Don't Call Me "Coach"

Every schoolteacher in America and a multitude of students, past and present, will want to read my novel. I have transformed the ups, downs and crazy goings-on of my thirty years in a high school classroom into DON'T CALL ME 'COACH', a tongue-in-cheek look at the uneasy marriage of academics and athletics. It is a love story, and it's clean, with Christian characters who pray to God. It is loaded with satire and deals with an issue relevant to today's society, which gives it a definite ring of truth.'COACH' is the story of Bob McGraw, teacher and coach of his school's tiddly-wink team, the latter position given to him as punishment for questioning the importance given to athletics over academics. After fourteen years of losing and being ridiculed, he has had it. To one-up his archrival, the football coach, he turns his back on God and makes a deal with Satan. He begins to win and enjoys it. His girl, Mary, the girls' physical education teacher, is devastated and walks out of Bob's life. He soon realizes that what he has done has cost him his soul, the love of his life and destroyed his philosophy of education. He then seeks a way to defeat Satan and regain his faith and true love. As he encounters problem after problem, Bob comes to the horrible realization that the fate of his immortal soul could rest on the 'winking' ability of a high school student and a tiny plastic disc. I am qualified to make my statement because, as an educator, I have seen the power that athletics can hold over academics and its effects on student and faculty alike. Both programs are essential to education but I feel that academics should possess the upper hand. By treating the subject with humor, I have zeroed in on an evolution that most teachers find frustrating.