My resume has held all manner of things over the years, but never once has it included coach.
Until now.
Well, substitute coach. Pseudo coach. Stand-in or placeholder coach. Three-day coach. Sounds like something you would buy off a late-night infomercial. But that’s what I was for the briefest period of time last week — a short-time cross country coach.
My daughter was so proud. “You’re the coach!” she screamed when I told her. You would have thought I had just announced I was Santa Claus and had brought her a pony named Stan.
Flagler College’s full-time cross country coach, Dave Williams, was heading out of town for a couple of days and asked if I would tend to his men’s team while he was gone. I jumped at the opportunity.
“Me, a coach,” I said with starry eyes. I pictured myself with a whistle, a clipboard and a hat that read, “I’d eat you for lunch, but you look bony.”
Just the idea of being a coach for a couple days was terribly exciting. The word “coach” has a ring to it, and most are tough, natural leaders. They instill a strange concoction of respect, awe, fear, inspiration, perspiration … and they spit a lot. They are confident, authoritative and yell things like, “You maggots better move it or I’ll wash my car with you.” How awesome is that?
I always believed part of being a great coach meant you had to have a steely gaze — one that could cut glass — and that you could come up with crafty, on-the-fly things to threaten your players with. Wild, off-the-wall verbal assaults that would get their attention like, “I’ve seen one-legged squirrels run faster than you, Johnson” or “ I am inches away from removing your spleen with a shrimp fork!”
How awesome to yell something like that across a field without fear of someone calling the police on you.
I’ve always wanted that.
I received some basic instruction on what I should do and what was expected of me. It boiled down to this: 1) Have them follow the provided workout; 2) try not to get any of them run over — they’re expensive to replace; 3) don’t get any of them lost as it’s really embarrassing if a sheriff’s helicopter has to pluck a shivering runner out of a swamp in the middle of the night; and 4) have fun.
Oh, and I did. I drew on my years of experience as a mediocre runner and my single year in college when I, too, ran cross country. (I spent most of that year clutching my lower legs and telling my coach how it felt like my shins were giving birth to water buffalos.)
I went on a couple of runs with them and told them stories about how my team had practices where we dragged tires tied to our waists down the beach. I said coach-like things, such as, “Good run, fellas. I’m proud of you all for not getting hit by that one semi.” Or if someone was complaining about some pain in say their leg, I would look closely and tell them, “Well, doesn’t appear the bone is poking through, so my expert opinion is you’re all right.”
They were a good bunch, and even called me “stand-in coach” on a couple of occasions, which really touched me.
Turns out I didn’t do much yelling, and never got the chance to tell anyone that I would impale them on a light pole if they didn’t run faster. (Probably better that I didn’t.) But it was fun all the same, and now I can officially add one more thing to my resume.