Midway through practice tonight, one of the parents crosses the line. Literally. He walks onto the field and asks me a question. The sheer effrontery of it. This is such a breach of etiquette I’m unsure how to react at first.
‘Don’t you think you are running them a little hard coach?’ asks the college professor father, carrying some academicky-looking book in his right hand just to remind us all of his illustrious position.
‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ I reply before blowing my whistle to announce yet another round of 40-yard sprints.
‘It’s still 85 degrees and you’ve had them running for over half an hour,’ he says, sounding like he believes this to be a reasonable argument.
‘What is it you teach at the university again?’
‘History,’ he answers, proudly holding up his designer-accessory book as some sort of proof of this. ‘Mostly European history although I do dabble in the Revolutionary War period too.’
‘Okay, well, unless you teach Physical Education, I would ask you to leave the field right now. I’ll leave the teaching to you and you leave the coaching to experts like me.’
You’d think this would be enough for him but no, these teaching types are too used to having it all their own way.
‘I’m just saying this is a rather punishing work-out in this heat,' he continues.
‘Just get off the field bud,’ I shout, making a menacing step into his personal space that startles him so much he begins to back away. ‘And you know what else you can do, teach? Take your kid who, for the record, needs to run more than most because he's carrying a few pounds and certainly doesn’t have any basic skills in this sport, and go join another club!’
End of argument. I go back to shouting at my players, having shown once again that, whatever else, I won’t participate in the wussification of another generation of American children.
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