Ugh. I went to Catholic schools. Discipline-wise, the coaches had nothing on the nuns. Or the priests...
Our wrestling coach was really good at his job, but was a total prick. Somehow he made you want to be on his good side, even while you knew you should hate him for all the yelling and the intimidation. He once slammed this kid Josh up against a wall in the hallway, challenging him to a fight. "You think you can kick my ass, pussy?" That sort of thing. I don't recall what set him off, but none of the kids except Josh really freaked out too much, because we all knew Coach went batshit occasionally. He was a big dude, too, and his face would swell up and turn red when he got pissed. During my Junior year he called me in to his office to tell me to stop talking about dropping weight when I wasn't "in a team environment", because "people who don't wrestle don't understand" that sort of thing. This was only about a week after I'd been pressured to drop to 103, so that we could have a "complete team." At this point I was wrestling at 112. My normal weight was around 120, and I was a pretty skinny kid to begin with. The reason they wanted me to drop from 112 to 103 is so that the coach's son could wrestle at 112. Coach was an asshole. I did really well that year at 103, and I wasn't all that upset about having to drop all that weight at the time, but looking back on it 15 years later, I would have much rather refused to drop the extra weight, kicked his son's ass at 112, and been able to eat some food now and again and not wear a rubber suit while running laps the morning before a weigh-in. I might not have done as well at States, but fuckit. When I was in college, I came back home to hear that Coach had been fired. He was also one of three guidance counselors at our high school, and his youngest daughter had been refused admittance into a really good school (Williams or Amherst or some such). It turns out that he'd fudged her grades to make her transcript more impressive, and had been discovered. Coach's tinkering bumped his daughter three spots up on the graduation rankings in her class. The real pisser is that the daughter was the only really nice person in the family, had no knowledge of what her dad had done, and he only bumped her up from 4th to 1st in the class. Would it really have made that big a difference to the admissions staff? I still feel bad for his daughter, but I have to admit that his public humiliation made me smile. It almost makes up for all of the young wrestlers that he bullied and intimidated.
Good stuff. Reminded me of Barry Fry. Not that anyone will know who he is.
Soz. Forgot the crap link.
This is even better.
Today (April 29th) is Lee Elia Day. Once the assistant soccer coach on my U-14 team tore us a new one after we lost a scrimmage to a U-12 team. He was one of the kids' dads and I think probably an alcoholic. It was pretty ugly.
The worst thing a coach ever did to me was make me run the 400. Actually, that was the worst thing that my coach ever did to me. The worst thing that a coach ever did -- and it wasn't just to me -- was to go on a rant about how Title IX was totally stupid because girls were never gonna be good enough to make the baseball team or do anything else worthwhile in sports. There were more holes than substance to his reasoning, but 16-year-old kids don't know that; they just know that they're being told that they're weak and worthless, and always will be.
Oh jeez, mayerkyl. Where were you a few years ago when my Knight/Indiana lovin' friend was trying to shove his over-rated ass down my throat? That clip was indeed priceless. Thanks.
I think Lee Elia was 85% correct and 15% bipolar. My worst(funniest) coach experience: A coach once asked us to write a paper about our goals for the upcoming season. Someone asked how long the paper should be. Coach said "Papers should be like a girl's skirt, long enough to cover the subject, short enough to keep it interesting." Advice that I still follow. Same coach, different day: "Hey coach, can I get a pop before practice." "I'll give ya a pop." Proceeds to punch me in the shoulder, his version of "a pop." "Hey coach, can I get a slurpee?" "Start runnin!!!"
Sounds like a great coach, mayerkyl! I love the paper advice.
