Hawk Talk: Denouement

So, you're saying you'll light my country music award on fire?

It’s been over a week since our season ended at Hopkinton. It’s clear to me now that, emotionally, I was not ready for that to happen. And that’s because it took everything I had not to explode in a mess of tears and slobbery viscera when the seniors hugged after the game.

I’ve written a lot about how being a part of this team has affected me as a coach. But I haven’t touched on how it has changed me as a person.

I coached college lacrosse for 12 years. It was miserable. It was miserable because I thought coaching college lacrosse was about coaching kids to get better. It’s not. It’s about recruiting. It’s numbers on a sheet.

It shattered me. I was mad at myself for a very long time for choosing the path of college coaching. Success was hard to come by. Happiness was wholly absent. I never smiled. I had two volumes - screaming and silence.

If you want to break it down - coaching college lacrosse is 90% recruiting, 5% administrative work, and 5% coaching.

High School lacrosse is not like that. It’s 100% coaching and development.

Somehow, I was equally unprepared for that. And the number one reason for that is that those kids immediately took me in. I didn’t have to win them over, I didn’t have to be a tough guy - I could just be myself.

It was the greatest gift to be called “Coach Dev.”

I used the lessons I learned from those 12 years of college coaching to try and build on a culture that Hopkinton already had. It was a tough transition at first, but eventually, I felt myself changing for the better as a coach and as a human.

We had fun at practice. We worked hard. We tried new things.

We won games. We lost a championship. We won a championship.

This group of seniors were freshmen in my first year. We were together for four years. I saw them grow up right in front of me. All I ever wanted to be was the coach that I never had. That I never thought I could be. The coach who cared about them as people and didn’t look at them as successes or failures in the recruiting process.

So when this season was over, and I was able to make it through the sea of sad faces to hug them, the first thing I said to each of them was, “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t say that because we lost; I said it because the journey we shared was over. We all wanted to keep going for as long as possible - but everything ends.

A lot of the players replied with, “I’m sorry, too” or “Thank you, coach” back to me as we hugged. But one of them said something that, in retrospect, was so unbelievably kind. He said, “It’s okay, coach.” And he said that because I was stumbling over my apology to him. Tears streaming down my face. He could see I was hurt - and he was hurt too - but he wanted me to hurt less than he did.

Only one team gets to celebrate together as champions at the end of the season. Last year it was us. This year it wasn’t.

On the bus ride back, the boys played their usual assortment of weird remix songs and 80s ballads. As we took the exit to get back to the school, they put on John Denver’s “Country Roads”. At first, no one was singing. Just vibing. But as we drew closer and closer to the school, more and more kids joined in. I looked at Coach Deacon and we smiled. And all of a sudden I was singing too.

Driving down the road I get a feeling

That I should have been home yesterday, yesterday

Country roads, take me home

To the place I belong

West Virginia, Mountain mama,

Take me home

Country roads

Thanks for giving me a home, boys.

Go Hawks.