A Great Coach . . . a Great Man

Jim Pearson, my golf coach, P.E. teacher, and one of my favorite people at Kickapoo High School, died yesterday from a long battle with cancer. He was a great man. A man of high character and integrity! Here is the article in the News-Leader.
I can remember coming out for golf as a freshman . . . scared to death. Whiffing my first tee shot, him looking at me and saying “that’s alright son, no stroke, hit it out there.” I didn’t make the team that year. But I remember the next year him asking me in gym class if I was going to come out the next year. I said I didn’t know. He encouraged me to come out again. It was some of the best memories I have had going out in the freezing cold spring weather for matches with local teams–9 holes at a time–after school before it turned too dark to see the ball!

My junior year I got some golf lessons from a fly-by-night “golf teacher” for Christmas. I thought it was bad when I whiffed on the first tee as a freshman! However, I came out and promptly shot something like a 50 on nine holes. Coach said, “you need to forget all you learned from that guy and just hit the ball the way I know you can.” I probably shouldn’t have made the team that year. But his loyalty to me having made the team the year before helped me to improve my scores each week of the short season and made it close to the hallowed “top 5” golfers which scores were used in matches.

I was very grateful to him for giving me the confidence to go on to do greater things than hit a little white ball. He wanted us to go on to college and study hard. He taught me to look at the heart of an individual, not simply the outside appearance. I remember a match with Central in which my teammate and I were paired with two guys that had never played golf in their life. It was very early in the season, so they had probably hit a sum total of four buckets of balls in their life between the two of them. First guy gets up–ball trickles between his legs and stops about 3 feet behind him. Coach Pearson, similarly to when I was a freshman, said, “that’s alright son, hit it again.” Three swings later, the next golfer teed off. Later on, I overheard coach talking to the other coach saying how he hoped that the young man would not give up this “great game.” Pretty cool memory. Not so much about wins and losses, but about building young men and women. That was the picture of coach Pearson I saw. He treated all of us the same way–the duffer as well as the next Tiger Woods.

He taught me to love a truly great game. I can remember he and his coaching colleagues would scramble a few holes behind the last group of golfers before they had to get back to score the first group finished.

It always made me smile when I would hear him on local radio broadcasts doing color for football games . . . but made me smile even more when he was so excited to give out the scores of the matches that had just completed of the girls and boys he coached even after retiring from teaching!

Thank you coach Pearson for being more than just a coach, but for showing us how to live. We are better for having you as a part of our lives!