FOOTBALL COACH MENTOR
2026-01-11
My husband, Sam, always talked about his mentor, Coach Gil. Sam was a defensive line backer on the high school football team, Weiser Idaho Woverines, for the 1948 & 1949 football seasons.
Part of the conference Weiser played against was the Ontario Oregon High School Tiger’s football team across the Snake River there on border between Idaho and Oregon, not far from Boise, Idaho. One of the players on the Vale Oregon team in that conference, Dave Wilcox from that era, went on to be a pro on the 49ers.
Sam told me that Coach Gil took him to the Ontario Rotary Club lunch one time to receive the honor of the Ontario football team naming Sam as their most formidable opponent.
Sam told me often about Coach Gil, and would explain, “Gil was the one who changed my life. He was strict about practicing my physical skills, but more importantly he taught me to develop my thinking. I learned to get in ‘the zone’. Time slowed down to when I could see what was about to happen.”
This past 2025 year and 2026 have become a focal point for me with Seattle Sports. All of our married years Sam and I had our kitchen radio on with a Seattle sports station. Sam always left the radio on and would say, “That way, if we have an intruder, they will think someone is home.”
More importantly, because of Sam’s mentorship with me, for the 56 years we were married, I am able to weekly, get in “the zone”, if I sit and start to finger in words on my computer keyboard. I love U-Tube Podcasts with conversations about the SeaHawks right now. I daily scribble notes that I like that might be subjects for my weekly blog and OMOIDE STORIES on a blank unlined 8”x11” empty notebook that sits on my desk next to my computer screen, with a yellow pencil. I never use the eraser. I scribble the words with different angles so I can more easily find them when I flip back through the pages. I think about one of the notes I’ve highlighted, with a heart drawing, on this scratchpad. I “get the bloody word down on the bloody paper” as our coach Janine suggests. Then all week, I edit, edit, edit. Somehow, I don’t consider myself a writer, but I don’t mind going over what I have written, over and over, and edit!
Then, I love taking it to the OMOIDE WRITING SESSIONS, that has met monthly, for 30 years and edit some more.
GO SEAHAWKS!!!