Ekovich's Resignation Just Another Reminder
April 26, 2017 at 4:28 p.m.
By Roger Grossman-
But at Wawasee, the administration now find itself – in late April nonetheless – beginning the task of finding a new head football coach.
Josh Ekovich informed the school Friday that he was resigning as head coach. His reason is an all-too-familiar one in recent years: “to spend more time with his family.”
We’ve seen it here in our area a lot.
Aaron Wolfe left Warsaw to become the boys basketball head coach at NorthWood – in part because of family ties there.
Tom Wogomon left the Wawasee football program to coach at Northridge four years ago, which was a really strange and awkward move on the surface. It made a lot more sense when he reminded us that he lived in Middlebury.
Brandon Bradley announced last week that he was leaving the Whitko girls basketball program to spend more time with his family.
And now Ekovich.
Notice, none of those guys said “we are tired of coaching and we don’t want to do it anymore.” None of them said “my sport isn’t fun and I don’t get the thrill from the challenge of putting my team up against someone else’s.”
They did say “my family has to come first.”
Occasionally, you hear that a coach is stepping down for “family reasons” or something of that sort, and it leaves you skeptical.
In the case of Ekovich, his situation lends itself to doing both – coaching and spending more time with family.
Think about this for a second ... you’re Josh Ekovich. Your first class to teach is at 8 a.m. You probably get to school by 7:30, which means you leave your home in Kendallville at 6:45. Assuming an hour to get up, eat and get ready for school, you’re getting up at 5:45 a.m.
During football season, practice starts right after school and goes until 5:30, 5:45, 6 p.m. … somewhere in there, right? If you leave the school at 6:15, you get home at 7p.m. Your family is either waiting for you to come home to eat as a family, is already eating without you or is already done eating.
You get about two hours of time with your family, depending on your kids’ homework demands or your need to either watch game film or do lesson plans – or both.
Oh, and you have a wife/spouse, too.
Now most spouses (female coaches have the same issues, and in many of those cases it is multiplied) understand what they are getting into when they marry someone who is or has aspirations of becoming a coach. You essentially become a “(insert sport here) widow/widower”, and the longest time you are in the same space as your spouse and awake is when you attend your spouse’s games.
In Monday’s Times-Union, Ekovich said “A lot of this has to do with living so far away,” and then refers to the Harry Chapin song “Cat’s in the Cradle” about a dad reflecting back on the time he lost because he was too busy when his kids were growing up.
He went on to say that he would very much be open to coaching somewhere, but somewhere closer to home.
Don’t we all get that?
Just by the math, he will get back 90 minutes a day, six days a week from the end of July to early November by not coaching at Wawasee anymore. And you can do a lot in 90 minutes. That’s nine hours a week!
It makes total sense and I wish him well in finding that balance.
But his resignation is a warning, to all of us really, on a lot of different levels.
It should be a reminder to all coaches that balance needs to be THE priority. I have seen one local coach who has a new outlook on life, and coaching, now that he has become a grandpa. Kids will do that to you and for you.
It should be a challenge to athletic directors to have people on-staff that can quickly fill a hole when needed. Ekovich says he decided to leave Wawasee now, because a coaching job may not surface in the driving radius he is looking for until this summer and he didn’t want to leave Cory Schutz in that kind of position. It IS better to leave now than June or July, but it’s still very late in the spring to be finding a quality head coach. I am not criticizing Ekovich for that. He doesn’t seem to have gotten serious about not being at Wawasee until the spring, and you know, life is like that sometimes.
But life can get in the way at any minute. Health problems, car accidents, scandal … any of them could force a coach or athletic director to scramble. In radio, they tell us that we should “always be looking to train our replacement.”
But Wawasee now has to try to put something together … quickly. If they have someone on staff who can take over – even for one season – that would really help a lot.
It’s also a warning to all of us: the National Federation, the Indiana High School Athletic Association, local schools, coaches, players, players’ parents – burn out is real and it is a growing problem. The pressure to spend more and more of the offseason on that one sport is an issue that must be addressed. While I have criticized parents for their approach to how they handle their sports-affiliated children sometimes, I cannot fault someone who just says “my kid is taking a break for X amount of time this summer to (insert activity here) with us.”
That is good parenting.
I know, I know—“if we don’t, others will and we will fall behind in our quest to make our teams better and ourselves more attractive to colleges.” I Totally get that.
But I know this about business: the Law of Diminishing Returns is real. That law says that you cannot give more that 100 percent, and if you try to give more than 100 percent you will likely be less productive in ratio to how much more than 100 percent you attempt to give. In other words, if you try to give 110 percent, you are likely to be about 90 percent productive.
