Chapter Ten: Return to Havre Part II
Standing on the stage of Broadmoor World Arena in May of 2018 felt like a dream. Just over a year ago I was lying in a hospital bed with a hole in my hand and suffering from detox hallucinations. Now I was preparing to walk across the stage as a University of Colorado, Colorado Springs graduate—with my girlfriend of nine months sitting alongside my Mom in the crowd.
It had been a whirlwind since returning from Havre in the fall of 2017. Jessica and me finally beginning our relationship, me finishing my recovery journey at Peaks, finally applying for a FAFSA loan to finish out my bachelor’s degree in Sports Medicine at UCCS. It was Jessica’s idea to apply for the loan, citing my strong GPA before leaving the Air Force and athletic contributions, but it was heavily endorsed by my employer, Colorado Iron Gym, who wanted me to spearhead their new personal training programs.
Between my schooling and Jessica transitioning from being a RN at St. Francis to their pediatric unit—with her ultimate goal of working in a pediatric office—time flew by. We managed to travel to Havre twice since my original return trip, with Jessica tagging along for Thanksgiving.
We’d agreed that if she traveled to Havre for Thanksgiving to meet my mother, I would head to her parents for Christmas, my first time meeting Lieutenant Colonel Robert Carson and his wife Julia. I'd met both of her brothers, the twins William (Bill) and Robert Jr (Bobby), over the summer. Both were enlisted in the Air Force and whenever they had leave and were back in Colorado Springs, they'd stop by Colorado Iron for a workout—I'm sure at Jessica's insistence. They knew I had been a cadet at the Academy and had been on the football team, but aside from inquiring about playing D1 football, they never questioned why I was no longer commissioned.
Meeting Jessica’s father was a different proposition altogether. By this point, I’d dismissed the naivety that his “no military” rule was the sole reason Jessica and I didn’t start dating in our college days. I had plenty of growing up to do at that point and likely would have sabotaged the relationship after my disenrollment at the Academy. More so because, unlike the twins, he wouldn’t be dissuaded from inquiring about the fall of my military career so easily.
“You got off easy,” I joked as we walked up to her parents’ house for Christmas 2017, “My mom is a sweetheart.”
“As long as I’m happy, my Dad is happy, Flyboy, just remember that and you’ll be fine,” she reassured me.
Small talk before and during dinner went as expected—getting to know each other, asking how we met, the usual family dynamics. It was afterward, when Jessica and the twins went to help Julia clean up and I was left alone in the living room with her father, that the interrogation I was expecting began.
“I noticed you didn’t have any wine with dinner, Armando,” her father said. The statement seemed casual, but the implication was clear.
“No, sir. It’s been nearly a year since my last drink, and honestly not a prospect I’m considering resuming.”
He simply nodded, as if he knew this information already, but wanted to see how I framed it—if I would try and hide the truth, or face it head on.
“You and Jessica met while you were attending the Academy, but you aren’t an active member?” Unlike his first question, this was clearly direct. He wasn’t fishing, he had something on the line. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Carson was stationed at the nearby NORAD complex, so while he wasn’t directly affiliated with the Academy, it wasn’t a stretch to assume he at least knew something.
“You are correct, sir,” I started, more trying to avoid an awkward silence while I decided what information I relinquished, while weighing what he might already know. “I’m sure you are aware—I was released honorably.”
Lieutenant Colonel Carson answered with the same knowing nod, waiting for information he wasn’t already privy to.
“The issue was with my father, Arturo Leon. He was an illegal immigrant from Mexico on a false work visa, and that false visa was used on my birth certificate. Why my father was working on an illegal visa, I think is a story for another time. But believe me when I say, I wasn’t disenrolled from the Academy by any fault of my own.”
The nod didn’t come this time as he let the silence stretch. Maybe as a ploy to see if I would surrender more information in the uncomfortable silence, or maybe just processing it all, weighing it against his expectations of someone dating his only daughter.
Finally, he patted me on the shoulder.
“It takes a man with strong character to admit his flaws and address them. And an even stronger man to face challenges that weren’t meant to be his, head on.
“One day, I may want to know the rest of that story, Armando. But for now? You make Jessica happy. And you seem like an upstanding young man.”
After Christmas dinner, on the way back to the small apartment we’d gotten together in Colorado Springs, she didn’t ask how the conversation went when she was gone. She could tell when they finally returned to watch ‘Die Hard’, her Dad’s favorite Christmas movie, that something had shifted in the room, for the better.
