Those hard-earned lessons include how to honestly face scandals

By MARTIN DAVIS
Editor-in-Chief of the Fredericksburg Advance

The vetting process for political candidates—especially national ones—is long and involved. And for good reason. The discovery late in the campaign of a sordid love affair, or dysfunctional family, or criminal activity can sink a campaign quickly.

In 2008, for example, John McCain was sailing toward the White House when his team somehow lit on Sarah Palin as his vice presidential pick. The vetting was poor, and it didn’t take long for the national media to turn her into a joke and cost McCain the election.

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris finds herself in a similar situation. Because of the unprecedented, and quick, way she moved from VP-candidate to top of the ticket, there was little time to vet candidates.

She settled on Tim Walz of Minnesota. At his coming-out party in Philadelphia, he hit all the right chords. One thing in particular seemed to grab the press’s attention—his time as a teacher and football coach.

It’s a path worth exploring.

The most important moments in coaching happen far beyond the stadium lights

Walz’s success on the field certainly suggests he was good at coaching. He joined the staff of Mankato West High School as a defensive coordinator on the heels of the team’s 0-27 losing streak, and three years later his players were lifting a state championship trophy.

But being good at Xs and Os alone doesn’t necessarily translate to on-field success. That only comes when coaches are as attentive and nimble with the Xs and Os as they are with the Jimmys and the Joes. In other words, it doesn’t matter how grand your strategy may be if you can’t help your players understand and buy into what you’re trying to do.

As a former special-teams football coach for Riverbend High School in Fredericksburg, Virginia, I know the demands that coaches put on players, and I know something of the challenges of getting young athletes to go along with your vision. The most important things that coaches do to build rapport and build a team happen largely outside the stadium lights on Friday nights. Instead, they happen at 6 a.m. practices when coaches convince players to be on the practice field when other teenagers are sleeping; they happen in private meetings where coaches speak truthfully to players who are struggling academically, athletically, and/or personally; and they happen at 2 a.m. when a player faces a crisis and the Coach is the first person they call.

I’ve witnessed all this first-hand. And I witnessed it in the more than 100 interviews I conducted with varsity high school coaches from across the nation. I was searching for qualities and values shared by coaches—men and women—in leading more than a dozen different sports, also male and female, for my book Thirty Days with America’s High School Coaches.

Included in this nationwide series of conversations with coaches were people like Marvin Nash, a football coach in Texas where high school stadiums far surpass in size and attendance the stadiums that Walz coached in Minnesota. Like Walz at Mankato High, Nash was not the top dog on the San Marcos High School football team when I interviewed him in 2021, but a coordinator. He ran the offense. Coordinators and position coaches, however, usually spend far more time with their players than does the head coach. As such, they arguably feel players’ successes and losses more acutely than the head coach.

Nash relished those relationships and worked hard to develop them with his players. One year, he lost a player tragically to suicide.

“I still think about the young man—ever since,” he said. “I have made it a point to get to know every kid by name and by need.”

In some shape or form, every coach interviewed for the book made the same point. Dealing with people, they know, is about far more than teaching them something new. They have to understand their struggles, too, and know how to connect with them.

At a time when voters feel as disconnected as ever from their leaders, Walz would seem to be one who can not just sell a message, but tap into how voters are feeling. For younger voters in particular, that’s a breath of fresh air.

As I think about these connections among coaches nationwide, I’m also remembering Heung Uy, a Vietnamese immigrant who at the time my book was written had built a powerhouse wrestling program at North Henderson High School in North Carolina, a school dominated by immigrant students.

“We take everybody,” he said when interviewed. In a sport that requires maximum physical fitness, that approach wouldn’t seem to work. Uy makes it work. “We take ragamuffins. Teachers and counselors send kids our way because they feel the structure will be good for them. We take the castaways and hold them to high expectations.”

Nearly all the coaches expressed similar sentiments.

And, back when he was coaching, Walz took a similar approach. Again, a breath of fresh air for younger voters who rightly feel unheard by aging Baby Boomers.