Ekovich was violating that law, but not anymore.
Good for him.
But at Wawasee, the administration now find itself – in late April nonetheless – beginning the task of finding a new head football coach.
Josh Ekovich informed the school Friday that he was resigning as head coach. His reason is an all-too-familiar one in recent years: “to spend more time with his family.”
We’ve seen it here in our area a lot.
Aaron Wolfe left Warsaw to become the boys basketball head coach at NorthWood – in part because of family ties there.
Tom Wogomon left the Wawasee football program to coach at Northridge four years ago, which was a really strange and awkward move on the surface. It made a lot more sense when he reminded us that he lived in Middlebury.
Brandon Bradley announced last week that he was leaving the Whitko girls basketball program to spend more time with his family.
And now Ekovich.
Notice, none of those guys said “we are tired of coaching and we don’t want to do it anymore.” None of them said “my sport isn’t fun and I don’t get the thrill from the challenge of putting my team up against someone else’s.”
They did say “my family has to come first.”
Occasionally, you hear that a coach is stepping down for “family reasons” or something of that sort, and it leaves you skeptical.
In the case of Ekovich, his situation lends itself to doing both – coaching and spending more time with family.
Think about this for a second ... you’re Josh Ekovich. Your first class to teach is at 8 a.m. You probably get to school by 7:30, which means you leave your home in Kendallville at 6:45. Assuming an hour to get up, eat and get ready for school, you’re getting up at 5:45 a.m.
During football season, practice starts right after school and goes until 5:30, 5:45, 6 p.m. … somewhere in there, right? If you leave the school at 6:15, you get home at 7p.m. Your family is either waiting for you to come home to eat as a family, is already eating without you or is already done eating.
You get about two hours of time with your family, depending on your kids’ homework demands or your need to either watch game film or do lesson plans – or both.
Oh, and you have a wife/spouse, too.
Now most spouses (female coaches have the same issues, and in many of those cases it is multiplied) understand what they are getting into when they marry someone who is or has aspirations of becoming a coach. You essentially become a “(insert sport here) widow/widower”, and the longest time you are in the same space as your spouse and awake is when you attend your spouse’s games.
In Monday’s Times-Union, Ekovich said “A lot of this has to do with living so far away,” and then refers to the Harry Chapin song “Cat’s in the Cradle” about a dad reflecting back on the time he lost because he was too busy when his kids were growing up.
He went on to say that he would very much be open to coaching somewhere, but somewhere closer to home.
Don’t we all get that?
Just by the math, he will get back 90 minutes a day, six days a week from the end of July to early November by not coaching at Wawasee anymore. And you can do a lot in 90 minutes. That’s nine hours a week!
It makes total sense and I wish him well in finding that balance.
But his resignation is a warning, to all of us really, on a lot of different levels.
It should be a reminder to all coaches that balance needs to be THE priority. I have seen one local coach who has a new outlook on life, and coaching, now that he has become a grandpa. Kids will do that to you and for you.
It should be a challenge to athletic directors to have people on-staff that can quickly fill a hole when needed. Ekovich says he decided to leave Wawasee now, because a coaching job may not surface in the driving radius he is looking for until this summer and he didn’t want to leave Cory Schutz in that kind of position. It IS better to leave now than June or July, but it’s still very late in the spring to be finding a quality head coach. I am not criticizing Ekovich for that. He doesn’t seem to have gotten serious about not being at Wawasee until the spring, and you know, life is like that sometimes.
But life can get in the way at any minute. Health problems, car accidents, scandal … any of them could force a coach or athletic director to scramble. In radio, they tell us that we should “always be looking to train our replacement.”
But Wawasee now has to try to put something together … quickly. If they have someone on staff who can take over – even for one season – that would really help a lot.
It’s also a warning to all of us: the National Federation, the Indiana High School Athletic Association, local schools, coaches, players, players’ parents – burn out is real and it is a growing problem. The pressure to spend more and more of the offseason on that one sport is an issue that must be addressed. While I have criticized parents for their approach to how they handle their sports-affiliated children sometimes, I cannot fault someone who just says “my kid is taking a break for X amount of time this summer to (insert activity here) with us.”
That is good parenting.
I know, I know—“if we don’t, others will and we will fall behind in our quest to make our teams better and ourselves more attractive to colleges.” I Totally get that.
But I know this about business: the Law of Diminishing Returns is real. That law says that you cannot give more that 100 percent, and if you try to give more than 100 percent you will likely be less productive in ratio to how much more than 100 percent you attempt to give. In other words, if you try to give 110 percent, you are likely to be about 90 percent productive.
Ekovich was violating that law, but not anymore.
Good for him.
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