Fast forward to my graduation five months later, with the two women who meant the most to me in the crowd as I crossed the stage, and I knew what the next step was.
That’s how I found myself outside of the Carsons’ home two weeks later while Jessica was working a weekend shift at St. Francis.
Bob, a name he’d insisted I call him after growing tired of being addressed as Lieutenant Colonel Carson for months, was expecting me. While I had been vague on the phone about the purpose of my visit, I suppose there aren’t many reasons for your daughter’s boyfriend to request an audience.
“So when are you going to do it?” he asked as he greeted me with a firm, but friendly handshake, a grin already creeping up his lips.
“I uh, how did you know?” He simply gave me the same knowing nod from that Christmas.
“I was going to do it at dinner this summer. Take her out to Pepper Tree and do it then.”
He quickly shook his head. “No. Don’t do it in the middle of a busy restaurant. It needs to be more intimate, just the two of you. Trust me,” he said with a wink as if that settled it.
He was right, of course, Jessica didn’t need any grandiose show of affection. Mid-July we went out to Pepper Tree, then drove to the top of Pikes Peak. That was where the planning fell apart. At the viewing center I’d slowed down enough so that when she turned around, I could quickly get on a knee and ask the question.
But as she started to turn, I fumbled. The ring fell out of my hand and rolled into the red dirt, out of sight. Instead of a romantic proposal, we spent the next thirty minutes searching through the red dirt until we were covered in it, before Jessica finally spotted it. We had spread out by then, with me searching the other side of the path. She caught my attention, then started shaking her hand—in the way girls do when they’re trying to show off their jewelry—with the ring in place.
“Does this mean yes?” I asked sheepishly, more annoyed at myself for my gaffe than anything. Instead of words, a simple kiss was all the reassurance I needed.
But as we joyously started preparing for a wedding in the following summer of 2019, with everything seemingly going according to plan, another curveball was awaiting around the corner.
We took a short trip to Havre that summer, sometime in July, just to catch up with Mom and get her ideas for the wedding. That was when Jessica noticed the continued decline in Mom’s condition.
It wasn’t the first time Jessica had mentioned Mom’s declining weight and persistent cough, but as their bond deepened, so did the respect my Mom had for Jessica. Finally, that July, she relented.
“I’ll go see a doctor,” she reluctantly stated to Jessica and myself as we were packing to leave that July. “And that’s a promise. But I don’t want any pestering about the results. If it’s worth talking about, you’ll know.”
It was Jessica who found out first. Mom had called her for medical advice, an outside opinion despite Jessica being a pediatric nurse, not a doctor. Mom wanted someone she trusted to weigh her options. She made Jessica promise not to tell me, a promise Jessica said she would only keep for a week.
She would tell me later, after talking with Mom, that she’d told my Mom she’d give it a week before she had to tell me and warned my Mom that if I asked, she wouldn’t be able to lie.
“I can omit the truth, but I can’t lie to him, Tara,” she recalled saying.
October of 2018, Mom told me. Lung Cancer. Stage 3.
Suddenly, it all added up too cleanly. The cough she’d had since I was in High School, the weight loss, the frail state she had been in when we reconnected.
I was devastated. I’d only just begun to rebuild our relationship and now she was being taken from me again. She was going to get a second opinion on the severity, but was fairly certain the prognosis was accurate. If the second doctor came back with the same diagnosis, she’d start Immunotherapy by November.
She promised to keep me updated, let me know what the next step was. But as usual, Jessica was one step ahead.
After I finished the call with my Mom, Jessica called me out to the living room. That’s when she told me that she already knew. And that she’d already been weighing the options.
“I was torn,” she started, pulling me close to ground her, “We have so much planned here. So much history connecting us. I still want to get married here in Colorado Springs, at The Pinery. I’ve been with St. Francis for so long. You’re finally getting grounded with Colorado Iron.
“But we have to be there for your Mom. After everything she endured with your father, with moving, with living on her own for so long. She deserves us to be there to help her.”
“We’ve rebuilt before,” I stated, more reassuring myself than Jessica. She had already made up her mind, and I knew that once she was set, that was it.
“And we can do it again, together,” I declared, squeezing her hand.
She squeezed back, gentle, reassuring. And just like that it was decided.
We were returning to Havre, for good.
No Father's Son
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redsox907
Topic author - Posts: 3787
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
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djp73
- Posts: 11478
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 13:42
No Father's Son
Next stop Havre HS coach?
