Thanks Coach

A boy and his coach.

It’s a relationship that can only be understood by another boy who ever had a coach he looked up to.

I’ve been expecting – and dreading – this day for a long, long time now, but I knew it was coming.

Word came Monday morning that we had lost perhaps the most recognizable face in the world of Clinton County High School sports in modern times when I learned that Coach Lindle Castle had passed away.

I was fortunate to have relationships with Coach on three different levels. The first one came when I hadn’t even reached high school yet and he reached out to me a time or two to fill in when he had an opening and needed a player for a golf match. That happened in the seventh grade, and by the time I had reached the 8th grade, after he had said goodbye to a senior laden squad that played before us, our young varsity golf team consisted of three players in the 8th grade and a single freshman.

We lost a lot of matches that year. Not as many the next year, and by the time I was a sophomore, we were a respected team in the area. Coach was happy, and for the next two years, through my senior year, he became a very happy golf coach.

Easy going, lots of laughing, handing out golf balls and jackets and stopping at restaurants and country stores on road trips we took in that old straight shift station wagon that served as the “team bus.”

The second relationship came when I was a senior basketball player and we learned that Coach would be coming out of his retirement from coaching basketball to once again lead the Bulldogs on the hardwood. He had been off the bench for some five years and none of us had ever played basketball for him, but with my prior experience on the golf team, I had already assured the other boys that those tales of yelling, stomping and kicking were simply not true – “this guy is a pussycat” I remember reporting.

It wasn’t 10 minutes into that first practice that I recall looking over toward this guy standing in the gym and wondering to myself “who is this mad man, anyway.”

The third time, and I guess my most treasured of all, is the relationship I was fortunate enough to build with Coach after I graduated, left for college, then came back in time to be here for his last season on the bench.

It was that year that he “tricked” me into sitting down behind the microphone before the start of the 1978-79 season, in order to get a better view of the action so I could write up game accounts. That was 39 seasons ago, and a few years back I thanked him publicly during a Meet the Bulldogs, for giving me the best seat in the house.

Since it’s inception, Coach and I served together on the C.C.H.S. basketball Wall of Fame Selection Committee, and that annual gathering always ended in some swapping of tales, lots of laughs and a couple of good natured backslaps.

The last time I talked to Coach was just a few weeks ago when I was invited to make a few photos of a breakfast reunion that was being set-up between a few of the players from the 1962 Bulldog squad and Coach.

As he entered the room that morning and sat with us at the table, his mind was sharp, the game stories were crisp and there was certainly nothing wrong with his appetite.

At 86 years of age, I was amazed at just how well he was doing. Still, I thought then that there was more frailty there than I wanted to see.

I sincerely thank Sherman and Jackie for asking me to stop by and grab a few photos. A copy of one of those photos has been on my wall since that meeting.

A boy and his coach.

Some were called by first names, others by last names. Myself, like many others were nicknames. Either ones he gave out, or ones we already had.

“Hey Silks” Coach would always say to me with a grin, a nickname I was given in the 7th grade by my math teacher, lunchtime softball and basketball coach and now next door neighbor Gene Latham.

Coach never called me Alan, Al or even Gibson – it was always “Silks” and it was always, especially in later years, a welcomed greeting to hear come from him.

For most who sweated, bled, worked, hurt, played, lost and won and learned about life from a coach – it’s an easy relationship to understand. Not quite like a father and son, but for me, and many others, it was about as close as it could get to that.

Coaches are charged with teaching the game to their players, and while they go about that, they hope to be able to collect more wins than losses. Players, hopefully for the most part, realize later in life, that along with all of that, their Coach was also teaching life long lessons about just that – life.

But there is more than that. If you played for Coach, on any level, and you gave it everything you had, regardless of winning or losing, you earned something else.

You earned his respect, and with that, you were forever one of his “boys”.

I knew the day I graduated that if I ever needed anything, Coach had my back. He knew in return that his boys had the same feeling about him. That’s why I have to know that with the love and respect his boys had for him, he had to swell in pride in later years knowing that while he didn’t win all of the games, he won in the most important ways.

Coach married the love of his life, Mary Helen, and they raised two daughters – both good friends – Terrie and Jan.

And while I haven’t even met nearly all of the players who played the games under his instruction, I know that I will have a room full of brothers come Sunday afternoon when “his boys” gather in the Lindle Castle Gymnasium to say goodbye.

A boy and his coach – no matter that he was 86 and I’m now pushing 60, we were still just that… a boy and his coach.

Thanks Coach – I love you!

I’ll see you in the gym!