Friday, August 23, 2013

Reflections #55 (Only 1021 to go): A Rare Opportunity (Pt. 1)

     It's not very often that the 40+ year history of a high school sport can be compiled without extensive research, but I don't do research.  Happily, in the case of St. Ignatius Soccer, I don't have to.  The reason, of course, is that Jim Luzzi is the only varsity soccer coach the team has ever had.  I can just ask him about his experiences…while he's still young enough to remember them.  For 42 years, he has been at the helm.  I'm not particularly fond of statistics either, but I like stories.    I like to hear them and I like to tell them, so I asked Jim some questions about being the sole Ignatius varsity soccer coach. One important "stat" is his win-loss-tie record of 465-404-92.  (This, of course, is before this season started.)
     In 1970, I was the athletic director, and a group of boys with an ethnicity that lent itself to soccer (Ukrainian) came to me and asked if we could have soccer.  Times were tough financially at the time, and I wasn't keen on the idea of adding one more responsibility into the mix, but I also didn't want to be the "bad guy" in this scenario, so I said that there was no coach…a sure fired cop-out.  Not to be denied, the boys found Jim Luzzi, and he agreed to do it.  Oh, well!  "A promise mad is a debt unpaid."  Since then, the boys and, eventually, girls have been the happy beneficiaries.
     In 1969, Jim's first year teaching math at Ignatius, he had helped me coach the sophomore basketball team and found that he enjoyed the added dimension of emotion and intensity that coaching brought to the educational experience.  He had never coached soccer before, but, to quote Jim, "I remember thinking, at the time, that if a more capable coach came aboard, I'd feel fine stepping aside.  I guess we know where that went."  The fact is that, in 1970, soccer was not a very big sport in the USA, and Jim was not very knowledgeable about its intricacies…but he was, and always has been intelligent, dedicated and hard-working.
     I wrote in blog #4 that he is highly organized.  (Some might say "obsessive", but he's my friend, so I won't say that. I'll just say "meticulous".)  He has saved all of the programs and award books for all of the seasons since the beginning.  Looking back through these documents actually gave him a chance to reminisce about teams and players he's coached through all of the seasons.  He told me that he could recall every player as each name appeared.  As a former coach myself, I can assure you that is a remarkable feat.
     I asked him what challenges he had at the beginning.  He said that knowing how to plan practices and knowing what system of play to use took some time to master.  He added, "Dealing with player personalities was another challenge.  Luckily, the first team was great about helping a rookie coach through the season.  There were great leaders on that team…"
     Again, I can empathize with him.  I coached 4 sports over my years, but I was the sophomore coach for 2 of them and freshmen coach for the third.  That meant I had the varsity coach to lean on to answer those questions.  The only sport that I was varsity coach was tennis, and those players came in knowing how to play, several highly trained and skilled.  All I had to do was make sure that we had plenty of tennis balls and I got them to the matches on time.
     On a related topic, I asked if there were things that he might/could/should have done differently.  He said, hind sight being 20-20, there were certain games in which he might have made better coaching decision, but he really doesn't think that there was anything that would have made a difference to the outcome of the entire season.
     At the end of this season, I'll post Part 2, his most memorable seasons and experiences.