A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article on this page about the Bel Air High School Track Team of 1945. The genesis of the article was a team photograph our friend Chuck Robbins had found and thought we would be interested to see it.
In talking with Chuck, who is of my father's generation, about the good old days, it became clear he had wonderful personal memories of his track coach, Dr. Bird Hopkins, who was something of a legend in local athletics during this period. Most of us who have played a sport or two have been molded and taught by a coach or two, and I think we tend to underestimate just how important a role they have played in our lives.
I also think we tend to underestimate what a coach does and how tough the job can be and how it's often more heartbreak than glory. Dr. Hopkins was pretty much a volunteer; he coached because he liked it and no doubt felt he had something to contribute to the well-being of his young men. Most coaches at the rec league level are volunteers and even those at the high school level aren't paid enough to keep a decent set of tires on their cars and gas in the tank, no matter how successful they are in the wins and losses column.
I got thinking of an old uncle of mine who was a high school football coach in the years just before World War II. He was moderately successful, but he went overseas for something like four or five years and I don't think was able to get his old job back when he returned from the Army. He did continue to teach, but it was another 10 years before he coached a high school program again, and it was a brand new school carved out of another district, and their teams were never good, even to this day.
Uncle Bill was a character, very much like the football coach you'd encounter in the movies of that era, a little loud, quick with a slap on the back, knew everybody within a 10-mile radius and never ever complained about anything. He was a little heavy and not real tall, a Woody Hayes body type and whip smart like Hayes, too. He'd occasionally talk about "his boys" and the other coaches of his era, most of who had since moved on to become high school athletic directors or had retired. I was still fairly young at this time and just getting interested in sports, and Uncle Bill was always happy to throw the ball around or show the correct way to get into a lineman's stance. In the years he wasn't coaching, I could see in his eyes he really missed it.
I've never coached an athletic team, but I've known plenty of coaches, both through high school and junior high and every one of the coaches at my college because I worked in the athletic department part-time. I've met many coaches since I moved to Harford County, including several whom like Dr. Hopkins achieved legendary status in many people's minds. And, the funny thing is, like Uncle Bill, I don't remember there being a complainer or whiner among the lot of them.
Not long ago, I stumbled upon an newspaper article on the Internet about an old high school teammate and friend whom I had lost track of decades ago. A better than average football player, who had been a D-1 college player until severe hypertension ended his playing career, he had just been essentially fired by the school district in New Jersey where he had been a head high school varsity coach for 36 years. Seems he had an up and down record, some years good, others bad, no state titles to his credit, but plenty of respect from his players and the community. It was just, the article said, that some younger members of the school board wanted to move in another direction. Many people in the community protested, but a new coach was hired anyway.
When the new football season arrived last fall, a reporter asked him how he felt, and he explained it this way: He realized that 2010 would have been his 50th year in football since he went out for the 7th grade team in 1960. He played a little golf and he'd retired from teaching some years earlier, but he'd just never considered a day would come when he wouldn't be coaching.
"I miss the kids and the coaches," he said. "I miss being around them."
Here's to coaches everywhere, they deserve our respect and our thanks, if not our admiration. They certainly earn all three.