Victory is so sweet

            Oh, how I love football season…always something for me to do on a Thursday and Friday night. As I’ve mentioned, our first game was against cross-town rival the Clarendon Lions. This is the only game anyone cares about in this town. Since Michael’s first day on the job, people have told him that if he beats Clarendon it doesn’t matter what happens the rest of the season. This is pretty scary to hear for a first time head coach who has so much riding on his first game of the season, not to mention that his team was 0-13 last season.

            That Thursday, the 7^th and 8^th grade team and the Jr. High team played the Lions and both teams won. Both teams played well and the stands were full. When the games were over everyone, including the Mayor, came up to me saying that was the best they have seen those boys play and act in a long time. It was a great way to start the season and gave his Senior High team some momentum before their game the next day.

            Before every game me and Jana Carroll (booster club President) go up to the school to help feed the team, and this is when I usually get to find out all the gossip of the day. Apparently, Michael had a pretty stressful day and not all due to it being game day. There is coach at the school named Coach O’Brien who has been trying everything in his power to bring Michael’s program down. From day one he has had something against Michael and it just seems to be progressing.  Well, about 2 hours before school was over O’Brien comes up to Michael and said that he has been checking grades of the football team and one of Michael’s players isn’t eligible. Of course Michael wanted to know why he was checking grades for his football team, and two, why he decides to bring it up to Michael now, a couple hours before they are scheduled to leave. Michael assured him that all of his players are eligible, but O’Brien said he found some loophole in the Brinkley School Policy that questions a senior’s eligibility. Since Michael didn’t have time to check it out, he had to tell a Senior that he couldn’t play in the first game until they could get everything straightened out. Michael said that was the hardest thing he’s had to do and that he had to fight back tears the whole time. Needless to say, O’Brien is not my favorite person and I can’t wait to be face to face with that man. Since I do not work for the school, and O’Brien is not my colleague, I can say whatever I want to him…basically everything Michael can’t. Unfortunately, this was not only thing that happened that afternoon either. At the pep rally, as everything is finishing up, some lady comes up to Michael, gets in his face and starts yelling at him about being a bully to her son in class and not playing him enough. Thankfully, Michael can handle himself better than me, and he just told her to schedule a conference with him if she wants to discuss her son and to have a nice weekend. That didn’t please her, so she kept yelling, put her finger in his face and told him that she wants him to get in her face and yell at her. Him being the better person, once again, tells her to have a nice day and walks away. Geesh, they wonder why I didn’t accept the teaching position they offered me several times. I was ticked that the principal was just standing there why all of this was happening and didn’t do much. The way I see it, no parent should be able to just walk into a school and get in a teachers face. I’m actually still mad about this if you can’t tell. So, after having all this happen, he now has to get ready for his first game. 

            I don’t remember everything that happened that game, but I do remember it was the longest game ever. Right when the buzzer rang after the first quarter, it started lightening, so everyone had to go inside until it passed. This took a little over an hour until they got to resume play, by this time it was a little past 10pm and here we are just starting the second quarter. If I remember correctly, I believe that we started the second quarter 8-7 us.  It continued to be a close game the whole time, but by the end of the 3^rd quarter you could tell that the Lions were getting tired. Our team was better conditioned and ended up pulling out the win 23-20. This game ended Brinkley’s 13 game losing streak and the stands literally went wild. Me, Mallory and Mrs. Janine all had tears in our eyes yelling, jumping and screaming until the last second. When the buzzer went off, I took off to the field to find Michael while he was running to the stands looking for me and we finally met in the middle we had the biggest hug ever. What a sight, Michael won his first game as a head coach and showed these boys that hard work does pay off. Everyone doubted them and said even though Brinkley has their “super duper coach, it’s going to take more than one year for him to turn it around”. BS – Michael turned it around in 5 months, and it only took 1 game to prove it.

            This win was the best thing to happen to these boys because now they too are believers. We were afraid that if they lost they weren’t going to believe that anything they did this summer was worth it, but now they definitely do. Brinkley now has the Judge’s Cup back and the Tigers 1^st win of the season. Watch out everyone!

