1FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
YOU’RE ALWAYS AUDITIONING FOR SOMETHING
“You got the job.” I pumped my fist in the air as I pressed the phone closer to my ear. “The committee was really impressed with you. I was really impressed with you. You would be a great fit as the next head football coach at Parkrose. Now, feel free to take some—”
I couldn’t help myself. I interrupted Vice Principal Drake Shelton.
“Yes. Absolutely. I’ll take it.”
Drake let out a hearty laugh. “Okay, then. We’re glad you want to be a Bronco! I’m excited to see what Coach Lowe can do! Why don’t we set up a time for you to come back and meet the kids? Say Friday at noon? I can pull these kids out of lunch and we can set it up. I’ll meet you at the auditorium. Oh, and you might want to start thinking about putting together a coaching staff, or at least try and get an assistant coach on board.”
“Yes … absolutely. That sounds great. Friday. I will see you there.”
My head buzzed. I couldn’t help but be excited. I’d waited two weeks—which felt like months—for this phone call, not knowing if I would even be on a sideline this year. I was worried I’d botched the interview, opened up a bit too much.
It’d been a rocky year since my best friend and teammate died. When tragedy strikes, it often leaves you in a difficult headspace where, at times, life just doesn’t make sense. I’d left my dream job as an up-and-coming young coach in the NFL to come back to my hometown and pick up the pieces. To be honest, I was struggling. Losing someone close to you is never easy, but it brought me back home and I was determined to find meaning in his tragedy. I was looking for something to help me move forward, but I didn’t know what that “something” was. That is, until Parkrose High School came into the picture. They were looking for a new head football coach and I was looking for a purpose. Parkrose had its own set of challenges, making the coaching job about much more than just football. Located on the east side of Portland, Oregon, Parkrose was a school consistently affected by budget cuts and lack of resources. The majority of the student body came from hardworking, lower-income, and often broken families. The city of Portland is labeled as “the whitest city in America,” but Parkrose didn’t fit that bill. It was one of the few schools in the area that was a true melting pot of different ethnicities, cultures, and races. As a low-income district, the first programs to be affected when it came to school budgets were the sports programs. There was no tradition of success on the field or court. The Parkrose football program was the worst of them all, with a twenty-three-game losing streak dating back three seasons.
The thought of becoming the head coach at Parkrose excited me. More than just football, it was an opportunity to help a unique group of students that, quite frankly, needed it. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The job was an opportunity to pour my energy into kids that were in a similar situation as I was growing up. Like a lot of kids in our country, I came from a single-parent household. I never had much. My mom sacrificed a great deal to provide me, my brother, and my sister every opportunity, to give us the best chance at future success. Ultimately, she moved our family across town so I could attend Jesuit High School, a private college-preparatory school on the other side of Portland. Somehow my mom made it work, balancing multiple jobs to be able to pay the tuition. In return, I worked my butt off, on and off the field.
At Jesuit, there were unlimited resources. The teachers cared about you, and the coaches were invested, talented, and dedicated to the student’s success. They did everything they could to get you to college and wouldn’t let you slack academically. Parkrose was different. Not everyone could move away for a better opportunity like I did. These kids were here to stay, many of them fighting for a way to get out.
Football taught me my biggest life lessons. It was my vehicle. It’s how I became an adult, how I grew into a young man. It’s where I found my power and figured out firsthand that there truly is no greater feeling than being part of something that’s bigger than yourself. I wanted to come in and give the students at Parkrose a similar opportunity, to show them that there are people out there who care about them. I wanted to be a role model and lifeline.
I’d said all this and more in the interview. They must have been wondering why a former Oregon Duck and NFL coach would apply to a coaching ad that had been up for four months on Craigslist, but I hoped my passion would show through.
The school was on a 0–23 skid, and maybe I was delusional or just searching for some hope, but I believed I could turn it around in a year, no matter who the kids were. Success on a football field comes down to this: if you have a team that cares about each other, and a head coach that always puts his players first, anything is possible. I felt that if I could create a family within this team, then we would win. That’s what’s special about high school football—you get to play side by side with your best friends. It’s a time in your life that you will remember forever, but you never get back. My high school teammates went from friends to family, and in some ways, I was here because I had just lost one of them.
I promised Drake that I would give the Parkrose kids what high school ball had given me.
More than the wins and losses, football is about the growth and the grind—the battle you fight within yourself and the lessons you take from them. When it’s all said and done, our fondest memories aren’t always the scoreboard, but the experience of working toward a common goal with your friends.
“Thanks again for the opportunity,” I said. “I won’t disappoint.”
Drake paused for a second. “Son … there is only one way to go from here.”
I put down the phone and smiled. I was about to embark on one of the greatest challenges of my entire life, but I was ready for it. I was just twenty-six years old, but I felt I had experienced a lot, learned a lot, and knew the path toward winning on and off the football field.
