Post #2 Coach Dad

This weeks post is strictly about my dad, Joel. He's an emotional, 45 year old man living in Hemlock with his wife, two out of three of his sons and myself, his only daughter. My dad grew up in Hemlock with his parents, older brother and younger sister. Joel attended St. Peter Lutheran School and Church for grade school then went on to Valley Lutheran for high school. For college he went to Delta and got his bachelors in design engineering and is currently working at Saginaw Control and Engineering. He worked at McDonald's during his teen years, which is where he met my mother.

In high school my dad was, like me, an athlete. He played basketball, soccer, track and in his older years played slow-pitch softball. When he got too old to play sports himself, after tearing both Achilles playing basketball, he picked up coaching. His coaching career started when my oldest brother was in 5th grade and his soccer team needed a coach and then continued to coach myself and other older brother's basketball teams along with my softball teams when we were old enough to start playing. For about years he coached at the grade school level until my second oldest brother started playing soccer in high school. My dad was offered to take the boys varsity soccer position and he could not refuse. That next spring the girls varsity coach stepped down and my dad was then offered that position knowing in a few years I would become part of the program. He is currently on his 6th season as the boys varsity coach and this spring will be his 5th season with the girls. Along with his high school team, Joel is back to coaching soccer at St. Peter for my little brothers soccer team and will more than likely be coaching there for another 2 years until my brother gets into high school. Not only has he coached my soccer teams in high school but he was the assistant coach for my varsity basketball team for 3 years. Since I no longer play basketball he decided to decline the opportunity of helping again this year.

Overall my dad has been a pretty successful coach earning the very first district championship in 2013 with the Hemlock Varsity Boys soccer team along with the very first conference championship this past spring with the Hemlock Varsity Girls soccer team. People come up to me all the time telling me what a fantastic coach he is. Sometimes I have to disagree with that statement due to the fact that we bumped heads A LOT during the time of having him as my coach. The problem we always had was that he would push me harder and discipline me more because he wanted to push me to be the best I could be. I did not agree with that at all at the time, I totally just thought he was being a big jerk, but now I know it was in my best interest and without that constant push I would not be playing college soccer or be the person and player I am today.

My dad has been one of my best friends, biggest supporters and biggest role models for my entire life. My family and I would not be the same without him and I am thankful for him every day. (Even though he can be really annoying half the time"

*Funny story about this picture. We were playing in one of our games this past spring against a very... aggressive team, (I won't name names) and one of our players got slapped in the face. Somehow neither of the refs saw the slap so I, as a captain, took the liberty to kindly ask the ref why there was no call on the girl who just slapped my teammate. The ref instantly ran at me throwing up a yellow card for absolutely no reason. This was both mine, and my father's reaction to the unnecessary yellow card and no call on the opposing player, shortly followed by a yellow card for my father who was asking for an explanation on my yellow card. Moral of the story, a family that gets yellow carded together, stays together.