The Coach They Fired By Email

It was Tyler, my quarterback, a junior, still in his school clothes. Behind him was Odell Sattler, a sophomore lineman who almost never says a word to anybody. They stood in the doorway like they weren’t sure the floor would hold them.

“Coach,” Tyler said. “Is it true?”

I did not lie to him. I have never lied to a kid in that building and I was not going to start the night I got fired by email.

“Looks like it,” I said. “I got a note tonight saying my coaching job’s done. Effective immediate.”

“From who?”

“From Mr. Pell.”

Tyler’s jaw did something I’d seen it do on fourth and short. “He didn’t call you?”

“No.”

“Did he even say thank you?”

I didn’t answer that one. Odell answered it for me, quiet, mostly to the floor. “That’s not right, Coach.”

I told them both to go on home, that it was a school night, that whatever was going to happen was going to happen regardless of whether 2 teenage boys stood in a field house watching an old man wrap a trophy in a towel. Tyler didn’t move right away. He looked at the wall of team photos, found his own, year before last’s team, found me standing in the back row with my arms crossed the way I always stand.

“You drove me home after two-a-days for 3 years,” he said. “Every single day. My mom was working doubles at the plant and you never once said a word about it, you just had the truck running.”

“That’s what you do,” I said. “That’s the job.”

“That’s not the job Pell thinks it is,” he said, and then he and Odell left, and I kept packing.

Odell lingered a second at the door before Tyler pulled him along by the sleeve. “Coach,” he said, “you put me on the weight room schedule before first period last spring when I was flunking 2 classes. Nobody told you to do that.” I told him I knew nobody told me to, that was sort of the point, and he nodded like that answer satisfied something he’d been carrying around since he walked in.

I want to tell you honestly that I thought that was the end of it. I thought I would box up 34 years of a man’s work into maybe 14 cardboard boxes, carry them out to my truck over 2 or 3 trips, and go home to Joanie and figure out what a Tuesday looks like for a man who no longer has practice film to watch.