This week in HS Sports: Is coaching camaraderie a lost art?

This is an opinion piece.

Orange Beach head coach Jamey DuBose is entering his 30th year on the sideline.

He’s coached throughout the state – Prattville, Florence, Central-Phenix City to name a few of his other stops.

The veteran coach with multiple state titles was asked at Baldwin County Media Day last month what he thinks about the state of high school athletics.

“I feel pretty good,” he said. “I don’t think we are in a bad place. Being an older coach, I don’t think maybe we have the camaraderie among coaches that we’ve had in the past. I think we are all looking to get each other in trouble too much.

“We need to coach our teams and worry about our players. It doesn’t need to be centered around parents or coaches themselves. It needs to be about the players. Other than that, I still like what we are doing. I still think Alabama is a front runner among states in what we are doing and how we are doing it.”

The camaraderie issue became a talking point later in the week with several veteran coaches in Mobile as well. It is something that clearly has changed in recent years.

“It used to be that coaches at conventions would hang out and talk or sit there in the bar and have a drink and talk ball and talk programs,” said UMS-Wright’s Terry Curtis, the state’s leader in all-time career wins. “These guys now, they don’t want to have a whole lot to do with you.

“We are all in it together whether it is dealing with parents, whether it is dealing with kids. The best resource you have is another coach who may have been through the same thing. I used to pick up the phone every day and call one of those guys and ask them for advice about a play or whatever. When you get those calls now, it is about different stuff altogether.”

Some of the change is undoubtedly due to technology. Coaches used to meet on Saturday mornings during the season to exchange films in preparation for the next week’s game. That is all handled online now.

“Hudl is a great, great tool,” Andalusia coach Trent Taylor said. “It has made life so easy. At the same time, I remember meeting Phil Lazenby for years on Saturday mornings. I would meet Jamie Riggs at Conecuh National Forrest. We were able to shoot the bull and learn about each other. It wasn’t just, ‘Here’s my film,’ and we are gone. At least we can get together now at coaches clinics and things like that, but it’s not the same. I think a lot of that is just society as a whole. Everything is fast paced. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. With the good, there comes some bad.”

Theodore coach Steve Mask said one thing he doesn’t see as much of in 2023 as he did earlier in his career is compassion among opposing coaches.

“When you beat the ‘H’ out of someone — and it happens — people don’t understand that coach has to go home with his players, too,” he said. “He has to coach them on Saturday morning and Monday afternoon, so why am I going to beat someone’s brains in and feel good about it.

“We’ve beaten people bad in my career though that wasn’t our goal. But when it happened, I picked up the phone on Saturday morning and said, ‘Look, man, what can I do to help you? We didn’t try to do that.’ Nobody calls anymore.”

I’m not sure there is a camaraderie in coaching problem as much as there is just a camaraderie in our world problem.

We text when we could call and actually talk to someone. We email when we could visit. We keep up with friends and family through Facebook rather than social gatherings.

I’m as guilty of it as the next person. Maybe more so sometimes. We need each other. We are made to fellowship, to strengthen one another.

COVID-19 took that away for a time in 2020. Let’s not let it – or anything else – take it away for good.

Thought for the Week

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” – Proverbs 27:17.

Ben Thomas is the high school sportswriter at AL.com. He has been named one of the 50 legends of the Alabama Sports Writers Association. Follow him on twitter at @BenThomasPreps or email him at [email protected]. He can be heard weekly on “Inside High School Sports” on SportsTalk 99.5 FM in Mobile or on the free IHeart Radio App at 2 p.m. Wednesdays.