As mentioned earlier, Michael’s staff consists of himself and Coach Duncan for grades 7-12. Michael knew coming here meant that he’d have to wear more coaching hats than when he was at Hebron, but we never knew he’d wear so many; coach, trainer, videographer, chauffer, landscaper, etc One of the parts of this job that takes up a lot of Michael’s time is preparing the field. We’re so used to artificial fields in Texas where they pay to have it put down and then you pay again in x amount of years to have it replaced. It’s not that easy when you have real grass. Michael mows the field twice a week, and occasionally takes Gracie and me up there for a romantic weed pulling date. Exciting I know. He also gets to paint the lines for the practice and game fields. I had never heard of this or experienced it, so it blew my mind. Since at one point in time Michael was the only coach, I offered to help him as much as I could. One of the times Michael asked for my help, I ended up being more of a hindrance than help. He needed me to help him measure the practice field so that we could pour diesel in the right places. Apparently it’s easier to diesel the grass first that way the grass dies and its easier to paint week to week because you don’t have to keep measuring. We get it all measured out one evening and then go back the next night to pour the diesel. My job was to drive the golf cart as Michael poured the diesel off the side, easy enough. Well, the sprayer they had only held 5 gallons, so once the sprayer ran out we had to drive back up to the equipment room to fill it. Michael came and dropped the sprayer off in the golf cart and then went over to get something out of his truck. Well, I started to drive over to his truck to pick him up so that we could head back to the field, and in my moment of grace, the diesel sprayer flings off the golf cart and breaks. AWESOME. This was the only sprayer they had and in a small town…everything closes at 5. So, here I was trying to help the poor guy, and I end up making his life more difficult because we couldn’t finish burning the lines until we could get a new sprayer. For some reason he doesn’t ask for my help much anymore. Thank God Coach Duncan came on board to help him.
Another part of the job he never had to deal with was being a chauffer. A lot of these kids don’t have a way to get to and from practices, so Michael has to go and pick them up and take them home. There have been a few times that he knows a kid he’s taking home might not have dinner that night, so he stops to get subs from Subway or something along those lines. Michael even drove to Conway one evening, which is about an hour and a half away, to pick up a kid who was visiting his sister. This kid was gone for over 2 weeks and said he couldn’t get a ride back to Brinkley. Since practice started the next day, Michael offered to go pick him up. One of the scarier times, Michael got a call at 11:30 at night from a kid and when he picked up the kid was crying and couldn’t catch his breath. The poor kid lived with his aunt and a few of his cousins. When his cousins got in trouble for robbing a McDonalds his aunt didn’t want him living there anymore because she assumed he’d be next to get in trouble. He didn’t have a place to go and called Michael because he didn’t know what else to do. We ended up getting it all figured out that night and he had a place to stay, but we both thought that we might be taking a kid in for a little while.
These are great kids who just have a lot of difficulties to get through. I really pray that we can be positive role models in their lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment