Coach and dad: Special bonds for some Snohomish County families
Published 6:31 pm Tuesday, September 7, 2010
June 7 was a day of rejuvenation for Jeff Sowards, a teacher, two-sport coach and head of the Hi-Q knowledge team at Lakewood High School.
Still coming to terms with the looming graduation of his favorite student, athlete and member of the Hi-Q team — a graduating senior named Chelsea Sowards, who just happens to be his oldest daughter — the 46-year-old Sowards showed up for the first day of spring cross country practice and found a capable replacement.
Incoming freshman Rachel Sowards, Chelsea’s little sister.
Jeff Sowards got to spend more time with his oldest teenage daughter than 99 percent of fathers, having taught her in two U.S. history classes, coached her in track and cross country and worked with her as coach of the academic Hi-Q team. It’s a relationship of which he’ll have a hard time letting go when Chelsea heads off to George Fox University, so Sowards is excited to have another four years of father-daughter/coach-athlete bonding.
“Throughout coaching (Chelsea), I was able to share something with her,” Jeff Sowards said earlier this month. “Her last race at Cedarcrest, I did find myself feeling a little melancholy, like I wanted it to last forever.”
Coaching one’s own daughter and/or son is an experience that, despite its pitfalls, has proven rewarding to several coaches throughout Snohomish County.
This area has a rich history of father-child sports relationships. Legendary football coaches Mike Price and Terry Ennis played for their fathers. Current Arizona State coach Dennis Erickson essentially grew up in front of a film projector while his father planned for high school football games. Four-time state wrestling champion Burke Barnes shared the experience with his father, Lake Stevens coach Brent Barnes.
And that’s just to name a few. There have been several other recent coaches who have shrugged off the whispers of favoritism, put in extra hours of late-night tutelage and endured long car rides home after losses … only to look back on the experience as the best years of their lives.
Kamiak football coach Dan Mack called his experience coaching son Johnny in the early part of this century “one of my biggest joys of coaching.” Brent Barnes has coached several state champions at Lake Stevens, but none of those experiences carried the same emotion that coaching his son did.
For their children, the unique circumstances of spending so much time with Dad become more and more special as the years pass.
“It meant a lot to me then, but I don’t think I understood how special a relationship that was,” said Burke Barnes, now 26 and running a wrestling club in his hometown. “Most kids don’t get to spend that much time with their dads. … I would rank my relationship wit him higher than anything else I’ve done as an athlete.”
Lakewood’s Sowards is among a few coaches who get to experience the joy of balancing the coach/father tightrope more than once. Snohomish High baseball coach Kim Hammons is among the others.
With the birth of each of his sons, Hammons placed a baseball in the crib, starting Jake’s (Class of 2005) and Nick’s (Class of 2007) family association with the sport. Both grew up to be batboys on their father’s teams in the late 1990s and they played for their dad when they got to Snohomish High.
“I feel like it definitely made us closer,” Nick Hammons said. “I wasn’t playing some sport while he was at home, coming to my games once or twice a week. We did it together. That made it definitely special.”
What made the experience even more special for Nick Hammons was playing for his dad as a senior in the 2007 4A state high school championship at Safeco Field. That same game was one of the most difficult of Kim Hammons’ career — if only because he had to pull Nick out of the game when he struggled on the mound.
“That was a long walk,” Kim Hammons said.
Kim Hammons said he tried to treat his two sons just like all the other players on the team, but that was challenging because Jake and Nick were sleeping under the same roof.
“The one thing I learned a long time ago was to keep my mouth shut when I got home,” said Kim Hammons, who retired from his teaching job five years ago but still coaches baseball at Snohomish High. “There has to be a time when you stop coaching.”
Oak Harbor boys’ basketball coach Mike Washington is also in line to coach both of his sons. Mike Jr. recently finished his sophomore year, while younger brother Andrew will be a freshman in the fall.
Like Hammons, Washington Sr. also had learn when to put down his coaching whistle.
“Sometimes you tend to be a little harder on (your child) than you need to be,” said Washington Sr., who was stationed in Oak Harbor while serving in the Navy. “One thing I had to learn is: once you leave the gym, there’s no Coach anymore; it’s Dad now.”
The 38-year-old Washington took a big step in his father-son relationship earlier this spring, when Mike Jr. beat him in a game of one-on-one for the first time. Dad hasn’t gone searching for a rematch quite yet, but he’ll have plenty of chances over the next two years.
“I’m so lucky to be around him so much,” the elder Washington said. “When he’s struggling with his shot, we’ll go in the gym. And then when I see him improve, I think he trusts me more.
“We have a really good relationship, and I think it’s because of the bond of basketball.”
Stanwood girls’ basketball coach Dennis Kloke has a similar bond with his daughter, Rachele, although he spent her first varsity year watching from the stands.
A former boys’ basketball coach at Marysville-Pilchuck and Anacortes, Dennis Kloke was out of the business when the Stanwood athletic director extended an offer for him to coach the Spartans girls. He took the job, coaching Rachele during her final three years of high school, and also served as her golf coach after a foot injury derailed her track career.
“It’s a precious time to be able to work with your daughter in a sport,” Dennis Kloke said.
Rachele Kloke, who recently finished her junior year as a University of Idaho basketball player, admitted that there were some initial reservations about having her dad as a coach, mostly because of public perception. But she loved the experience and is better for it.
“Being a coach’s kid probably got me where I am today,” said Kloke, who led Idaho in scoring last season and was named second-team all-Western Athletic Conference. “He taught me the fundamentals and taught me about the game. And I understand where coaches are coming from all the time, so it helps build a relationship with them.”
One of the more experienced coaching fathers in the area may well be Darrington volleyball coach Greg Powell, who has been coaching daughter Mandy off and on since she was 10 years old. Mandy graduated from Darrington High in 2009, and her father immediately felt a void.
He said the long car rides from tournament to tournament gave him a unique opportunity to spend countless hours with his teenage daughter. Then again, the rides took some early adjustment.
“When she was 10 years old, we were riding home after a tournament, and she got really mad at me,” Greg Powell recalled. “I had put in the wrong players and really messed up badly (in Mandy’s mind). I stopped the car and said: ‘We’ve got to understand right here the difference between the coaches and the players.’”
After that, Powell’s memories of time spent with Mandy were all positive.
“She was a ballgirl as a young child, and she always wanted to be playing college volleyball,” Greg Powell said. “And now here she is (at Idaho). It’s an awesomely rewarding experience to help her reach that dream.”
For the sons and daughters who play for their fathers, the experience can be just as rewarding.
And when it’s over, the athletes realize how good they had it.
“It’s going to be different,” recent Lakewood graduate Chelsea Sowards said of a college running career that will come under a coach who isn’t related to her.
“We have that bond because of our experience together. It’ll be hard to have a coach who’s not my father.”
And as for those athletes like Lakewood’s Rachel Sowards and Oak Harbor’s Drew Washington, whose fathers are just beginning to coach them, Idaho basketball player Rachele Kloke offers this advice:
“You’re probably going to run some extra lines, but don’t worry. It’s going to pay off in the end.”
