It always rained on Saturday mornings in the spring. I was prepared, though. I pulled my Champion sweatshirt, emblazoned with the letters of my alma mater – MORAVIAN – across my chest. It would keep me warm today.
Next, I yanked a brand new Nike windbreaker over the sweatshirt. This piece of apparel was my pride & joy. Yes, MORAVIAN COLLEGE was stenciled across the back but the moniker ‘Coach Wiragh’ on the front is what made it so special. I had been expecting the windbreaker. After helping out the entire previous season with whatever needed to be done at practice, meets, daily support for the –student-athletes, driving that god-awful van . . . they weren’t paying me for this so I at least deserved the uniform. What I never expected was that Coach Pollard would give me the coach’s uniform instead of the athlete’s uniform. Coach P’s blessing, that I was in some way on par with him and the other far more experienced coaches like Webs and Morgs, well, that made me feel important. Even if I was nothing more than the equivalent of a grad assistant on a D-3 track team.
It was going to be a long cold, wet day at Franklin Field -- Penn Relays. I was driving a 15-passenger Astrovan down the Schuylkill Expressway to Philadelphia. Sexy, huh? Such is the life of the junior assistant coach. Yes, the windbreaker was important. It would keep me dry today.
That was 22 years ago.
Today, as I drove to the train station on a cool, dreary, grey day in March, I thought of Coach Pollard. I thought of all of those miserable days when we froze in the stands & on the sidelines, watching, cheering, yelling, cajoling thru race after race, jump after jump. We exhilarated in the many races won but, really, no one was watching. Only us. The accolades don’t follow D-3 athletes and coaches. We were in it together, for the experience, the kind of experience you don’t understand until it’s passed you by. The nervousness, the anticipation, knowing that competition will bring joy & sorrow, pain & satisfaction. I didn’t think of these things as I drove to the train station. I didn’t need to. They were just a long-ago part of me.
Our guide, then, was a boisterous, barrel-chested former shot putter. He instilled confidence and brought levity. Competition was important. But you needed to work at it and enjoy it. Coach Pollard was loved by all. My workplace-mantra these days is: ‘it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission’. That’s classic Coach P and it has served me well, allowing me to take risks and to be creative. It keeps me out of the box and free.
I bought my train ticket to Philadelphia and reached to put it inside the pocket of a black sport coat I hadn’t worn in years. The left-inside pocket where I stashed my ticket was empty. I checked the right inside-pocket out of habit (I always find treasure in the pockets of jackets I haven’t worn in years. Even after a discovery I stick the treasure back into the same pocket so I can relive the discovery again at some distant time). Inside, I found two pieces of paper: one a program to a funeral and the other an “In Memory” card. The date was October 22, 2007, the day Coach Pollard had died.
Over three years had passed since that grey October day when athletes in track uniforms had lined the aisles around the packed pews of the stately First Presbyterian Church in Bethlehem. The family spoke thru tears & smiles of the love they had for their father, her husband, and all of the old Greyhounds heard, many for the first time, of the love life Coach P had with his wife, Donna, and daughters, Katie & Kasey. We saw the private life of a man we all thought we knew. The family stories only served to pull everyone closer because they revealed a part of a man that we didn’t know but was familiar to us. They illuminated the reality that as well as we thought we knew Coach P, we really only knew pieces of him.
Then Walt Wandall and Shawn Walsh, two old Greyhounds each rose to tell their stories, the stories we all knew, the stories we each would tell if we stood at the wooden pulpit that day. They’re not important anymore, those old stories. They’ll live on and when we’re together we’ll re-tell them again and again. It’s the inspiration for those stories that’s really important. None of the old Greyhounds knew the real Doug Pollard before he left. Only his family knew the man inside and out. We just knew the parts that he shared with us. But, those pieces inspired us all, inspired those old stories we all love to tell, and that remain a part of us.
We walked out of the church and into the cold October afternoon, ostensibly having said goodbye to our friend, our mentor. Yet many, myself included, wishing we had found the time to make that one last trip to Coach P’s office for a few jokes, to hear an assessment of the upcoming season, to get just one more piece of the man who had left us so suddenly.
The SEPTA train approached Suburban Station, not far from the University of Pennsylvania & Franklin Field. I slung my soft cover, black brief case over my shoulder, stepped off the train and slowly made my way out of the underground tomb where we had disembarked. As I stepped out of the train station the cold winds of March heartily whipped in my face and I stuffed the October 22, 2007 In Memory card back into its hiding place, this time in the left-inside pocket of my coat. It was another cold, grey day but my heart was full.