Even so, those around me didn’t share my confidence and optimism. “Parkrose?” my mother had asked when I first applied for the position. “Why would you want to coach there?”
My mom, who was always my greatest supporter, hovered over me while I shoveled the last few bites of dinner into my mouth. It felt strange being back in Portland, after traveling the United States over the past five years. I’d played Division I football at the University of Oregon, and had coaching stops in Philadelphia and San Francisco on my résumé. Still, in many ways, it felt as if I had never left.
My mom had a point. Just last year I was standing next to Colin Kaepernick. It was a crazy run, being on the inside while watching him take a knee during the National Anthem. But now, as I sat back in my mom’s small but warm home, I was ready to lead a program of my own. I looked up at my mom, locking on her always endearing and caring eyes.
“I don’t know, Mom, but I have a good feeling about this. It feels right.”
“But Keanon, those kids haven’t won a football game in years. You sure you have enough patience for that?”
I loved my mom. I knew she was poking at me sarcastically, knowing far too well I was up for the challenge. I smiled at her.
“That’s exactly why I want to give it a try. These kids need a mentor, someone they can look up to. Just think about what the coaches must have been like over the past couple seasons. You don’t lose every game because of a bunch of high-schoolers. Coaches who don’t give a damn are the reason you lose every game. I don’t know, Mom … it just feels like something I need to do.”
I remembered going to local high school football games growing up and watching Parkrose get absolutely destroyed week after week. For the last twenty years, Parkrose was the laughingstock of Portland-area high school football. Not much had changed. When I applied to be the next football coach, Parkrose was the same struggling program I remembered as a kid.
The other teams didn’t even take their games against Parkrose seriously. It was a get-right game, one you could easily overlook on the schedule because you knew it would be a layup. When it came to football, Parkrose was a joke. But I planned to change that. I wanted to win. No matter where I was, I demanded greatness and always played to win. Call it the athlete in me, but I didn’t accept second place all that well.
“Alright, Keanon.” She smiled. “Show them why you’re the guy.”
Even though my mom had a way of challenging me, she always made it known how much she cared. Growing up with a single mother will do that to you. She was firm, but never held back her love for us. It wasn’t easy to play the role of both a mother and a father to three children, but Mom always made it work. She did her best to ensure we had enough. My mom always left it all on the field.
* * *
I spent the next few days preparing to meet the kids: pulling up old playbooks, reviewing film of the Parkrose kids playing ball the past two seasons, and working on a preliminary list of the drills we’d run during practice. But I still hadn’t found an assistant coach to help me out.
I had a lot of football friends in the Portland area, and I called damn near every single one of them. I got the same response from most:
“Parkrose? Like the Parkrose that hadn’t won a game since the nineties?”
“Come on, Keanon … you really took a job with those guys?”
“You know you’re my boy, but I can’t do that.”
“Man, I got enough stuff going on in my life, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”
Who could blame them? Parkrose did stink, ever since we were little. As I worked my way through my cell phone and called nearly every one of my former teammates still in Portland, I finally arrived at Brian Jackson. B-Jax, as we called him at Oregon, was a bone-shattering defensive back from Hoover, Alabama, who loved to hit. He was a no-nonsense baller, and there were many practices where I lined up against him on offense. Way too many of these plays ended up with me and him scuffling, pushing, and jawing in the middle of the field. Coach Chip Kelly, or whoever was closest to us, would run over and have to break it up. But we had a mutual respect for one another and were always cool off the field.
Figuring he might be willing to give it a shot and with my options dwindling, I gave him a call. By some miracle, he was willing to hear me out past the point where I told him about the open coaching position at Parkrose. We spoke about the school and its lack of support and unique demographics. I tried my best to explain to him, as the committee explained to me, that Parkrose didn’t have a bunch of athletes, high-quality facilities, or resources at all. It would be an uphill battle, but I was willing to fight it. B-Jax, maybe just to help a brother out, agreed to join my staff. One became two.
Friday came, and I grabbed my computer bag, double-checked my tie in the mirror near the door, and headed out for my new job. Parkrose was exactly as I remembered it, as if frozen in time. The district hadn’t put much time or energy into updating the outdated building. You could see a few haphazardly applied coats of paint on the outside of the building, but it was like putting lipstick on a pig more than anything else.
After parking my car, I walked into the beaten-down building, looking for signs to the administrator’s office. When I found out, I opened the door and was greeted by an elderly woman with oversized glasses and a voluminously coiffed head of hair. “Hey, honey … you here for the coaching gig?”
“Yes, ma’am. I am. My name is Keanon Lowe, and I am scheduled to meet with the athletic director, Daunte Gouge.”
“Okay, sweetie. Have a seat. I will let him know you are here.”
She then picked up the phone, and I could hear her speak with Daunte. A few minutes later, a door behind her opened and a skinny, red-haired man wearing sweats and a zip-up hoodie with the Parkrose emblem walked through.
Copyright © 2022 by Keanon Lowe