Friday, August 5, 2011

High School Coaches: The Exister

The Exister is just that, he exists.  Maybe he got into coaching at some point with a sense of higher purpose, but his ideals have been stripped away.  Maybe he has to coach football in order to coach another sport that he truly loves.  Perhaps he was hired under the condition that he has to coach, and his contract stipulates that if he stops coaching, he loses his job, or he needs the money he gets as a stipend for coaching more than he wants to admit.  This is the life of the Exister.

You can always identify the Exister.  He may be the one wearing a hat or shirt from the sport he truly loves.  He is the one that leaves skid marks getting out of the school at night after practice rather than sit around and relive yet another anecdote from one of the Lifers.  He may have a calendar some where that counts down the days until the end of the season.

Such is the life of the Exister.  He is not a bad guy, and he does love the kids, but the sport has worn him out.  He understands that there are guys that live and breathe coaching football, and he either has empathy for them, pity for their families that never get to see them, or a desire to drag the person to the door to show them what the world outside of football looks like.

An Exister generally prefers to work with the less talented athletes, as the talented ones already have enough people blowing smoke up their collective asses.  He tries to make sure that the hours the kids spend on the field leave good memories, but by no means should they end up pumping gas talking about how the time they spent on the field was the best of their life.

An Exister will actually understand if a kid decides to quit, or play another sport, or even put academics ahead of football.  He will look across the room at another Exister and draw an sympathetic look from that coach as they watch the same play for the 32nd time.

Such is the life of the Exister.

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