level of the visitors coaches box while the varsity coaches checked their headsets. I sent her a pic of those guys and said “within two years I’ll be at that level of the box, calling or coaching the game; not outside filming it.” Plain and simple, I wanted it. 

In subsequent jobs, including my first full-time high school gig at Caprock High School a few years later, the stranger in a strange land mentality waxed and waned. Some of the coaches I worked with were incredible human beings, who continually set good examples, never showed any judgement toward me, and showed deep love and passion for their job and for the kids.  As I made my mistakes, I was made to face the music. Coach Dan Sherwood gave me a shot for which I will always be grateful. He hired me as an unpaid volunteer (I taught a full class load and served as a full time coach as well, though I was officially “just” a teacher. I coached for free). I was thrilled, but there were more than a few painful moments. Getting rebuked for big mistakes I had made in game prep, or while coaching from the box during games, or in my filming duties, were hard. One of the worst scenarios for young coaches is when we get caught “watching the game” when coaching from the box. I was supposed to be carefully watching route combos and personnel distributions. When our DC would come over the headset and ask what had happened on a given play, the worst feeling was to freeze with the realization that I didn’t know. I always internally flagellated  myself when that happened. But it was part of the growth process. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the delightful junior and senior girls that served as filmers for me during those years, as they endured the pain of my manic states, and at times helped me prevent catastrophe with cameras and technical nightmares. 

At times I thought a little too much of my own progressive & forward-thinking status, and had to learn that in this world of southern football, nobody is immune to bad judgment and blind spots when it comes to talk about race, or to the perpetuation of stereotypes, myself included.

All told, I have many fond memories of that time. I met some amazing people, and watched immensely talented coaches work, and studiously took notes of all of their habits and systems. I met some guys that will remain my friends for life. Regardless, I had to accept that I would always be the outlier…the stranger. My interests and reading habits were different from everybody else. My politics were different from everybody else. My parenting philosophy. My interest in fine arts. My background in music. My vocabulary and manner of speech. My idea of leisure and relaxation. My love for my classroom content. My lack of a successful playing career, and so on and so forth. 

To some degree, I was always going to be a stranger. Even to my closest colleagues. And I wasn’t ever really sure how to handle that. 

It has taken years to come to the realization that the way to handle it is simply to embrace it. I’m me. I’m not someone else and I don’t want to be. I have continually made mistakes, miscalculated, and said the wrong things, and I have always seen how much personal growth and wisdom comes from facing and embracing those flaws. But I have stopped allowing myself to be self-conscious about my uniqueness as a football coach. 

This is who I am. 

I will always own my mistakes. As I have gotten older I have gotten better at that, too. But I will not allow the very things that make me unique to count against me simply because there may be people that can't (or simply won’t) comprehend or accept it. And that is my advice to the reader. Own your mistakes and be aware of your flaws. Embracing those negatives and their implications will make you so much stronger, even if it is painful at times. 

BUT.

Do not pledge to change who you are, or to conceal and dodge what makes you unique. I know for a fact there can’t be many other trained singer/MA in Theology/Anxiety Disorder sufferer/political theory buff/Defensive Coordinators out there. But here’s the thing: I don’t care anymore. 

Maybe I will indeed always be, in some qualified sense, a stranger in this world. But this is me. I have found plenty of friends and allies in the ranks of Texas High School football coaches. We don’t agree on everything, nor should any sane person expect that. But we have a common purpose and we appreciate and admire one another’s unique qualities and talents. Take this as another valuable piece of advice; surround yourself with talented, hard working people that embrace one another’s unique strengths and perspectives. Find people that don’t turn every other conversation into an opportunity to break out the measuring tape. Find support and respect for honest disagreement. In that atmosphere you will find you can thrive. 

At the end of the day, all I want is to do my best and to do good in the lives of others. I will continually fail, make wrong decisions, be  emotionally reactionary, and speak out of turn. But I will own those flaws. My brother shared this quote with me, and it articulates better than I ever could:

"The man of sense...is constantly catching himself within an inch of being a fool; hence he makes an effort to escape from the imminent folly, and in that effort lies his intelligence. The fool, on the other hand, does not suspect himself; he thinks himself the most prudent of men, hence the enviable tranquility with which the fool settles down, installs himself with his own folly."

-Jose Ortega de Gasset

Likewise, I will own my uniqueness and my personal talents. I’m sure there is a comfortability that comes with rolling into the profession with every typical and expected box checked. But it’s a comfort I have never known, and at this point in my life and career, not one that appeals to me. That doesn’t mean great coaches don’t come from more typical, traditional backgrounds, obviously they do. It’s just not my journey, and I wouldn't be who I am had my story been more of a boilerplate one. 

It took a good long while, but I embrace my journey as a stranger.