Coach O'Dacre

I've had many coaches in my day playing several sports, but none quite like my hockey coach, Coach O'Dacre.

Let me take you back to when I first met him. I was a freshman coming off my first season of high school hockey. I knew that our coach we had that year was being fired and a new coach was to replace him. Coach O'Dacre, O.D. for short, held some off season practices and sent emails out to all the kids who'd play the previous season. My brother and I got the invite and decided it would be good to meet him. I remember it like it was yesterday. The first thing he said to me and my brother was this (brace yourselves) "If you f*** with me I will make your lives f***ing miserable." Then he smiled and told us what a great season we were going to have. And we did. That year, we came in second place on varsity in the playoffs, and third in the regular season.

The next year I tore my ACL, MCL, and Meniscus in my knee. When I told the coach he called me a few choice words (in good humor), told me to stop being a (insert vulgarity here), then proceeded telling me "back in his day" stories about how tough he was. "I'm tellin' ya' Welser, back in my day I'd've taken a shot in the knee before every game and been on the ice playing fine. I can't tell you how many times i've played injured. Ya' ought to tell that mother of yours to stop babying you, Jesus Christ!"

Sentimental interlude: I love my coach O.D., he really is one of the funniest and greatest men I know even if he comes off as a little rough on the edges. He loves each if his players and, I believe, shows it by yelling because, he says, if he didn't care about us he wouldn't yell and try to make us better.he know more about hockey than anyone I know and has a deep passion for the game and yelling at referees.

This year, I was back and playing in tip top shape. I got the privilege of being coached by him again and I improved tremendously under his wing. But back to coach. If you haven't gathered it already, O.D. enjoys curse words. It can be safely said that O.D. doesn't curse like a sailor, sailors curse like O.D. In one particular practice, coming off a weekend of loss, he was ripping into our team with a five minute speech about God-knows-what, and I decided, a minute into the speech, I'd count all the variations of "f" words he said and how many times he said them. He said 65 "f" word variations in 4 minutes, that's 16.25 per minute! I wasn't even counting the other cuss words added in! This man has talent like you've never seen. He also told me once, after I'd missed the net on several shots, "Jesus, Welser, you couldn't score in a whore-house with a fistful of 50's!" This man is creative.

O.D. taught us beyond the ice as well. He has a story to go with everything! Before the end of our season our team was told that he had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and that though they'd caught it early on, it was still dangerous. We were all devastated that such a tough guy could be sick like that. He seemed invincible in the way he spoke to all of us and acted. When he was receiving surgery, a few weeks later, he was unable to make a weekend of games in South Dakota. That weekend, I played probably the worst hockey of my life. A shot of mine actually went a good 20 feet over the net (I'm not exaggerating). I got scored on by some bender (see wayne gretzky post) twice and I was just awful. I was worried that my coach wasn't going to be ok and it affected me greatly. Next week, he attended practice, against his doctor's strict orders, and told all of us he was fine. As it turns out, when he went back in later and talked to the doctor who had fantastic news. They told O.D. everything was great and he was actually cleared to be back with us, but was advised against yelling so much.

When I talked to him about everything and told him I was excited to hear he was in good health he said, "Eh, it takes whole lot more than that s*** to kill a tough old bastard like me. Maybe you should take notes Welser, so ya can stop being such a p**** all the time."

Welser, out.