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Coach of the Year

By Anonymous

On Saturday JP's career as head coach of our local summer league swim team came to an end. His team won the championship for the first time ever and did it by 150 points. Landon and I attended the banquet at the pool that night and it was so wonderful to see how much the kids and parents adore him. He was always surrounded by people, laughing and joking, complimenting kids on their swims- somehow managing to know each of their times and how much they had improved (there's 250 swimmers on the team, between ages 6-16). Several people cam up to me to tell me how great he did and how much fun they had this season. One parent, a dad, even came up to me to thank me for my role as Mrs. Coach. He said he knew how much time JP had dedicated to the team, and how that takes away from family time and he really appreciated my behind-the-scenes work.

It was so nice to hear because it really was hard. Since April I've been on my own every night with a generally over-tired tantrum-throwing toddler. JP has come home about one second before Landon goes to bed and on many of those days I've tossed him our cranky child and headed off to our room without a word. That sounds terrible and I've really tried not to complain too much because there are single parents and moms with husbands serving in the military overseas and moms with husbands who don't help out 1/10 of what JP does, but dammit, it was hard. Our family just works better when the two of us are together.

But back to JP -- my favorite part of the evening was watching him hand out the awards to the kids. When the team manager introduced him all the kids swarmed him for a big group hug. The team manager then took back the microphone and said that in 13 years with the team, she'd never seen the kids do that before! It was very sweet and just made me feel so proud of him. I coached summer league in college so I knew what we were getting in to when he accepted this job. I also knew he'd love it, knew he'd be good at it, and knew it would help his company (he's starting a swim school, more on that later). But even knowing all that, I was unprepared for how much he was in his element. I'm glad I got to see it- I came home with a happy, exhausted Landon and even greater than normal feelings of love and respect and pride in my husband, the Coach.

Full post as published by Lag Liv on June 29, 2009 (boomark / email).