'Night, Coach ...

I've been thinking a lot about this lately: in a few weeks he'll coach his last basketball game. He began coaching in 1974 after a more than respectable playing career in both high school and college. In fact, he received his B.A. in Chemistry from The Citadel in exchange for playing basketball for four years. Not a bad deal. He loved it. Probably the only thing he has loved more than playing hoops is coaching kids who love to play hoops. And he's coached so many! He's coached kids who have gone on to be lawyers, preachers, jailbait, and just about everything in between. He's coached on the high school and the college level. He's coached both boys and girls, including three of his own children and his then future son-in-law. When he coached his daughters they had only one request: "Don't make us cry." He tried not to.

Diplomatic and decidedly mellow in "real" life, his trim six-foot-four frame supported by size-thirteen feet becomes alarmingly animated during a game. Veins pop out from his handsome neck and forehead; arms encased in 36-inch sleeves begin windmilling wildly as he staggers in disbelief at a "bad" call or a clumsy "layup" that results not in two points, but a turnover. He loses his voice by the second or third game of the season and talks in a raspy croak for weeks afterward. He's been thrown out of a few classy gyms, that one, as well as a few dumps. He almost always knows when his behavior has a chance of resulting in the ref making the "T" sign in his direction, and he measures those odds as carefully as he calculates the next play. Sometimes it's worth it to get "teed up" in order to make a point (although not the kind that goes on the board). Win or lose, no one could ever say he coached a game with less than his all.

Thirty-four years of coaching adds up to a lot of road trips, y'all. For seventeen years he coached in the Midwest, which added up to a lot of very cold road trips. He's driven the bus as often as he's ridden it, and although he has a definite "game face" and strikes a no-nonsense pose as often as not, no kid could ever honestly accuse him of being unfair or unkind. He's competitive but considerate; he's the perfect example of law and order tempered with grace and mercy. On the way home from away games he almost always stops so the kids can load up on fast food, even though it means he'll get home past midnight. And although he's patient as they queue up for their burger/fry/coke feasts, when he stands to his full height and motions toward the bus, they know they'd better wrap it up pronto.

He has always regarded coaching the game of basketball not simply as an opportunity to participate in a sport that you love after you're too old to play it, but as a means of teaching kids important things about life. As he has stressed the fundamentals of a fascinating game, teaching and encouraging his players through wonderful victories and difficult defeats alike, he has been a vital and relevant role model. He is a faithful Christian, a loving husband, and a devoted father. He is consistent, dependable, hard-working, and maddeningly predictable. He's almost always calm but hardly ever boring. No matter when you meet him in the course of a day, no matter what he's been through or what he faces, if you give him a smile he will give it right back to you.

When I met him I was not quite nineteen; he was twenty-four. At that time the sum total of my knowledge of the game of basketball could have been written on a grain of rice, with room left over for chapter one of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth. We began dating two years and six months after we met, were engaged five months after that, and got married five months later. In June we will celebrate our 29th wedding anniversary. If I had a nickel for every basketball game I have sat through since meeting him, I could afford to buy him some of the things he has denied himself over the years so that I could have stuff I wanted. I still don't know all that much about basketball, but I learned a lot about him. Eventually, however, he taught me enough about the game that for years I served as his official scorebook keeper. He claims he's never met anyone who kept a better book. Do you think he's just saying that? I still don't know ...

He told me once that, from the time he was a teenager, more than anything he wanted a wife and family. When we were dating he showed me a creased and worn piece of paper that for years had resided in his wallet. On it was a list of names of girls. When I first saw it I wondered what in the sam hill was going on, and he let me stew for a moment before solving the mystery. Turns out it was a list of girl names he'd liked (only the names!) for a long time. He had written them down because someday he hoped to marry a girl with one of those names, and call a daughter by at least one of the others. The name at the top of the list was Jennifer ... my name. I only remember two other names: Barbara and Stephanie. I nixed Barbara ... no offense, all you Barbaras ... lovely name, just not my taste ... but we named our first child Stephanie.

Even though, like everyone, he has a few flaws and can be exasperating at times, this man lives for his family. Our kids know that their dad stands ready to do anything in his power that they ask him to do for them. They call him when they have problems and questions, and often just to talk. He always has time and he's always interested in what they have to say. As for me, over the years I've been what some might call high-maintenance. He has never criticized me for that; indeed, he wants me to have nice things.

For years I was vocal about my desire to someday own a pair of diamond earrings. A vain and selfish want, but I wanted them so badly. On an ordinary Saturday fourteen months ago, he woke me and announced that we were going shopping. I checked my phone messages for evidence that perhaps the Human Genome Project, needing my husband for their research, had left me a handy clone (my man being no shopper), but finding none, I hastily dressed. By that afternoon I was wearing a lovely pair of diamond hoop earrings that he let me pick out. It made him happy to make me happy. Every time I put them on (which is every day) I think to myself, "I wear his love glittering on my ears." Silly I guess, but that's how I feel.

He'll turn fifty-six in eleven days, a few weeks before his last game. And although in his career as a coach he's won over three hundred games, the team he is currently coaching has yet to prevail in a contest this season. It's possible that at the final buzzer, they will have no stats in the win column. This is a first for him ... and it's a little sad that his swan song won't be followed by a victory lap. Time was he coached teams that made other teams tremble. Those days are in the past. But I admire that, as competitive as he is, he has never let the fact of losing bother him too much. Or I should say, bother him in the wrong way. Through the years he never "brought it home" and made others miserable when his team didn't do well. We didn't have a cat to kick but if we had, he wouldn't have kicked it. He dealt with the frustration by simply working harder at the next practice, because he knows that no matter how many losses come, the next victory is always within your reach. A lot like life.

There are grandchildren now and we have busy schedules, and in no time many things will crowd into the space that basketball has occupied for so many years. And while it is very unlike me to get nostalgic about sports, my eyes will fill with tears when he trudges in late for the last time, hoarse, tired ... with his tie loosened, his sportcoat over his arm, his clipboard and scorebook in hand. He will give me a sweet smile. It will be the end of an era ... and it was a good era. It was fun. I'll miss the sounds and smells of the gym on a winter night, and I'll miss watching his antics on the sidelines. I always thought it was cute when he got all worked up. So I think tonight when he kisses me and says "'Night, precious" as he always does, instead of answering "'Night, baby" as I always do, instead I'll kiss him tenderly back and say "'Night, Coach."

Comments

[iflylowsc]

That was beautiful Jenny!

[Jennifer]

Thanks luv.

[Matthew Richards]

That was very nice. I played for "The Web" while at Hammond Baptist back '89, '90, and '91. I remember well the road trips and the late nights. I never said a proper "thank you" for any of it. Shame on me. I guess it is better late than never--Thank you for the lessons and time you sacrificed from your own family to coach us. God bless.

Matthew Richards
HB Class of 1991

[Jennifer]

He remembers you fondly, luv. Thanks for reading.