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Caesar
- Chise GOAT
- Posts: 13812
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47
No Father's Son
Sox over here going for this refreshingly cute narrative (cartel, cancer and alcoholism aside) in contrast with Brice Colton's debauchery, I see.
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redsox907
Topic author - Posts: 3787
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
No Father's Son
kinda
refreshingly cute narrative if you exclude half the story
imagine how grungy those four years of debauchery would be if this was written in real time and not as an auto-bio
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redsox907
Topic author - Posts: 3787
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
No Father's Son
Chapter Eleven: Building the Foundation
It didn’t take long in the planning process of our move to see that Jessica and I had vastly different experiences with moving. While mine had been chaotic and nerve-wracking, rushed moves based in fear, Jessica’s was much more structured. Born into a military family, moving was second nature. She’d moved from Vandenberg AFB as a child, to Ramstein AFB in Germany, before settling into Colorado Springs, first at Peterson AFB, then finally settling when her Dad took a permanent position at the NORAD complex.
Mom and I had figured it out on the fly for so long, that was my plan when Jessica and I had decided to move. After the initial talk, she asked me the next morning when I was going to start looking at gyms that were hiring to get the process started.
“Uh, when we get there?” was apparently not a suitable answer. So instead of immediately packing up our modest belongings, I started making phone calls to gyms I knew of in the area to gauge interest in a personal trainer. It took a few calls, but finally I was in luck. Ross Wallace, a former teammate at Havre High and the same friend who took me up in my original Cessna flight, was the manager at Elevate Fitness and was more than happy to bring me onto the staff. In fact, we were halfway through him offering me the job before he finally stopped and goes, “I probably should have asked this before, but you do have qualifications, right?”
By that time Jessica had completed her clinical hours in the pediatric unit and had taken her PNCB, making her eligible to be a full-fledged pediatric nurse. Pediatric nurses are always in demand and she was able to quickly secure a job at NMHC (Northern Montana Health Care) Family Medicine starting at the beginning of the year.
We officially rolled into Havre on December 28th, 2018. Between getting settled in, our new jobs, and Mom starting her immunotherapy in January, time flew by. We quickly realized that the two-bedroom condo Mom and I had shared in my teenage years was considerably too small for the trio of us. By the summer of 2019, we had finally convinced Mom to move into a three-bedroom home that was for rent in town. One of Jessica’s co-workers, Rebecca Vilas, owned it and offered us a reasonable rate due to Mom’s illness.
Things weren’t perfect. Caring for Mom was stressful at times, and as a newly engaged couple, it was an additional stressor that not many couples in their mid-20s have to deal with. The additional costs of getting a home for the three of us, as well as helping Mom with the bills—since she had to drastically reduce her working hours due to the fatigue from the immunotherapy—caused us to have to postpone the wedding until the summer of 2020 as well. But we took the problems in stride, determined to figure them out together.
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty,” was a motto we adopted when we made the move to Havre, knowing it wouldn’t be all sunshine and daisies. “We may have to alter the roles of pessimist and optimist from time to time,” I softly declared to Jessica when we decided on the quote to be our guiding motto, “But as long as we agree to always move forward together, there isn’t anything we can’t accomplish.”
By the fall of 2019 Ross had requested a favor. His little brother, Max, was a junior at Havre High and was having trouble bulking up for the transition from JV to Varsity. He was a linebacker, like I had been in my playing days, and requested that I help train Max to make sure he didn’t miss the opportunity. “You were the workout warrior of the entire school, man, no one attacked training like you did. Think you could take him under your wing, a couple of classes on the weekends just to help him get a base going,” he asked. And while he could see I was weighing the options, he quickly added, “I can pay you personally for an entire day’s worth of pay for each session—think of it like a consulting fee.”
Just like that, I started training Max a few times a week. By the end of the football season, I had nearly the entire varsity defense training with me on weekends and occasionally during the week. Each parent offered to compensate me for my time, not at the same rate Ross had originally hired me for, but enough that I was easily doubling my income with all of the personal training I was doing on the side.
With the additional boon of funds, we were able to afford to travel back to Colorado Springs in March of 2020, to officially tie the knot at The Pinery. COVID threw a small wrench in the plans, with the venue limiting the amount of people inside the facility to just close family. But we liked it better that way. “I didn’t want to invite all of my friends anyways,” joked Jessica, “It’s more intimate that way, based around family. Just like our entire relationship has been,” she added thoughtfully.
That’s how the once fairly mid-sized wedding we had been planning for turned into a small event with Jessica’s parents, her two brothers, her maid of honor Donna Kimp, my mother, and my best man Ross. And we both agreed afterward that it was better that way.
While Jessica and our two mothers fawned over pictures after the ceremony, I found myself alone at one of the tables with her father. We’d grown close enough that I considered him a father figure and felt this was the time, if there ever was one, to finally divulge the rest of my truth.
“Bob, if you’re still interested, I think I owe you the whole story about my disenrollment,” I proudly started. I wasn’t afraid of the past, not anymore, having decided sometime between my recovery journey and our move to Havre that regardless of what my father was, one thing he wasn’t was courageous. And I was confident that those close to me felt that was one of my defining traits.
He gave me a surprised look, which was rare for Bob, but simply offered the same knowing nod, signaling me to begin when I was ready. I laid the story out, an abbreviated version, but with plenty of the fine points. He sat and listened, expression unchanging through the entire story. Finally, when I was finished, he let the silence sit for a beat before offering his thoughts.
“To be honest, Armando, if you would have told me that story when you and Jessica first started dating, sober or not, I would have thought you were cooking up an off-the-cuff excuse to justify your behavior. I know you enough by now to know that isn’t true. And I’m glad you let me get to know the real you, before telling me that.
“Not that it takes away from who you are. But it adds to it. Many men better than me would have been broken by half of that story. I’m not going to get all sappy on you, but you’ve got the heart of a lion, son.”
With the downsizing of the wedding, we were able to afford a brief honeymoon on our own. Ross agreed to look after Mom for the short week we would be gone, and we were able to plan it between her immunotherapy to make it easier on everybody. As we sat down to look through destinations with Julia, her first suggestion was Mexico. Jessica and I exchanged an immediate glance, hers of worry, mine of amusement, before we both broke into laughter that left her mother more than a little confused. When we’d finally calmed down, we suggested somewhere closer, just in case.
“Mom doesn’t need to know the gritty details,” she whispered to me as her mother turned to grab more pamphlets. Eventually, we settled on Hawaii, Kauai more specifically. We weren’t interested in the night life or tourist experience. We were more interested in getting some alone time, just the two of us, out in nature. While we both enjoyed the trip, and the vacation from our daily grind, we had differing opinions on Hawaii in general.
I, for one, was in love with the island, climate, and people. The way everyone seemed and felt like a family. Jessica, however, was not so enthused. “Too hot and too open,” was all she would say. When I jokingly suggested moving there, I was met with the coldest shoulder of the whole trip.
When we returned to Havre following the week-long honeymoon in July of 2020, Ross had some exciting news for me. At least, he thought so.
“You’ll never guess who showed up at the gym looking for you,” he began when I returned to work. When I simply met him with a blank stare that said, just tell me, he was quick to respond, “Sorry, I forgot you don’t like being in the dark. Coach Gatch, from Havre High. He wanted to set up a meeting with you to go over what the guys were working on last year.”
I thought the Coach was going to berate me for the work the guys were doing, or ask that I cease training them in favor of them spending more time with their own staff. But instead, the meeting turned into a job interview before I knew what had happened.
“Mr. Leon, I just got to say the shape you’ve whipped some of these kids into,” Coach Ryan Gatch began with a deep whistle for emphasis, “I’ll be honest, I wrote a few of those kids off as nothing more than JV stars. They just didn’t have the body, or the work ethic, to keep climbing the ladder.
“Until you showed up. I ain’t gonna lie and say I didn’t do some research when Max told me him and the boys were training with some new guy at the gym. But when I called Coach Sukut, who was now the principal over at Cascade, well it all made sense.”
Coach Sukut had been my High School Coach at Havre during my playing days, the same one who had me start on JV with clear instructions to show him the work, then rewarded me with a promotion.
“He said you’re probably one of the hardest workers he ever coached, and most definitely a gym rat. So I was sold.
“But now, instead of the guys going to see you, I want to bring you to see them. How ‘bout signing on to be the Strength and Conditioning Coach this season?”
If you’d asked me two weeks ago how I felt about coaching, it probably would have been a lukewarm response. But getting to continue my journey as a trainer, now at my alma mater? It seemed like a slam dunk.
Before I left Coach Gatch’s office that day, I signed the paperwork to be the new Strength and Conditioning Coach at Havre High School for the 2020-2021 football season.
It didn’t take long in the planning process of our move to see that Jessica and I had vastly different experiences with moving. While mine had been chaotic and nerve-wracking, rushed moves based in fear, Jessica’s was much more structured. Born into a military family, moving was second nature. She’d moved from Vandenberg AFB as a child, to Ramstein AFB in Germany, before settling into Colorado Springs, first at Peterson AFB, then finally settling when her Dad took a permanent position at the NORAD complex.
Mom and I had figured it out on the fly for so long, that was my plan when Jessica and I had decided to move. After the initial talk, she asked me the next morning when I was going to start looking at gyms that were hiring to get the process started.
“Uh, when we get there?” was apparently not a suitable answer. So instead of immediately packing up our modest belongings, I started making phone calls to gyms I knew of in the area to gauge interest in a personal trainer. It took a few calls, but finally I was in luck. Ross Wallace, a former teammate at Havre High and the same friend who took me up in my original Cessna flight, was the manager at Elevate Fitness and was more than happy to bring me onto the staff. In fact, we were halfway through him offering me the job before he finally stopped and goes, “I probably should have asked this before, but you do have qualifications, right?”
By that time Jessica had completed her clinical hours in the pediatric unit and had taken her PNCB, making her eligible to be a full-fledged pediatric nurse. Pediatric nurses are always in demand and she was able to quickly secure a job at NMHC (Northern Montana Health Care) Family Medicine starting at the beginning of the year.
We officially rolled into Havre on December 28th, 2018. Between getting settled in, our new jobs, and Mom starting her immunotherapy in January, time flew by. We quickly realized that the two-bedroom condo Mom and I had shared in my teenage years was considerably too small for the trio of us. By the summer of 2019, we had finally convinced Mom to move into a three-bedroom home that was for rent in town. One of Jessica’s co-workers, Rebecca Vilas, owned it and offered us a reasonable rate due to Mom’s illness.
Things weren’t perfect. Caring for Mom was stressful at times, and as a newly engaged couple, it was an additional stressor that not many couples in their mid-20s have to deal with. The additional costs of getting a home for the three of us, as well as helping Mom with the bills—since she had to drastically reduce her working hours due to the fatigue from the immunotherapy—caused us to have to postpone the wedding until the summer of 2020 as well. But we took the problems in stride, determined to figure them out together.
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty,” was a motto we adopted when we made the move to Havre, knowing it wouldn’t be all sunshine and daisies. “We may have to alter the roles of pessimist and optimist from time to time,” I softly declared to Jessica when we decided on the quote to be our guiding motto, “But as long as we agree to always move forward together, there isn’t anything we can’t accomplish.”
By the fall of 2019 Ross had requested a favor. His little brother, Max, was a junior at Havre High and was having trouble bulking up for the transition from JV to Varsity. He was a linebacker, like I had been in my playing days, and requested that I help train Max to make sure he didn’t miss the opportunity. “You were the workout warrior of the entire school, man, no one attacked training like you did. Think you could take him under your wing, a couple of classes on the weekends just to help him get a base going,” he asked. And while he could see I was weighing the options, he quickly added, “I can pay you personally for an entire day’s worth of pay for each session—think of it like a consulting fee.”
Just like that, I started training Max a few times a week. By the end of the football season, I had nearly the entire varsity defense training with me on weekends and occasionally during the week. Each parent offered to compensate me for my time, not at the same rate Ross had originally hired me for, but enough that I was easily doubling my income with all of the personal training I was doing on the side.
With the additional boon of funds, we were able to afford to travel back to Colorado Springs in March of 2020, to officially tie the knot at The Pinery. COVID threw a small wrench in the plans, with the venue limiting the amount of people inside the facility to just close family. But we liked it better that way. “I didn’t want to invite all of my friends anyways,” joked Jessica, “It’s more intimate that way, based around family. Just like our entire relationship has been,” she added thoughtfully.
That’s how the once fairly mid-sized wedding we had been planning for turned into a small event with Jessica’s parents, her two brothers, her maid of honor Donna Kimp, my mother, and my best man Ross. And we both agreed afterward that it was better that way.
While Jessica and our two mothers fawned over pictures after the ceremony, I found myself alone at one of the tables with her father. We’d grown close enough that I considered him a father figure and felt this was the time, if there ever was one, to finally divulge the rest of my truth.
“Bob, if you’re still interested, I think I owe you the whole story about my disenrollment,” I proudly started. I wasn’t afraid of the past, not anymore, having decided sometime between my recovery journey and our move to Havre that regardless of what my father was, one thing he wasn’t was courageous. And I was confident that those close to me felt that was one of my defining traits.