Our admiration of the best coaches is not because they’re perfect

Coaches, of course, aren’t perfect, and neither was Walz.

Before moving to Minnesota, he lived in Nebraska where he was arrested for drunk driving and going more than 90 in a 55 zone. The arresting officer at the time admired him for accepting responsibility and doing the right thing. According to the report: “Along with immediately swearing off drink, the 31-year-old teacher and football coach had immediately reported the incident to his principal at Alliance High School, where he was one of the most popular and highly regarded members of the faculty. Walz had offered his resignation.”

The principal convinced Walz to continue as a teacher, but he resigned from coaching. According to the defense attorney at the time, “[Walz took] the position that he’s a role model for the students there. He let them down. He let himself down.”

Unfortunately, when he ran for Congress in 2006, his campaign manager changed the story about the arrest, saying Walz wasn’t drunk at the time, and insisted that a hearing problem prevented him from understanding the arresting officer. Blame the campaign manager if you want—but the buck should have stopped with the candidate. Walz should have corrected her.

It’s a reminder that role models have feet of clay and can fall.

And, as public figures, past failures don’t disappear

So, it’s a mistake to celebrate coaches as demigods. Usually, they are like everyone else. They make mistakes, sometimes bad ones.

Many of us still remember the moment in 1978 when Woody Hayes lost control of his temper, struck a player and touched off a bench-clearing brawl—and the word “controversial” pops up anytime the explosive Bobby Knight’s name is mentioned. The lists of sporting scandals documented on Wikipedia now run for pages and pages.

It’s a fact of life in such high-pressure, high-stakes roles and the question is not whether such scandals will end—but how people touched by them will bounce back? Do coaches involved in scandals admit their errors?

As one who covered national politics in Washington for more than 15 years, Walz needs to know that those questions about his drunk driving decades ago won’t go away—ever. He’s a public figure and his failures are as much a part of his life on the national stage as his successes.

Walz has shown throughout his career that he can honestly step up and deal with his mistakes. In a 2018 interview with The Minneapolis Star Tribune, he gave an honest accounting of his arrest—and that account in the Star Tribune now is showing up in other profiles, including a new one in TIME magazine. That drunk driving failure is now a part of who Walz is—and will be forever.

That’s a powerful lesson of life as a public figure that coaches nationwide learn if they survive in the public spotlight for long.

What are the solutions? A return to values of Grace and Humility

As we move toward November, it’s a good time to think about coaches. What they mean to our communities, the influence they have therein, and the mistakes they sometimes make.

It’s also a good time, however, to reflect on ourselves. We hold coaches (and teachers and doctors and politicians) to impossibly high standards that most of us simply could not meet. We then blame both the individual and the system that created them when they err.

The most important lesson I learned as a coach was this: Grace and humility may be the two most-important habits humans can develop.

Successful coaches know this. Just learn more about the lives of the remarkable Marvin Nash and Heung Uy—both of whom you can meet in my book.

We as voters are right to hold Walz and all political candidates to a high standard and demand they display grace and humility.

But leaders of all stripes—coaches, politicians, teachers, and more—have a right to expect no less from those who they serve.

Donald Trump has rightly been called out for taking the concept of “alternative facts” to a level of absurdity. That he lies constantly does not give Walz a pass on his own missteps.

Walz’s elevation does give America an opportunity to get behind a new type of leader. And Walz has an opportunity to reset the standard of political discussion in America. The question is, will he?

The other question is, do we as a society really want that? Or will we continue to play the blame-game and continue to deflect responsibility for ourselves, and point the finger at others.

Coaches—and Walz—know that’s exactly the wrong approach. Coaches hold themselves and their players to the same standards:

Control what you can control.

Let go what you cannot.

And stand with your teammates.

It’s time leaders and followers embrace those lessons.

Walz has a chance to show the way.

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Martin Davis is the author of Thirty Days with America’s High School Coaches, an award-winning opinion columnist, and editor-in-chief of the Fredericksburg Advance, a local journalism initiative in Fredericksburg, Virginia.