| The Accidental Coach | for everyone |
Speech on Induction to Hancock Hall of Fame, 3/11/2011. To all my former players who can't be there to share this special night....
If you go back 40 years to when I started at Hancock, I doubt you could find a better candidate for “Least Likely to be Inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame (if it ever gets created)” than I. I not only wasn’t any kind of jock, I bordered on, and occasionally waded waist-deep into the pool of anti-jock. So much so that when I first applied for the softball coaching position in 1985, Superintendent Brodbeck kept the position open for months until Curt Baker could be coerced into taking the job.
I’m happy to share the whole story for those who are interested, but, in short, I volunteered that first season, working with Curt, learning about athletic coaching and making a good friend. With two coaches we were able to keep more girls out and, with Jerry Schloss’s support as Athletic Director, even schedule a few JV games. The JV coaching position became official the next year and, thanks to the mentoring I gained from Coach Baker, I took over the varsity program in the 1989 Spring season, certainly better prepared than I would have been in the Spring of 1986. I had great support from every Athletic Director following Jerry and am proud of Hancock’s softball program and the job Nikki Herman has done in maintaining it. As for me, I’m still coaching 25 years later, albeit not at Hancock, still having fun, and, as unlikely as it seemed all those years ago, honored to join the other teacher-coaches in the Hancock Hall of Fame.
Until you’ve coached, you don’t know how hard the job is, how tired you are when you get home. And you don’t know how good a teacher you can be, because good coaches – and by this I mean drama coaches, music coaches, journalism coaches, as well as the obvious athletic coaches – who care about their “players” make good teachers. The process is the same, even if you’re substituting a performance area for a classroom.
In my almost 20 years of coaching Tigers I was lucky to work with several outstanding athletes, and, more importantly, people who are already members of Hancock’s Hall of Fame: Rhonda Stokes Stratman, JoAnn Oberkirsch Hufker, Nikki Herman, Beth Kilian Wilson, Rachelle Menees Gage, Amanda Nevois St. John, and now, April Stratman. That kind of talent, plus numerous young women who were really good, committed, coachable softball players, makes it easy to rack up wins and records. Playing in the Spring didn’t hurt, either, although I’m convinced our best teams in the 90’s could have competed in the Fall, as well.
I loved working with the teams of young women who were always more important to me as individuals and people than players. Each season they made me a better coach, a better teacher, and a better person and I’m indebted to each of them. I got great support from the administration, whether as athletic directors or after they became principals. Principal Moser has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?
In addition to my surrogate Hancock daughters, I was also lucky enough to coach my own daughter at Webster Groves High School and I want to thank her for her patience and generosity, her willingness to share me and my limited time. We’ll start working on having Becca hit left-handed soon. My wife and life-partner, Carolyn, has always been equally generous and, perhaps more importantly, helped me keep things in perspective and I am, and will always be, thankful for her love and support, no matter what.
I’m proud to join the community of outstanding athletes and coaches who make up the Hancock Hall of Fame. It means more to me than I can express and I share my joy with all my former players.
But let me tell you what would mean even more. In this time when teachers have become convenient scapegoats for politicians, I want to say that accolades do not define us. We who have worked – and it is work, hard work, no matter how easy the best teachers make it seem – as instructors and coaches of young men and women, as shapers of the future of this country, as mentors, role-models, and helping hands, we did not do it for honors, plaques or awards – or money. Those extrinsic rewards were not, and are not, our motivation or raison d’être. Nor were we competing with each other, trying to outrank each other on some arbitrary, random scale. No, we worked together with a common goal, to help our students, our players, find their place in the kind of world we wanted for them, because that’s who we are – teachers. I’d ask each of you here tonight to help defend the teachers and coaches who cared about you as students, as athletes, as people, because those are the kind of people, whether they ever get a plaque or an honor, you want working with your children in the challenging world that awaits.
Drmist1 wrote on Mar 6, '11
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, Robert. I cannot imagine how proud you must be. I appreciate YOUR inclusion of all "coaches". Hopefully, someday, everyone else will value that work enough to include the students we coach as well.