The Coach They Fired By Email
Dr. Albrecht, the superintendent, opened the personnel portion of the agenda by stating, carefully, that the board had the authority to review and ratify or reject any change to a supplemental coaching contract, and that tonight’s public comment period would address agenda item 7, which was my name, printed plain on the sheet they’d handed out at the door.
Marge went first. She did not yell. She read the number of signatures, 214, and the number of years, 34, and the amount the district claimed it would save by letting me go, $9,200, and she said that was less than the cost of resurfacing the gym floor the board had approved the year before, and she sat back down without raising her voice once.
Ike went up in street clothes, not his uniform, and said plainly that he was there as a citizen and a former player and nothing else, and he told the story of the groceries, the same one he’d told me in the field house, in front of that crowded room, his voice not shaking until the very last sentence.
Odell Sattler’s mother spoke. A woman I did not know, who said her boy had been failing 2 classes until I put him on the weight room schedule before first period, stood up and said my name like it belonged to somebody worth defending.
Marlys Ostrander, who has waited tables at the diner on Main Street for 22 years and fed half my rosters a free cinnamon roll before every home game since I started this, stood up without any notes in her hand at all. “I don’t know a thing about football,” she said. “I know that man has sat at my counter every single Saturday morning of the season for 34 years and asked after every boy by name, win or lose, and I know the fella sitting up front there has been in this town 14 months and I have never once seen him order more than coffee.” She sat back down to the kind of laugh that is really just relief wearing a different coat.
Early Fenstad, the farmer who had played guard for me 20 years back, spoke last among the former players. He is not a man of many words, and he kept his to about 20. “Coach Datz taught me how to take a hit and get back up,” he said. “Seems only right the town returns the favor tonight.” He sat down, and for a second nobody in that room made a sound.