Coaching both boys and girls in multiple sports is a challenge many TMB coaches face
By Per Peterson
Tracy-Milroy-Balaton track and field coach Marie Hanson is one of the Panther coaches who oversees both boys and girls. Unlike her colleagues, however, she does so at the same time for both track and field and cross country.
Student-athletes aren’t the only ones who make a transition from one athletic season to the next. A number of TMB coaches have to do the same thing, and for many, that transition might not be as easy as you think.
The coaching seasons of Karl Campbell, Rick Haberman and Derek Ashbaugh nearly overlap as fall turns into winter, or winter into spring. But they not only change sports. All three have to make the transition to coaching a different gender of teenagers.
Campbell has been the head wrestling coach for 21 years, and has coached softball at TMB for five seasons; Haberman has coached the volleyball team for a total of 14 years and the boys’ basketball team for 15 years; and Ashbaugh has been an assistant football coach for five years and the head girls’ basketball coach for nine years.
The wrestling-to-softball transition for Campbell might just be the most challenging one. Since he always has at least individuals compete in the state wrestling tournament, Campbell doesn’t have much turnaround time between the end of one season, with boys, and the start of another, with girls. He typically gets about a week between the two, sometimes as little as one day.
See this week’s Headlight Herald for more on this article.