Thanksgiving...

On the far west side of St. Bonaventure Catholic cemetery in Columbus, Nebraska, is a stalwart landmark of my life. It is my grandmother’s headstone. It is in the middle of the country, in the middle of the state, and it is in the center of my life. I travel there once a year and bring flowers, symbolic of renewal, yes, but more importantly, a gesture of thanks. Grandma was my coach. Not a coach that registered wins and losses, but a model of how to live one’s life. She had fun till the end of her 89 years, to her adverse circumstance was merely a fly that only passes by once and is never dwelt upon, and her biggest joy was seeing her kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids progress through life. She was a pillar of strength and the center of our family. Huge Reunions coincided with her August 30th birthday—always a fond farewell to the last days of summer. As a child, I admired her as she outbowled me, beat me in miniature golf, endured long games of Uno. I longed for the December day when the big cardboard box arrived on our front doorstep, secured over and over again with layers of tape, layers my mom would let my sister and I tear apart to get to Grandma’s heart—tins upon tins of holiday cookies, including her family-famous ginger snaps. As I grew older I was amazed how her letters arrived like clockwork on Easter, Christmas, and my birthday—always with a little cash inside. :) I would have to decipher her hieroglyphic handwriting, but it was worth it, it was grandma, she remembered everything about me, and she always mentioned Nebraska football and Dodger baseball—it should be no surprise that those are the only two sports teams I still religiously follow. Grandma always knew. While other scoffed my affinity for Nebraska, I longed for the drive from Omaha to Columbus. Though like a typical kid I may have claimed boredom while driving the two hours through flat, sometimes barren cornfields, I knew the reward at the end. I knew the cookies were there. I knew the magical basement, a historical trip through the last 40 years of American history, awaited. I knew I would get to sleep on the extra mattress pulled into the family room and I would get to hear the train passing through the night. I knew a part of me resided here and always would, still does, even six years after her passing from us. She was the coach who took joy in watching the tiny leaves sprout on the branches of her tree, her team. She wouldn’t dare publicly take credit, but she had to know at some point that the love began in that tiny kitchen of hers where all those cookies were baked, and living room table a few feet away where all those letters were composed, perhaps over her daily 5PM cocktail—consistent, but never to excess. Of all the people I’ve ever met, I try to emulate her. She is the quiet leader. She does not have to say much, but all will listen and follow…

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Eight years ago…my gosh, has it been that long? I was playing in my high school alumni soccer game against the varsity team; its players I would begin to coach four days later. I was moving back home after a year and change out of college and in the foreign world of Grossmon—the juvenile court school in Pomona, California, and a few months working at an after-school center in the City of Industry with kids on probation. It was time to go back home.
Late in the game I was playing sweeper and went up against a player I thought I could never coach. He grabbed jerseys, he sulked a bit, and he popped off to one of his teammates. I wisely told him, “You know, I’m going to be coaching you in four days, your behavior is an embarrassment.” He was a spoiled PV kid. I had come back from the ghetto, and I knew it all…
That first day of practice the varsity was done stretching and in typical trusting form, Bruce, the head coach, said, “Okay, Dodger Derek, what do you want to do?” Having no clue I said, “5 v. 2” because it’s what I knew. The drill began and I must have stopped each of the three groups about five times a piece. Immaculate the drill must be if we are going to win CIF. I desired and required perfection. I was, in fact, the every-three-minutes-reminder that we did in fact change the cover sheets on the TPS reports. I was, in fact, the guy who causes you to hate your job. I was perfection.
A couple games into the season we lost to Leuzinger, 2-1, at home. No way do we lose to Leuzinger. I was furious and embarrassed. No way do we lose at home. No way. Not to the ghetto school. No way could we lose to a team that starred Kei Kamara, who now plays in the MLS and recently was called up to Sierra Leone’s national team. No way would I someday be friends with Kei and play on the same alumni team with him every Thanksgiving morning. Wait. What? First off, he’s not an alum of PV or Peninsula, but he did play club for Bruce, the man who took Kei under his wing. He is an amazing story if you care to look him up. He is family. But at that time? No way could we lose to that team. That was the team that won CIF that year. But that didn’t matter, because I was embarrassed, and how it made me feel was what mattered. This was my team, and they must act, speak, and play like I did—the perfectionist, or as I heard it recently, the deceptionist…
Now it wasn’t all like that. I wasn’t militaristic. We had fun. Bruce taught me how to have fun. The kids taught me how to have fun. It was my first year and I was fully idealistic, and I still had a lot of Mr. Keating in me. So much so that I had the kids memorize and inspirational quote and recite it to me as they got off the bus before an important league game at Santa Monica, a game we won. Of course, that also coincided with the speech on the bus, as all the kids remember—Bruce’s impassioned speech referencing the memory of his mom, who had passed away from cancer after a long painful battle before that soccer season. Of course that probably wasn’t going through my mind at the time.
Again though, it’s not all like that. We did have a lot of fun. I’ll never forget Brent Butler, one of our two goalies, taking off his shirt during a rainy, muddy practice in a show of…manliness. We can’t forget that because ten seconds later Bruce had taken off his shirt, too. Hilarious. Brent also stood up on a bench and recited “If” by Rudyard Kipling, the poem I brought in for the entire team. It is no coincidence that we are friends now, and that he texted me a year ago saying “Sorry” after Virginia Tech had beat Nebraska in football, since he knew I was at the game and am a huge fan.
Again, it wasn’t “all like that” because I learned quickly in that first year. I learned quickly that coaching is not about X’s and O’s and wins and losses. It’s about raising kids, enhancing lives, learning a lot—a lot about yourself, and having fun, and usually shedding tears at the end of the season when you realize you don’t get to spend two-three hours a day with the seniors that won’t be back. Of course in a program like ours, I like to think that no one ever leaves. Especially when the cell phone rings the day before Thanksgiving and it’s one of your ex-players confirming they’ll be at the game—and this particular ex-player has said, “I want to teach high school English and coach soccer.” When I think of this, I think of Langston Hughes writing, “Life is fine. Fine as wine. Life is fine.” And I like to think my grandma smiles from above at 5PM while reading this…

