Coaching

When I was a high school senior, a series of timed runs at different distances in gym class confirmed that I was the fastest person in the building. As a college student and young adult, I played in numerous softball and fast-pitch baseball leagues, and I was always one of the three best players on the field. I have run marathons, including one at age 41 in which I finished in the 39th percentile out of almost 2000 runners.

I don't say all of this to boast. I mention it for the irony factor, for I am without a doubt the worst high school coach in history, and I include those scumbag who have fucked one of their impressionable athletes. I'm guessing those predatory scoundrels at least taught someone how to box out around the perimeter. I have coached - if I may abuse that word - three different sports in my 20 years or teaching. How did I fare? I am to coaching what the Hindenburg was to transatlantic flight.

It takes a slew of qualities to be a good high school coach. I have none of them. The only thing I have going for me is that I was a damn good athlete for most of my life. Unfortunately, that is not one of the qualities you need to be a good coach. If you've seen some of the John Goodman-esque coaches plodding along the sidelines of high school games, you know what I mean. I admire the hell out of dedicated high school coaches regardless of their won-loss records. They work painfully long hours, know how to motivate kids, know how to teach every aspect of their sport and put themselves on the line with each competition.

When I coached, I would have my eye on my watch from the moment practice started, trying to come up with some lame excuse to cut practice short. I couldn't motivate an Eskimo to put on a sweater. I've coached a sport about which I know a lot, baseball, and I have coached a sport about which I knew next to nothing, basketball. I've run marathons, yet failed miserably at coaching cross country.

The first four years of my teaching career, I was an assistant baseball coach. The head coach was a grizzled old retired cop who was now a teacher's aide. He didn't know too much about the basics of how to play the game, but he knew the basic strategies and he could recognize the most talented players and knew where they belonged on the field. He ran disciplined, orderly, productive practices, and never once canceled a session. I wasn't much of a help, although for some reason he liked me and tried hard to keep me from quitting when I finally gave it up. I was there mainly to get in some practice of my own, as I was still in my mid-twenties and still playing lots of ball myself. My main contribution to practice was showing off for the kids. I would sneak out with the outfielders and shag flies, catching them smoothly behind my back to oooo's and ahhhh's from the highly impressed kids. Pathetic, I know.

One day after practice, when the head coach was delivering his daily end-of-practice diatribe on how badly we practiced and how bad the team sucked (we didn't suck, but his first love was coaching football, so he like to go all Lombardi every chance he got), he started reaming them out on all the goofing off that was going on at practice and how "this shit needs to stop. I hear joking, I hear laughing, I see people catching balls behind their backs ..." Eighteen sets of eyes that had been staring ashamedly at the dugout floor darted in unison toward me. Instead of 'fessing up and getting the kids off the hook, I just stared at the ground and bit my lip, using every ounce of my energy trying not to laugh. I let the kids take the heat, and not one of them ratted me out. The coach, who was a bit batty, I must admit, never did know that I was the one screwing off.

I taught the kids some valuable fundamentals, but I never cared if we won or lost. I just wanted the kids to learn the basics of the game. I finally quit when I found myself applauding the other team's nice plays as strongly as I applauded ours. That's not a good move on any sports bench.

I also coached cross country for one disastrous year. I love running, but I hated every second of coaching it. The team consisted of seven boys and two girls, none of whom could run. On the first day of practice, not one of them could run the 3.1 mile course without stopping to walk part of it. That was to be expected. However, under my stellar Prefontaine-like tutelage, this held true all the way through the final practice. They started at Point A, and by the end of the season, they were still at Point A. I had taken them nowhere.

The biggest problem I had was that every kid hated running. So of course, they joined the cross country team. In movie-land, I would have worked them into a competitive, dedicated team of runners who win sectionals. This did not happen, for I never learned how to motivate. Let me provide an example. One hot September day, I met them in the shade at the end of the football field and outlined my pathetic plan for that practice. I think it involved some running. Every kid began to whine, which they did every day. I was hot and tired and didn't want to be there either. So how did the Vince Lombardi of the running world handle this coachable moment? I said in an even, emotionless voice, "Fine. If you don't want to practice, then just go the fuck home. We're finished today." And I turned around and began walking back to the school. They stood there thinking I was bluffing, waiting for me to stop and turn around to see if I had made my point, like Kurt Russell might do right before the big inspirational-music-over-shots-of-inspiring-practices scene. Instead, I walked to my car, got in and started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. As I drove away, I could see them still standing, stunned, in the shade. I assume they finally went the fuck home.

I'd like to say that the tactic worked and that the next day's practice was the beginning of a dramatic turn-around, but it didn't and it wasn't. We are probably the only team in our state's history who went an entire season without earning one point in any of the meets. I was nearly 40, and at practice I would give them half-mile head starts on course runs, then still beat them by five and six minutes. I could not have done a shittier job ...

... unless you count my one season of being the assistant varsity girls basketball coach. It was the 9/11 of coaching experiences, only with laughter and alcohol.

A friend of mine took the head coaching position, and the coaching bylaws required him to have one assistant who was female and another male for away games. He asked me and another girl to help him out. My duties consisted of: Ride the bus to away games only, sit on the bench with him, and ... um ... that was it. No practices ... no home games ... and I didn't have to do a single solitary thing on the bench.

That is, until the day before the first away game, when the head coach learned that his best friend's father had died, requiring him to attend the funeral. I said I didn't see any good reason why they couldn't stack some dry ice around the corpse and hold the funeral when we had a break in the schedule, but the grieving pansies didn't see it that way. So, the head coach went to the funeral and I made my big-time head coaching debut the next night.

I do not exaggerate when I say that the only thing I knew about the game was that baskets got you one or two points, depending on the situation.

How little basketball did I know? One of our players ran by the bench and said she needed to come out because her legs were cramping up. A girl on the bench got up and ran over to kneel by what I now know was the scorer's table. When time was called, I heard a loud buzzer go off, and I thought I had done something wrong. I didn't know it was just the signal for a substitution. I has to ask what those alternating green arrows were for. I asked if we played four quarters or just two halves. I didn't know what any of the ref's foul signals meant. I might have even asked how I missed the coin toss. We lost. Badly. It remains as humiliating a two hour period as I have ever experienced.

Another time, the female coach and I went out for pizza and beer before game that was going to be played just four miles away. The coach said we didn't have to take the bus ride with him because the ride was so short. Since we had several hours to kill, one pitcher of Bud turned to three. The game started at 7:00. At 7:15, we sat in the pizza place trying to decide between going to the game (we were, after all, assistant coaches) or going to "her place" to drink more. In a rare fit of responsibility (perhaps I'd jerked off that morning), I made the decision to go to the game. (Plus I knew those big floppy bologna tits would be there for the taking at a later time, if I so desired.) I sure wish I had video of the two of us staggering into the gym mid-game and walking along the edge of the court to join the team for the end of the first half. The only thing missing was Gene Hackman telling a puzzled ref that we were okay, we were his assistants. I still regret not telling the girls we were going to run the old picket fence on 'em. (You know ... like in Hoosiers? C'mon, work with me.)

After three painfully unforgettable forays into the world of high school coaching, I will never again put my "Ned Bitters" on the dotted line, not even as a do-nothing assistant who only has to attend night away games on alternating Fridays when there's a half moon. I could handle that, but I couldn't handle some selfish old prick kicking off and sticking me with the clipboard for an evening. That, and I'm too old and too married to go chasing after big ol' bologna tits anymore.

Ned Bitters teaches high school and dreams of one day seeing one of his former students on stage at a strip club. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.