You can kind of see the players receiving the Judge's Cup and raising it. 

Community Pep Rally

If I felt like I ever wasn’t involved in the football program at Hebron…I am now making up for that times 100. At Hebron they had a wonderful booster club that did everything plus some for the team and coaches; Brinkley is a completely different story. They have had a booster club, but they really haven’t ever done anything besides work the concession stand. The president, who is a teacher at the school and has a senior on the team, said that Michael has just given everything a new life. She said she was never motivated to do anything because nothing came of it, but mine and Michael’s enthusiasm has made her want to do everything she can. At the start of the summer Michael, Jana (booster president), any myself decided to go out into the community and try to get donations for the program through ad sales. We’re making posters with the football schedule and all business logos who donated, as well as a board with company logos at the entrance and around the fence on inside the stadium. It made such an impact by the three of us dividing and conquering. Getting out there and meeting people and talking to them about what’s going on with the program really made people interested. Doing that, we raised over $3000 and had local businesses, churches and fans sign up to feed the whole team, Junior and Senior High, before every game. All of this is just unheard of for this area and these boys love every minute of it. We even had parents ask to have a fish fry for the boys after the first week of summer practice. So as these boys are finishing practice on a Friday, they are greeted by 5 parents frying catfish, fries and hush puppies for them.

            One of our goals this year has been to really get the town involved in football again, because lately, support  has been lacking. In the midst of our sales filled summer, Jana and myself decided to have what we are now calling the first annual Community pep rally. The first game this season is on Sept. 2 and happens to be against their biggest rival, the Clarendon Lions. If you’re familiar with the Battle of the Axe between Lewisville and Marcus you will have an understanding. We decided to schedule the pep rally on August 19 because it’s 2 weeks prior to the big game and the Friday after the first full week of school. Next was just trying to figure out how to get people there since Brinkley hasn’t ever had a community pep rally. Jana and me met once a week to discuss what we wanted to do and how we were going to do it. We decided that we needed to get the Mayor involved, so I went to his office the next morning and asked him if he’d be willing to talk at the pep rally and encourage the town to paint Brinkley Black and Gold before every game by hanging posters and painting the windows of their shops the day of a game. Of course he said absolutely and helped us out by spreading the word at council meetings and such. I wrote a couple of articles for the newspaper announcing the details of the pep rally and had our churches make mention of it to help spread the word.

            We decided to have the pep rally at regular game time to get everyone used to the schedule, 7:00 on a Friday night. We contemplated having it on the field, but thought that it might be better to have it a neutral site so people felt more involved, we decided the downtown city park was the site.

Michael and I were driving to the pep rally that night and when we were just about to turn the corner I looked at him and said, “I sure hope people show up” and right when we turned that corner I was amazed. People showed up in groves. There was nowhere to park and so many people already standing out there. Jana said she arrived at 5:30 and people were already there claiming seats. What a site. All Michael’s boys, Jr. and Sr. high were standing there in their jersey’s just smiling ear to ear. I can’t even imagine how special they must have felt. We had school clubs out there selling waters, hotdogs, Home of a Tiger yard signs, and t-shirts. The pep rally started right at 7pm and we had the Mayor start off with his spill about community involvement on Friday nights and painting the town black and gold., and then Jana introduced herself and our new Superintendent and Principal. We invited the peewee cheerleaders to come and perform, so they did one of their cute little cheers before passing the microphone off to one of the senior players who introduced Coach Sain. Michael talked a little about their summer workouts, the start of practices and how proud he was of the boys. He then called out every one of the Jr. and Sr. High boys by their first and last name and their position. This made a huge impact on everyone. I was praying he wouldn’t forget one of their names, but I should have known that he wouldn’t. I was so proud of him at that moment because I could just see the joy in his face and each of theirs. I can’t wait to see Michael in his first year of being a head coach, with just one other coach on staff, turn this whole program around. Anyway, back to the pep rally, we had about 5 other senior players speak about the upcoming season, and we were a little nervous about this. In the past we were told that they’ve gotten up there and said things that, for lack of better words, made them seem uneducated, so we somewhat scripted them to make sure that didn’t happen. Well, they did a great job and represented the team well. Next we had the Jr. and Sr. high cheerleaders perform, and then had the band play the Alma Mater in closing. Everything went better than expected had everyone talking. The mayor came up to me afterwards just beaming and kept saying how this is just what this town needed and how he thanked us for giving Brinkley it’s spirit back. Even at church people were stopping us telling us how amazing the pep rally was and how impressed they were that Michael knew everyone of those boys’ names.

