SPORTS

SHIELDS: Judge prep coaches on more than wins, losses

Each Friday night for the past three weeks, we’ve kept up with scores from all over the area as finals became knownand watched as teams’ seasons came to an end.

For some, those ends came too early and too abrupt. Those programs had hopes and expectations of playing in the state semifinals for a shot on the stage on the plateau in Cookeville.

Then there were other programs whose seasons ended after brilliant runs further than anybody expected outside those teams’ locker rooms expected. While the initial emotion of the moment was filled with the tears of the mourning because a run had come to an end, there was still a little sweetness with the bitter taste of the season-ending defeat when the coaches and players looked back on what they’d accomplished – whether it was making school history or simply overcoming odds in the face of adversity.

For some there were other mitigating factors affecting the end of the season that made things more emotional.

After his team’s first-round loss to North Side in their first-ever home playoff game, Chester County head coach Michael Hodum was understandably emotional after what the Eagles had done in the preceding weeks.

But his family was a little more emotional than expected. That’s because Hodum’s daughter, Lacy, came to Henderson with him and was a part of the cheerleading squad. According to Hodum’s wife, Jill, she’s been to nearly every game Hodum has coached in the past 17 years since she was born, which was about seven weeks before he started working as an assistant coach at Haywood.

That loss meant the last time Lacy would be on the sidelines as a part of the school’s cheerleading squad with her father coaching, as she’s set to graduate from Chester County in May.

“If your family can become a part of your work with the football program, you’re really blessed. I have been,” Hodum said.

There were similar stories all year. South Gibson head coach Scott Stidham’s daughter, Landry, graduates in spring after cheering for the Hornets as well. One of the highlights for Stidham was on a Thursday night in October when he walked onto the field in clothes he’d normally wear in church to escort Landry in homecoming activities.

Of course there was the story in October when University School of Jackson senior Mike Taylor went through the loss of his mother to cancer. There were times when head coach Mickey Marley had not much more he felt he could say to his senior other than an offer of prayer and any help the Taylor family needed. During that time, the Bruin football program – and the entire school – came together as a family in support of their brother going through things a high school senior shouldn’t have to go through.

Taylor was also just one of a few players this season who were carried off the field with possible neck or spinal injuries or major concussion issues. Similar scenes played out at different places like South Side and McNairy Central as a fearful young man – sometimes barely conscious – was placed on a stretcher in front of a quiet stadium as parents, friends, teammates and coaches feared the worst and hoped for the best.

This Thursday, set aside as a national day of gratitude, the families of those young men will be grateful for a clean bill of health coming out of the season, but that wasn’t the case in the hours after some of those games when coaches and teammates would call or visit their local emergency rooms checking on their team members.

It’s sometimes easy to forget the men leading these teams – head coaches and the members of their coaching staffs – are human beings who shouldn’t always be judged by wins and losses alone. They get into coaching because of their love for the game and their desire to have an effect on young men’s lives.

Sometimes what they decide to do strategically or personnel-wise doesn’t make sense to those sitting in the stands, and sometimes the decisions the wannabe coaches sitting in the stands would make might appear to be correct ones.

But coaches deserve a little bit of leniency sometimes because those of us in the bleachers and press boxes are just there on Friday. We’re not there on Monday through Thursday watching what’s happening on the practice field and in the film room seeing which players are working the hardest and doing their best preparing for Friday night. We’re also not there in the winter watching who’s hitting the weights the hardest in the winter and putting their best foot forward in the spring.

So if you’re a fan who’s unhappy with your team’s overall performance this year, the coach probably shares your feelings on some level. But the coaches in West Tennessee high school football don’t have seven-figure salaries (or six figures for that matter), and they don’t have contracts with multiyear buyouts.

They’re good people that work hard for the kids, and 20 years from now, those young men will have grown into productive members of society with wives and children of their own on whose lives they’re having similar effects.

Then, we’ll truly know which coaches were doing their jobs when it mattered the most.

Brandon Shields is the sports editor of The Jackson Sun. Contact him at 425-9751 or at bjshields@jacksonsun.com. Follow him on Twitter @JSEditorBrandon.