Football coach

Jim took these pictures too.

Before I was a softball coach and a basketball coach I coached football.

Before the undefeated Rangers there was the undefeated Augies.  We played our games at Saint Paul Academy.   Here we are in pre-game warmups before a mid-season game.

Well, mid to late.  I can identify the game number because we awarded stars for each victory.  That team of 4th and 5th graders played seven games to finish 7-0.

Five stars on the helmets, mid to late season.  That's I think 1973, and I absolutely know the names of both of the kids with me in the foreground and I am pretty sure about the kid in the helmet.  I would publish their names but I know that there is an internet search program which will report if your name is used anywhere on the internet and provide you with notice and a link to where it was published.

So those guys are in their 50s and may have privacy concerns.  I don't really have their permission to use their images so I won't use their names.  But I definitely can identify the two best players on my first undefeated team.

This is the next year.   We were good, really good again but not quite good enough to be undefeated.  Our two best players from the year before were 6th graders and the Catholic school that they attended sponsored a school team which 6th graders could play for.  So they didn't play for us.  We were still good, really good.

That's the Mayor in plaid, Yanker in the jacket that matches mine.

This team won some sort of trophy although I think it might have been third or something.  That's Coach Nagle with me behind the two rows of players.

I have a really, really good story about Coach Nagle and that team.  Try to get me to tell it sometime.  Note that we were still using the stars and that this team had won it looks like 6 by the time this picture was taken.  I can identify most of them too.

Coach Nagle, Coach Damjonovich (aka Yanker) and Coach Miller behind a team that pretty clearly thinks they are number 1.

Plenty of yellow stars, that team won a bunch of games too.

A highlight of that season was a father racing down the sideline paralleling the route of his son encouraging him with repeated "Go Son, go Son."  I remember it amused me at the time because pretty clearly everybody on the team was somebody's son.

So the point is, I guess, it wasn't a complete accident that when it came time for me to coach softball and basketball, I knew what to do.  I had worked out the kinks coaching other people's children and I was ready when it came time to coach my own.