After the showing for the pep rally, I have no doubt in my mind that on September 2^nd those stands will be full for the first time in several years. Watch out Lions!!!

The band is playing to entertain everyone before the rally starts.

The little peewee girls starting it off with a cheer

Michael talking about the summer workouts and start of practices

Michael introducing the Jr. high Cub team.

The Jr. high cheerleaders being introduced and cheering

Sr. High Tigers being introduced

Sr. High cheerleaders being introduced and performing

Seniors doing a little chant

Alma Mater

Here we are with the sign that will lead to many eggs and rolls of toilet paper to be thrown at our house.

Small town = many jobs

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.

Summer football

One of the major pulls of us taking this job was to try and change this football program. Not all of these boys have a life that we’re accustomed to and they really deserve a change. I honestly believe that Michael, and I’d like to think myself, are going to make this happen for these boys. Coming into a program that has no where to go but up, me and Michael knew that the first thing we had to do was make these boys know that we love and care about them, basically give them a reason to play for Michael and in turn, learn to love the game again. If you can imagine, they haven’t really had a reason to play in the past. They had a coach who didn’t care about them or the game anymore, and in turn over the last 8 years they only won 15 games. These boys felt like losers. Michael has only been here for 5 months and the attitude in these boys has already changed dramatically.

For the past few years this program hasn’t had a summer workout regimen, probably the reason they were so prone to injury during the season, so Michael made the schedule for them and communicated it to them and their parents. We were so nervous that no one would show up, so Michael gave them an incentive to. He’s calling it the Iron Tiger club and any and all players who complete a certain amount of summer workouts get their workout clothes monogrammed with Iron Tiger as well as their name on the back of their jersey. Doesn’t seem like a big deal since we’re so used to seeing that in Texas, but Michael says in Arkansas, it’s basically unheard of to have your name on the back of your jersey. Needless to say, the boys showed up…a lot of them did. So much so, that boys were calling Michael to open the weight room even on the weekends. I remember Michael calling me to tell me he was on his way home one night, which the school is about 3 minutes away, and he walked in the door about an hour later. He obviously had some explaining to do as he ate his cold supper. Michael said that as he was walking out the door and locking it up, one of his seniors came running up, bent down with his hands on his knees to breathe and said “I’m sorry I’m late coach, we got stuck in the fields, can I please get in a little of my workout?” Well, how do you say no to that poor boy? Working in the heat all day farming the fields and then running up to get in his workout.  I obviously forgave Michael, but this just shows the dedication these boys are putting into this program.

At the end of July, Michael and I decided to invite the senior football players and cheerleaders over to our house for a cookout to thank them for showing leadership all summer long. Michael said it was really funny at workouts that week because the seniors were bragging to all the other players that they get to go to coaches house. Well, out of the 13 senior players, 12 showed up and of the 4 senior cheerleaders, 2 showed up. It was a lot of fun; we grilled for the kids as everyone sat outside together talking and laughing about everything they went through last year. They said whenever they get bored they start talking about last season, and I now understand why. The stories these boys were telling about their practices, games and coaches would have entertained anyone. In between all of their storytelling, they were playing a football game on the PlayStation while others were playing cards.  They all came over around 6:30 and the last of them left that night at 11, I would say that’s a success. We have such a great group of kids here and I’m so glad we came. These boys definitely needed Michael, and I know Michael needs them in order for this year to be a success. 

The Brinkley Tigers Sr. High Football Team

Senior cookout at our house.

