My husband coaches kids. I volunteered him, but he took it from there and now he could be mayor. All the mothers of all the uncoordinated and ill-behaved children he has ever named to a starting lineup would vote for him.
Gary begins every sports season with his imitation of Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz, a notorious whiner who sees Goliath at every stop on his schedule. "You know," Gary says after his first practice, "we may not win a single game this season."
And every season ends the same way: A respectable won-lost record and women coming up to us in the mall saying, "Look, Jason, dear. It's coach Gary. Oh, coach, I just wanted to tell you what a wonderful season Jason had with you. He has so much more . . . "
At this point, the kids and I roll our eyes and drift out of the conversation. We've heard it all before.
And I've said it before to those who coach my kids. I feel this incredible rush of gratitude to the men who have volunteered their time to teach children in whom they have no biological stake. I can't even get through homework with the two I carried for nine months, and these men -- who are not even the husbands of my friends and therefore required to be nice to my kids -- spend cold fall evenings patiently trying to get my children to listen to a set of simple physical directions.
To be sure, there are bad-guy coaches out there. Men with bad tempers, men who won't play the weaker kids, men who are trying to rewrite their own failed athletic history.
And it is also true that most men are coaching so their children will have a team on which to play. But there must be something more in it for them than just quality time with Junior. There is such enthusiasm there, such relish in what they are doing, that the mothers who wash the uniforms don't have.
My husband started by coaching his own children. But I suspect he will continue even after they move on to other things. He'd give up his job and coach the JV girls' basketball team if he thought he could earn enough to pay the bills.
But if you asked these men what they get out of coaching, my guess is they would be too busy working on their lineups to give it much thought.
My friend Steve coaches a gifted AAU girls' basketball squad that plays the game like a pack of terriers. He swears he does nothing more than roll the ball onto the court for his daughter and her teammates.
"You know what I get out of this?" says Steve, who played college and professional football. "When you quit playing sports, you lose the togetherness, all the things that happened in a team setting. And if you coach, you get it back.
"It isn't the wins and losses, although you remember those, too. It is the group of people working for a common goal and all the things that happen along the way."
As the next generation of mothers emerges -- for whom team sports was a part of growing up -- more and more women will coach, I suspect. But for now, it is mostly dads who are lugging the equipment out of the car trunks.
My friend Ron, who works with four different baseball teams so his son will have vehicles for his emerging talents, says simply that someone has to do it. "These kids will probably not be playing sports for a living, so you want to make sure it is a positive experience for them now," he says.
But his wife sees something more there. Something positive for her son, to be sure, but something almost magical for the coach. I see it, too.
My husband, coach Gary, has coached every kind of kid. Little ones in Healthtex just learning to speak English who just wanted to pick clover. Long-legged wonders in Umbros and cleats who sleep with their game faces on.
He's coached boys who cried and girls who should be fitted with choke collars. He once called a timeout in the middle of the game and shouted, "OK, Fireballs. Let's tie our shoes."
After each season is over, he wanders the house aimlessly on Saturday mornings with a cup of coffee and talks his way through his roster, reminiscing about each member of his team. He is lonely for the children who came to him as a sorry collection of stumblers, crybabies and fat kids. Even after 12 weeks of a season, he is not ready to let them go.
"You know," he always says, "if the season started right now, I bet we'd win all our games."