He gave me a surprised look, which was rare for Bob, but simply offered the same knowing nod, signaling me to begin when I was ready. I laid the story out, an abbreviated version, but with plenty of the fine points. He sat and listened, expression unchanging through the entire story. Finally, when I was finished, he let the silence sit for a beat before offering his thoughts.
“To be honest, Armando, if you would have told me that story when you and Jessica first started dating, sober or not, I would have thought you were cooking up an off-the-cuff excuse to justify your behavior. I know you enough by now to know that isn’t true. And I’m glad you let me get to know the real you, before telling me that.
“Not that it takes away from who you are. But it adds to it. Many men better than me would have been broken by half of that story. I’m not going to get all sappy on you, but you’ve got the heart of a lion, son.”
With the downsizing of the wedding, we were able to afford a brief honeymoon on our own. Ross agreed to look after Mom for the short week we would be gone, and we were able to plan it between her immunotherapy to make it easier on everybody. As we sat down to look through destinations with Julia, her first suggestion was Mexico. Jessica and I exchanged an immediate glance, hers of worry, mine of amusement, before we both broke into laughter that left her mother more than a little confused. When we’d finally calmed down, we suggested somewhere closer, just in case.
“Mom doesn’t need to know the gritty details,” she whispered to me as her mother turned to grab more pamphlets. Eventually, we settled on Hawaii, Kauai more specifically. We weren’t interested in the night life or tourist experience. We were more interested in getting some alone time, just the two of us, out in nature. While we both enjoyed the trip, and the vacation from our daily grind, we had differing opinions on Hawaii in general.
I, for one, was in love with the island, climate, and people. The way everyone seemed and felt like a family. Jessica, however, was not so enthused. “Too hot and too open,” was all she would say. When I jokingly suggested moving there, I was met with the coldest shoulder of the whole trip.
When we returned to Havre following the week-long honeymoon in July of 2020, Ross had some exciting news for me. At least, he thought so.
“You’ll never guess who showed up at the gym looking for you,” he began when I returned to work. When I simply met him with a blank stare that said, just tell me, he was quick to respond, “Sorry, I forgot you don’t like being in the dark. Coach Gatch, from Havre High. He wanted to set up a meeting with you to go over what the guys were working on last year.”
I thought the Coach was going to berate me for the work the guys were doing, or ask that I cease training them in favor of them spending more time with their own staff. But instead, the meeting turned into a job interview before I knew what had happened.
“Mr. Leon, I just got to say the shape you’ve whipped some of these kids into,” Coach Ryan Gatch began with a deep whistle for emphasis, “I’ll be honest, I wrote a few of those kids off as nothing more than JV stars. They just didn’t have the body, or the work ethic, to keep climbing the ladder.
“Until you showed up. I ain’t gonna lie and say I didn’t do some research when Max told me him and the boys were training with some new guy at the gym. But when I called Coach Sukut, who was now the principal over at Cascade, well it all made sense.”
Coach Sukut had been my High School Coach at Havre during my playing days, the same one who had me start on JV with clear instructions to show him the work, then rewarded me with a promotion.
“He said you’re probably one of the hardest workers he ever coached, and most definitely a gym rat. So I was sold.
“But now, instead of the guys going to see you, I want to bring you to see them. How ‘bout signing on to be the Strength and Conditioning Coach this season?”
If you’d asked me two weeks ago how I felt about coaching, it probably would have been a lukewarm response. But getting to continue my journey as a trainer, now at my alma mater? It seemed like a slam dunk.
Before I left Coach Gatch’s office that day, I signed the paperwork to be the new Strength and Conditioning Coach at Havre High School for the 2020-2021 football season.
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Caesar
- Chise GOAT
- Posts: 13812
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 10:47
No Father's Son
Aaaah. Coach dynasty. So when he's crashing out in college on players like Kade Vaughn, we'll know it's because he's from that cartel stock. 
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djp73
- Posts: 11478
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 13:42
No Father's Son
Was wondering if he was going to use that last season of eligibility first
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redsox907
Topic author - Posts: 3787
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
No Father's Son
was a branch I thought about, but there are only a few circumstances the NCAA allows an extension past the five year clock, medical being the most obvious. It would get convoluted, so we just coaching it up from here
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redsox907
Topic author - Posts: 3787
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
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redsox907
Topic author - Posts: 3787
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
No Father's Son
un mas 