The Big move

     A lot of people have asked me about the move to Brinkley. It has been a big change for the both of us, but I honestly think we could be happy just about anywhere. Any move is a pain, but this move in particular. I hired movers to help me load everything since Michael wasn’t here, and they were horrible. After being 4 hours late, and taking over 4 hours to load my little house, dad got angry and fired them on the spot. Once they left, which was a whole story of its own, we headed to Arkansas at 7:30pm. That obviously wasn’t the plan, but like I said…it’s a whole story of its own. We pulled into Little Rock about 1am to get a good nights sleep before embarking on our next journey.

     I’ll start the rest of this story by telling you that there aren’t a lot of living options in Brinkley. We didn’t want to buy a house since we still own our house in Prosper, and it’s basically impossible to sell a house here. Michael looked for 3 months before finding us the house we did. It’s an abandoned house that one of the school board members had. Let’s just say that we are paying $100 to live in a 3 bedroom 2 ½ bath house which should tell enough of the story for us. The agreement was that since we’re hardly paying to live here, we make some of the small changes ourselves. Well…these changes weren’t so small after all. Pulling up to the house wasn’t bad, it’s in a nice neighborhood and looks decent on the outside, so I was a little excited based on what Michael had been telling me. I didn’t see the house for the first month we had it and thank God. My wonderful sister and mother in-law did a lot of labor for us. Apparently the whole house was wood paneling and poorly taken care of, so Mallory ended up spackling all the seams, sanding and painting all the walls for us, while Mrs. Janine and Neenie cleaned and help paint. Thank God they did this because it was still in bad shape when we walked in, so I couldn’t even imagine what it looked like before. There were holes in the ceiling from the roof leaking, birds in the house, nothing on the floor besides concrete slab, water stains everywhere, $1000 worth of new plumbing, etc. It goes on and on and on. Thank you so much to everyone who helped us move and clean, especially my parents who helped drench this place in bleach and my in-laws for helping with all the labor. Since moving in we have cleaned and painted just about every surface of the house, laid new floor in the bathrooms and gotten new carpet. It feels and smells much better than it did at first. I don’t have before pictures, but I will post these pictures of what it looks like now. Lets just say everything is 100% improved from what it was.

     It blew my mind that we were renting this house from someone and they didn’t have it cleaned for us, but apparently that’s how it’s done here. The new coach Michael hired had to go through the same situation. They rented a place close to the school and on their move in day, they show up to the same nastiness we did. Michael said his poor wife was up at the field house crying and frustrated, so they actually lived with us for about a week while they got it all cleaned out. It’s all a work in progress, but we’re making the best of it.

Master bedroom. We have our dresser along the back wall where you can't see in these pictures.

My beautiful closet. Michael hung an extra clothes bar, painted, laid flooring, and built the shelving for my shoes, hats and luggage. It's a big closet, about the same size on the other side.

Guest bath - cabinets and counter painted, new hardware, new mirror, new light fixture, and new flooring

Guest room

Living room -  carpeted, paneling fixed and painted

Living room - (bookcase to left is being worked on, will look like it does on the other side)

