Friday, January 8, 2010
I wish I could have said all things at Mike's funeral that I wanted to say. He was a great guy, and even though I have hardly seen him in the past few years, I am going to miss him. I was fortunate enough to learn a great deal from him, and to have him play a role in both my life and my son's life.
It seems that there are so many youth coaches today that just don't get athletics. There are those that are just too soft, who insist that not only is winning not everything,that it's really nothing, and that all we need to do is just have a good time. They miss the value of competition and much of what athletics and fail to teach kids that by putting in more effort, greater results can be obtained. When this lesson is applied to an athletes life outside of sports, it adds quality to their entire life; and no other activity in life brings out the value of the competitive spirit more than athletic competition. There are others who think that if their 3rd and 4th grade team doesn't stomp every opponent that their players' future careers in the NFL, and their future careers as NFL coaches are going to be jeapordized. Then there is a group in the middle with a balanced perspective. Mike was one of those coaches with a balanced view.
I coached football with Mike for 4 years. My guess is that we put in about 10 hours per week for about 9 weeks during the first three seasons and for about 15 weeks in the last season, including that trip to Las Vegas that Mike gave to us. That doesn't even include his driving time, so we're talking about 400-500 hours of practice time together. He didn't do it for money, and he didn't do it because he had a kid in the program, he did it because he loved football coaching and helping to be a positive influence in kids' lives. In that time I never felt he didn't try to get the team prepared to win the upcoming game. But more importantly, he was never mean or derogatory to kids; winning at any cost was not acceptable. In that time I learned that one of the most important things in coaching is to develop kids, not football players. Mike was a competitive person, and he wanted to make better players to win games, but he was about much more than that. I can remember dozens of times when Mike would ask kids about school, their teachers, about their family members, or about their parents. The attendance at his funeral of so many of his former players was a testament to Mike's greater interest in developing young men of character, and using football to do that.
I also learned another thing from him. It isn't uncommon for parents to get involved in coaching because their kids are involved. It takes another level of character to stay involved developing kids because it's the right thing to do. By passing on his passion for football to some of these kids, they are richer for it. So am I. For the past three years I've continued coaching youth football to try to carry-on that lesson I learned from Mike. This year I had quite a few parents thank me for coaching their kids, and I can honestly say that lesson I learned from Mike, and might never have done it had it not been for him. With championships in the Colorado State Tournament, and participation in the Nathional Championship Series, he took EPYFA to a level never before, or since, achieved.
I want to end on a fond note, by telling a few stories that I will always remember about Mike on the football field. I've forgotten the exact details, but you'll see that, in stories like these, humor and personality and character. The first displays that fact that he knew all the kids on the team that played for him. After winning the Colorado D2 championship game in Broomfield, he handed out trophies and said something that was not only positive, but was dead on accurate about the kids; most of the comments about football playing, but many just about the personality of the kid. He did that on the spot without preparing, because it came from the heart.
The second was when we were at practice in his last year with the White Lightning, one of the kids said, "coach, I have to go to the bathroom." We only had a few more minutes to go, we were getting ready to run sprints. Mike said wait just a minute. After a few more seconds we looked around and noticed that the only john was a port-a-potty at a construction site about 1 block away. Mike said, OK, get going. The kid said...nevermind. I haven't seen anything on AFV any better than that.
The last is when Mike made a bet with the team that he could beat them all in a 40 yard wind sprint. Some of the big heads on the team including Brodie thought they'd smoke him. Not only did that 50 year old, slightly overweight coach win, he beat them all by at least 5 yards. I think that surprised them all and showed them a side they'd never seen before.
Making state champions from any group of kids is a rare event. My guess is close to 10,000 kids play youth football every year at each grade level, but less than 100 are crowned champions. I've heard several of those kids including Brodie refer to those years with fond memories. I know that the four years I coached with Mike were some of the best times of my life, and I'll never forget the impact he had on my coaching and on so many of these kids, especially my son. For that I will miss him each time I take the field.
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