Friday, August 27, 2010 is opening night for most high-school football programs across this country. It is a time of heightened promise, unbridled excitement, and excess testosterone for untold thousands of young men and their families. Most of the head coaches prowling the sidelines will be rugged, tough, macho men who have crafted teams in their brawny image. A lone female face will stand amongst this sea of masculinity as one of the few women in the United States to coach a boys’ football varsity scholastic team.
Coach Natalie Randolph is in charge of the Washington, D.C. public high-school Calvin Coolidge Colts football team. This cherubic-looking, petite former college track star and women’s professional football player was selected for the job in lieu of several ex-NFL players who might seem the more-qualified candidates. But Randolph was the only applicant to mention her concern for the student-athletes and emphasize that her primary attention would be on their needs, so school administrators hired the soft-spoken science teacher.
She is fulfilling her promise. “She’s grooming us to be great young men in society,” her quarterback said. She has mandatory, enforced team study halls 4 days each week, and her focus has been as much on discipline, team-building, and academic excellence as it has been on the x’s and o’s of football. “I want them to understand what the word ‘work’ means and how to function in life,” she said.
Regardless of the scoreboard on Friday and the won-loss record this season, Randolph is coaching winners, and raising men. She’s a woman of greatness and a shining example of what is really important about high-school football.
From August 2010, http://raising-a-man.tumblr.com
Coach Natalie Randolph is in charge of the Washington, D.C. public high-school Calvin Coolidge Colts football team. This cherubic-looking, petite former college track star and women’s professional football player was selected for the job in lieu of several ex-NFL players who might seem the more-qualified candidates. But Randolph was the only applicant to mention her concern for the student-athletes and emphasize that her primary attention would be on their needs, so school administrators hired the soft-spoken science teacher.
She is fulfilling her promise. “She’s grooming us to be great young men in society,” her quarterback said. She has mandatory, enforced team study halls 4 days each week, and her focus has been as much on discipline, team-building, and academic excellence as it has been on the x’s and o’s of football. “I want them to understand what the word ‘work’ means and how to function in life,” she said.
Regardless of the scoreboard on Friday and the won-loss record this season, Randolph is coaching winners, and raising men. She’s a woman of greatness and a shining example of what is really important about high-school football.
From August 2010, http://raising-a-man.tumblr.com
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