It is finished

Thirty years is a long time to do something. I haven't been married for thirty years...yet. Some of the coaches and teachers I work with now haven't been on the planet for thirty years.....yet. With that being said, it has been a great run.

Yesterday started like most days. Got up at 4:45, had coffee, perused the intranet, got ready and rolled out for my hour commute to work. We fed 'em breakfast, had a devotional, piled them up and rolled out for our two hour first round playoff game.

We did our walk through at Carrolton and I got to meet the legendary Joey King. He is a GREAT dude. I even think I was able to monkey him into being on my podcast. (I got a verbal anyway :) ). He rolled out the red carpet for us and for our small town country kids it was pretty cool for them to get see the Taj Mahal that is Grisham Field. One of my best friends on the planet, David DT Thrower came by to see our kids and check us out. He's like a big brother to me. I texted my wife and told her we had made it, I got to see DT, all was good. We did our walk throughs, they ate, and we headed to the game.

The game didn't go great. We didn't play well, made a lot of mistakes early and it got away from us. We weren't very competitive. Meh, it happens. They are kids and they do kid things. I took in very sight, every sound, every inch of the ground for I knew something that only a few did.

Afterwards I hugged a lot of crying seniors for the 30th year. I told them how much I enjoyed watching them play. I made sure they knew how much I loved them and loved coaching them. I made sure to tell them that this was not the END but the BEGINNING for them. I walked out to a vacated sideline and stood in the coach's box.

One last time.

They say I need to get some things checked out. Doctors put me on the sideline about a month ago. Not many know that. I have been a press box, Friday night, meetings on Sunday guy for the past 3 games. I didn't want to go out this way but it has come to this.

We got home and unloaded the stuff. Everyone left and my HFC caught me in the parking lot. He thanked me and I couldn't stop to talk, didn't want it to end this way. Felt like I let him down, felt like I didn't do enough for him or the kids. Felt like I was the weak link. That must be when you know it's time. I didn't walk away out of disrespect, I walked away because it was hard. Thirty years.

I got in the truck and drove the hour home. I stayed up until 3am like always on a Friday night. I checked scores, watched some film, read a little and tried to calm down from another game night.

One last time.