Coach Com Stories

Reading a post online this morning, I'm reminded of a story from a high school football tournament a couple years ago.

We put the coaches way up in the rafters where they can see the teams formations and whatnot. To communicate to the coaches on the field we have a Telex intercom system. As things progress, even high school coaches have outgrown our simple two channel system. Teams nowadays usually bring their own wireless intercom set-up. Some will use our wired stuff as a back-up or they might augment their system by using ours for their "lessor" coaches. They have several coaches now that all would love to have their own channels.
The tournaments we do are typically four games per day. I really don't know what they do at their home fields but they can be really rough on our gear. It's very common for them to call during a game and need a cable replacement. They're dragging these things up and down the sideline with fifty or sixty kids in cleats doing their best to stand on the cables so that's to be expected. We don't really mind the death of a cable or two. We're making enough to cover that.
Interestingly enough, they're usually pretty irate when the system that they've torn-up doesn't work anymore. It doesn't matter if they're currently winning or losing either. They're just pissed that they can't communicate with the boys upstairs.

There are a few memorable instances:

1. The coach-assistant kid hands me belt pack & headset and says "It quit working". "Where's the cable?" I ask. "It fell out" That's when I notice that the connector is still attached to the belt pack.
Now, I've never had an XLR cable just "fall out" of the connector before but hey, one never knows, right? Riiight, uhhuh. Quizzical look, replace cable, go on about my day.

2. Called to the sideline, I'm confronted by a coach who's livid because he can't talk to his guys anymore like he could in the first quarter. He's on a cell phone with them now.
So, we know it *was* working. I can hear myself in the headset so I know that this end is working. I can also hear that the key upstairs is open and some body's talking in the background. Coaches kid says their guys upstairs both have the headsets on but can't talk to anyone at all. I get one of my guys to go upstairs so we can figure this out. The other team is using their own wireless rig. We quickly learn that something is terribly wrong here.
You see, this being a wired system, it sort-of matters which booth you are in. The booth on the left is wired to the "home" side. The other booth is wired to the "visitor" side. There is no way to talk to the visitor side from the home booth. Probably a good thing, that.
The fix is easy. When the coaches come back after half-time, they switch booths and low, the headsets work now! I'm still wondering who they were talking to in the first quarter :)

3. As I approach the coach, I notice that he's no longer wearing the headset. Unfortunately, he's still wearing the belt pack and it's still attached to the headset which is presently dragging behind the coach on the ground(!). The coach is pretty involved in the game, but I manage to get his attention by tugging gently on the now-destroyed headset (remember the sixty young men with cleats?)
"That damn thing doesn't work!" spits towards me. I'm kinda angry but I manage to ask what happened. No usable information comes from the coach so I politely inform him that I'll be a few minutes fetching another headset and cable. I also let him know that he'll be charged for the replacement of the gear he's ruined. He literally throws the junked headset and belt pack at me. "We aint payin, tha fuckin thing didn't work anyway!" he yells.
Its a funny thing, but that replacement headset we have on hand wasn't where we usually keep it. We're not sure how it got misplaced... Too bad about the loss, coach.


(no football teams were actually harmed in the making of this post, honest)