I hate to brag but I have raised some awesome kids. I guess I can’t call them kids anymore, they’re all grown. But they’re still awesome. Today, I would like to talk about my awesome son, the best soccer coach who has ever lived.
Jay has been playing soccer his entire life. We didn’t know, he didn’t know it. But that’s what he was doing. He used to run up and down the driveway, with his head down, kicking at things. Sometimes it would be rocks, sometimes just the dirt. I thought something was weird about that but it wore him out and it made him happy so who was I to judge?
But the first day he stepped out on a soccer field I knew what he had been doing all those years. He had been developing his stamina. He had been practicing to shoot up-field to get in position to shoot or stop the ball or whatever. He had been practicing soccer.
And he played. He played all that he could. He was really very good. It seemed that he was held back a lot by his coaches. Of course, he wasn’t their son and they wanted their son in the middle of things so they would get mad at Jay for dribbling the ball all the way up the field, with his head down, with only a goal in mind. They forced him to keep his head up and pass the ball to their kid so that kid could score. He got to where he didn’t listen very well and did what he knew he could do. By doing that he made the all district and all region teams. His team never went further than the district but he did.
All through high school he would tell me and the guidance counselor that he was going to play soccer in college and then go professional. He had never had a recruiter even come and see him play. But I figured he would figure it out. So, when he was planning his classes for his senior year and the guidance counselor asked him what he was going to do with his life he said he was going to become a history teacher and a soccer coach. I about fell out of my chair.
And that’s what he did. He attended Western Kentucky University. He played intramural soccer but then started going to the high school soccer games around the area. He found out that Warren East High School didn’t really have a coach. He began working with them and coached them all through college. When he graduated he started coaching with his teaching gig.
When he moved up to Louisville and started teaching at Fairdale High School I was concerned because Fairdale is such a diverse school. And in that diversity there are an awful lot of soccer players. And in that diversity all of those players approach the game completely different. I mean, anyone can watch the World Cup and come to realize that. The kids from South America play different than the kids from Mexico, who play different than the kids from Africa or the mid-East or Europe, and from the kids who were born and raised in Louisville. How do you capture that diversity and put it together as a team. But if he has never excelled at anything, he has excelled at that. He lets those kids play. They have to play the way he wants them, but in that context they are allowed to be themselves. He is not going to hold a kid back because he wants another kid to shine. He wants all of his kids to shine.
Jay took the job at Fairdale to teach. But they found out that he could coach and they gave that job to him. He was happy with that. But then he married and was expecting his first child right dab in the middle of soccer season so he decided to take a year or two off from coaching so that he could be a dad. He spent the spring getting ready for the birth of his daughter instead of conditioning the boys. You could tell that he missed it but his excitement of being a father far outweighed the pull of his body to the soccer field.
But then tragedy struck. Jay lost his little girl before she could be born. They were in the middle of getting her room ready and planning baby showers when they found out she would be born asleep. The time that followed was so painful for everyone, but especially the new mom and dad who were being denied their precious baby girl.
I don’t know why I can’t write about Lucy. I should be able to. I think about her often, I talk with her often. But I just can’t get it down on paper. I think sometimes it’s because I don’t want to stir up that hurt. But that hurt is there and will always be there. And she is loved so much more than she’ll ever know.
Jay and his beautiful wife had a baby boy in May. Jay made the decision to go back to coaching. So he spent his spring getting ready for the new baby and conditioning his boys. He knew he had some work to do since he had a lot of boys that he didn’t know and a challenging season. Oh, he did this while taking classes for his second master’s degree. He’s not a slacker.
And the season has been a good one. He hasn’t won all of the games but the team won the district title for the regular season. Next up was the district tournament. As expected, they would be in the finals. As expected, they would be playing one of the toughest teams in the district. Jay told his kids to play with hustle and with heart and if they did that then he didn’t care if they won the tournament. But he reminded them that they were capable of being the victor.
I wish I had been at that game. Jay has been struggling with a bad cold so he was having issues with his voice. The game was forced into overtime, by this boy who was wearing his confidence on his sleeve, with little time left. And in overtime, that boy, who was on fire, scored the winning goal. They had won.
As the boys crossed the field back to their coach they were chanting LU-CY! LU-CY! LU-CY! I heard that there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. Jay had dedicated the game to Lucy before the game even started.
Looking at the pictures that were posted all over Facebook I came to realize that my white-middle-class-man son does every day what everyone in our country struggles with. He takes that diverse group of young men and has them come together to achieve a team’s goal. He respects them. They respect him. He treats them all the same. If you screw up, you get the bench. He doesn’t care who your daddy is. He doesn’t care where you live. He doesn’t care where you come from. If you listen and play hard and smart and give it all, you’re going to play. If not, you’ll sit this one out. He has always been that way but to see it in pictures just causes all of this pride deep inside me to bubble to the top.
I think he and his team could teach us quite a bit.
Love you Jay-ber! You will never know how much!