My gosh, it’s already been eight years since I started coaching. Although sometimes it seems longer than that. Time is easily distorted when emotions are present. Steinbeck would say moments hover for more than a moment, Einstein would say it’s all relative. And it is. I made it to Grandma’s grave on the six year anniversary of her passing to the day, but when one returns to the center, to God, to beauty, time is really not that important. But it’s my eighth year of coaching and finally…finally, I care not to unfold the paper. Next week the soccer preview will come out, predictions will be made, feelings will be hurt if names aren’t mentioned, bulletin board material will be posted, and the season will begin. I don’t care. Someone might unfold the newspaper and read a story, cast judgment based on prior or predicted results, and consider himself an expert. Someone might say, “No way Leuzinger wins the Bay League.” Someone might say, “No way Mira Costa shouldn’t win league with all its talent.” Well, ultimately, it does not matter. Because what really unfolds during the course of the season are the lives of these kids, the Palos Verdes tree will cast its branches and leaves will sprout—some will grow strong, and some might get swept in the breeze. But the tree is a functioning unit, a pillar of strength, a beacon of light in the sometimes cruel night. The tree should never reach for artificial suns, yet only the shining of the true sun which returns every day, and really, never leaves. But those newspapers? Throw them away. They know naught. No one can write about you without love. Don’t let your eyes deceive you. The newspaper has no knowledge of the team’s bond developing in October in the heat of the Santa Ana winds during an agility training session on a baking artificial turf. What does everyone else know of the senior who has suddenly matured and willed himself away from a shaky foundation to become rooted strong in belief of something greater than the individual? When I feel this, I am complete. We as coaches will make our adjustments, suggestions, and minor tweaks along the way, but it is the foundation that must be there.

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By the end of that first season, that one player had become one of my favorites. I don’t like to admit we have favorites, but it’s human nature to do so. We’d take that kid out of the game for a breather, ad two minutes later he’d be standing next to us demanding to go back in. In subsequent years, Kurt would come back to help coach our offense. I would love someday if he became a full-time staffer. We don’t have the same personality, but as a I learned over the years, it didn’t matter. We as coaches can’t expect our players to be carbon copies of us. Each kid is an individual part that can contribute something great to the whole, and it is our job as mentors to help the kids figure out, and encourage them to contribute. We need to take interest in their lives so that their activities are seen as fruitful. It is not necessary that our kids do everything perfectly since we do not. We cannot create expectations for others because those tend to end in disappointment. They are selfishly driven and teach the wrong lessons, lessons which may repeat themselves into the next generation we wish to cultivate. We need to teach our players to be humble, fair, and ferocious all at the same time so that their paper unfolds kindly and assertively, like the leaves on a developing tree. We need not to say too much, to yell and scream, to belittle the other team or the referees, because destructive attitudes and behaviors breed themselves. At the end of the day, if the kids are true and have worked hard, they will have a center to come back to, and that is all that matters.
I am extremely grateful that I had wonderful coaches growing up—my parents, my sister, my sports coaches, my teachers, my teammates, my friends, my relatives, and of course my God. And if God were to be personified, I would imagine God to be in the form of my Grandma, the ultimate coach. On Thanksgiving, I’m sure we all have a coach who embodies this wonderful heartfelt holiday. Thank you to all of you who read this…our experiences together as coaches for all are invaluable.