Coaching with Your Coach

I was fortunate enough to play football at South Side High School at a time when some of the best athletes to ever walk the halls were all in one place at one time.  We still hold the record for the most consecutive wins in school history.  I think it is 20, but someone reading this feel free to correct me.

Now, I say that I was a part of this great group, but my contributions were mostly in the background.  I was backup tackle to an All City and State tackle.  I was bummed to have to sit through a lot of games, but I recognized that he and the rest of the starters had more talent than me.  Of course, winning all those games didn't hurt either.

I start with this trip further back into my past to create the reference for this blog entry.  If you have been reading my blog from the beginning you will know that in addition to teaching elementary PE I was also coaching at South.  You no doubt can start to see the connection.  I was going to coach with my coaches just four years removed.  And remember that the head coach had no choice as to who his new assistant would be.

Bob Gernand was that coach.  I remembered him as a gruff man who didn't seem to like me very much.  In retrospect and having coached with him for three years, I know that it wasn't dislike, it was that he knew that I had more potential which he had never been able to tap into.  Years later we met at an inservice.  He praised me for the work that I had done after I left South.  That is when I knew what he had seen in me.

His assistant coach was a proud Polish man named Walt Bartkiewcz.  He had actually been my coach because he coached the lineman.  I respected this man.  He pushed us hard.  His staccato English was precise and boomed across the field.  He didn't mince words.  You didn't have to guess where you stood.  He told you.

When I entered the locker room that I had left just four years before, I felt trepidation walking into the coaches' locker room.  The only times that I entered this area were when Bartkiewcz had called me in for a chewing out.  Now I was going into this room realizing that my former coaches hadn't had a say in my hiring.

Inside sitting at the desk was Bartkiewcz.  He jumped to his feet and stuck out his hand, and with a broad smile he greeted me, "Morris.  Good to see you!"  With his vice grip handshake I knew that I wouldn't have a problem with him.  We had evolved to colleagues immediately.  From the showers Gernard came in and, for one of the few times, I saw him smile.  He also shook my hand. "Welcome back."

Walt and I became friends.  He confided in me about his life and his years of coaching.  I heard such great stories.  I learned from him that young people want you to be truthful.  He lived that to his dying day.  in the end he was estranged from his family and alone, and that saddens me even now.

Bob and I never were really friends.  It never felt like we should be.  He was the head coach.  I was the defense back coach.  We never got past that.  When I resigned as the assistant coach after three years, it wasn't because I had taken the job at North Side.  It was because of a disagreement that he and I had.  That is why the encounter that we had years later meant so much to me.

These two men were my models for coaching.  In the end I was like neither of them as a coach. I finally realized that I needed find my own style of coaching.  Unfortunately, it came after I had left coaching baseball, but that is a different story.