Steep learning curve for rookie head coach

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/09/2010 (5527 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Paul LaPolice is up to his bad back in distractions this days.

His football team has gone sideways. His judgment calls last week in a 17-13 loss to the Toronto Argonauts were gobbled up like tenderloin by ravenous second-guessers.

He’s practically sleeping at his office on Maroons Road.

And tonight, his 3-8 Blue Bombers will host the defending Grey Cup champion Montreal Alouettes, with their formidable 8-3 record, in front of the restless faithful in a game the home team will be widely expected to lose.

Suffice to say, the pressures that weigh on a professional head coach are consuming the Bombers’ first-year field boss.

Yet win or lose tonight, the fan base for the embattled LaPolice is about to expand by at least one.

LaPolice’s wife, Tina, is due with the couple’s second child, joining three-year-old daughter Payton. According to the head coach, his family’s roster is about to expand “any day now.”

“We’re working our darnedest to get two points this week,” LaPolice said after his ritual pre-game press conference Thursday afternoon. “But there’s a major step going on in our life right now. I love the business, but you have to say, ‘Wait a minute, I’m having a child.’ Sometimes it’s a knock on your balance, between family and work.

Last night was the first time I saw Payton in five days — my daughter, who I live with,” he explained. “It’s a short week so you’re in at 5 (a.m.) and leave at 11 (p.m.), plus the travel days…”

Clearly, life in the LaPolice household is a little tense, exciting and about to get quite topsy-turvy. But the demands of his occupation never cease.

Here’s the thing, though: LaPolice isn’t a rookie father. He’s been there. He’s lived through the nights when the baby cries and experienced the joys and uncertainties as a first-time dad. The second time around won’t require the same learning curve, naturally. Said LaPolice of the anticipation: “It’s much easier.”

What’s our point? Well, LaPolice won’t dwell on it, he might not even admit it, but let’s face facts: Until arriving on the Bombers’ doorstep, he was never the head coach of a football team before. Never. Anywhere.

It’s rarely factored into the Bombers’ equation, but the old hound dog Dave Ritchie had an adage that every rookie starter equalled one loss over the course of a season. So what’s the math on a rookie head coach?

Seriously, if it takes, say, a new cornerback half a season to understand the nuances of his position, what’s the over-under on the guy who’s his boss?

“It’s the day-to-day things, like when people come in (to your office) and say, ‘Here’s the travel plan in three weeks’,” LaPolice said. “Those are things you never had to worry about as an assistant coach.”

Neither do assistant coaches make critical play calls on a third-and-two with a game, and perhaps a season, on the line — and then have to answer for it all the next week if it goes bad.

No one complains, certainly not LaPolice. But the dichotomy of a head coach is that you are responsible for so many things yet, in the words of LaPolice, “There’s so many things you can’t control.”

Whether he realizes it or not, LaPolice will look back on his 2010 season a few years from now and shake his head and say, “I can’t believe I did that” to no one decision in particular.

He won’t be alone. Not long after hiring Scott Arniel as the head coach of the Manitoba Moose, his no-nonsense GM Craig Heisinger was heard to utter: “He (Arniel) thought he knew all the answers. He didn’t even know all the questions.”

These days, Arniel would probably agree as he embarks on his first season as head coach of the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets. Oh, the stories he could probably tell about his rookie year behind the Moose bench.

Of course, a new learning curve awaits for Arniel. The classes don’t stop. It’s the same for LaPolice.

All the while, however, there’s absolutely zero room for empathy or excuses. And only the strongest survive. “The biggest thing is when the chips are down you still have to believe in what you believe in,” LaPolice said. “Believe in who you are and what you’re going to do. Because nobody else will.”

Well, that’s not entirely true. There’s at least a couple of believers still in the rookie’s corner and it will soon be three.

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“It’s almost like I feel bad sometimes when I’m so involved in this (football) and we’ve got one of the best things in life coming up, a child,” he said. “So I’ve got to make sure I enjoy that moment.”

Live and learn, right?

One of these days, years from now, the newest addition to the LaPolice clan will hear the circumstances of his or her birth way back in the fall of 2010.

We’re not sure what the father will say, exactly. But chances are, he will be much wiser when he does speak.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca

Randy Turner
Reporter

Randy Turner spent much of his journalistic career on the road. A lot of roads. Dirt roads, snow-packed roads, U.S. interstates and foreign highways. In other words, he got a lot of kilometres on the odometer, if you know what we mean.

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