Dining room - repainted and carpeted

Eating area and a little of the kitchen - repainted

Never ending drama

          So I know its been awhile since I’ve added anything, but that’s not for lack of anything exciting happening. I guess the news that surprised us most was that Dr. Best, the superintendent we really liked, ended up resigning in May and checking himself into a mental facility. I’m not making this up, nor is it hearsay. He was stressed and having family issues and apparently having a mental breakdown. Michael jokes that the first guy who gave Michael a head coaching position is now in a mental hospital. Hahaha! So, there isn’t a Superintendent and the school also let go of their Principal, so basically no leadership at the school for a couple of months. Poor Michael ended up taking over many things that he shouldn’t have had on his plate. Not only did the administration get let go, but 3 of Michael’s coaches left as well. For about a month, Michael was the only coach for the Jr. High and Sr. High teams. Right before we left for our vacation the school hired a new superintendent and Michael was able to hire a new coach.        
          Michael really wanted to hire a really good black coach because of a town that’s primarily black, at the time they had no black representation on the coaching staff or the administration. He got what he wanted and hired a coach named Ed Duncan who graduated from Arkansas Tech a few years before us and was an All American on the football team. He’s a great guy and we are so thankful to have him. So now there are two coaches on staff. The other guy that gets the stipend for football hasn’t been helping at all because he is a sickly thing. His name is Maine and he’s worked a total of 3 days this summer because he’s had an eye infection that spread to his whole body, a series of stress tests and finally a heart attack. At this point Michael said he would rather the guy just get out of coaching because it’s more of headache than anything. I feel so bad for Michael because he wakes up at 5:30 to go to the field and doesn’t get home sometimes until 9:00. Not only that, but he’s in the heat constantly, either outside with the boys, mowing or painting the fields, or in the field house, which isn’t air-conditioned. Needless to say I do a lot of laundry. The boy comes home from lunch drenched, changes, comes home for dinner, changes, and then comes home for good, and changes again. He’s working so hard, but he does really enjoy the fact that it’s his program. I am very proud of him

          We did get to squeeze in a vacation to Kaui’i, Hawaii and had a blast. It’s where we went on our honeymoon. Living apart for 2 ½ months made Michael really sentimental, so he wanted to go back this summer. Everything was great, however, when we returned to our house we discovered that we were broken into. We figure it was kids because they didn’t take some things that most adults would have. They basically ransacked our house, which really sucked since we had just gotten everything put up from moving, and they took our Wii, our DVDs, our camera, our Blue ray player and some of my jewelry. So they bypassed our new Mac computer our 2 nice TV’s etc, and thankfully didn’t break anything. It could have been so much worse. The man we’re renting the house from decided to get our roof replaced while we were gone, so we suspect that one of the roofers knew we were on vacation and somehow spread the word. 

          Anyway, since my Internet is up and running I’m going to start updating this more often. Love and miss yall.

1st few weeks…

            Michael moved up to Brinkley on Saturday, March 26 with his truck, clothes, and a mattress, while I stayed here to finish out my school year. Needless to say, I can’t wait until June 3 so that I can move up there full time. I hate being apart from him, but we decided that we wouldn’t go longer than 2 weeks without seeing each other so it makes it a little more manageable. Gracie and my night light are keeping me sane at night all by myself. And, he has it much worse off that I do. He was originally planning on staying at his parent’s house, but after commuting an hour each way to the school, he decided to move into an empty trailer of his uncles in Clarendon. Only about a 10 minute commute. Clarendon is Brinkley’s big rival, so Michael is keeping under wraps about living there for the moment. Poor guy only has a mattress lying on the floor with no TV or Internet, so he pretty much works every minute of the day. He says he hasn’t stopped moving and the whole town is just amazed at this new young coach coming it with all this energy.

            First on Michael’s agenda was to clean out the field house. If you don’t know, Michael is a bit of an organizational freak. So walking into this old field house, with absolutely no organization, just frustrated him. Thankfully his parents live fairly close so they came up to help him clean (thanks guys) and take inventory of what he already had and what he still needed. I didn’t get to see the field house before, but the after sure looks good. He’s done a great job organizing, cleaning, and ordering all kinds of stuff for this new and improved program.

            The first day Michael was there, he met with the team, talked about his expectations, etc and then said “get changed and meet me in the weight room”. He said all the kids just stared at him until one finally said, “Coach, we don’t have anything to change in to.” Michael found out that they have been working out in their school uniforms instead of workout clothes. First thing Michael bought… workout clothes. Just with that little purchase, he was their hero.

            If you can imagine, Michael’s environment has changed dramatically. He’s coming from Hebron High School with 3 freshman teams, 2 JV teams and 60+ kids on the Varsity squad, to having 25 high school kids trying out for 1 team. Not to mention that HHS had about 15 coaches on the sideline every game to Michael’s coaching staff consisting of 3 other guys. Regardless, Michael is loving being the boss. Especially that he’s the youngest guy on staff and gets to tell other people what to do. Not to mention that there is a rumor that the new football coach is HOT and all the girls want to know how old Coach Sain is to see if they have a chance.