The passion of sports never goes away, starting as some young student athletes in middle school and high school players will depart from the sports, but the love of the game never leaves their hearts.

There are many ways to stay involved in the athletic world without playing at the next level and many reasons are made as to why someone would become a coach, but when coaching at the high school level you must become an educator as well.

The offensive line coach for Dobson football, Coach Tony Conrad, said he just knew he wanted to get into coaching, and wanting to coach led to a career as a teacher.

“I started at my high school that I went to,” Conrad said. “I coached there, and I was teaching at the middle school that feeds into it.”

The varsity girls basketball coach Henry Bribiescas was a high school athlete growing up, but decided to start his career as a banker. Coaching his twin girls in youth sports motivated him to change his career and become a high school basketball coach.

“Well I was a banker for 13 years prior to changing careers,” Bribiescas said. “So being a high school athlete and being a lover of sports, it was actually my girls. I have twin girls (who) were my first kids, and coaching them in youth sports and getting back involved in that kind of really gave me the bug to become a coach.”

The difficulty of the career is balancing all the aspects of being a teacher with the extra time that these individuals put into the athletes they are trying to develop.

” It’s hard,” Dobson assistant girls basketball coach Mackenzie Parcell said. “I have resources like teacher’s assistants who help out. Grading is probably the hardest part of it because it takes a lot of the time. I do a lot of my planning over the summer.”

A lot of logistics go into balancing teaching and coaching. More hours are spent not only at grading papers but watching film to prepare for the next game.

 “It is a balance you know you have to grade papers keep up with your academics and then you have to plan for coaching,” Bribiescas said. “It really is a second job. It puts a strain on family. It puts a strain on your relationships, but you know coaches just have that passion and you’re willing to sacrifice a lot because it is a big sacrifice.”