Coping With Hardest Losses

High school coaches prepare their athletes to face full-court presses and left-handed pitchers. They teach them about goal-setting, loyalty and working together.

But there are no game plans for how to deal with the death of a teammate.

Coaches themselves aren’t ready to handle such misfortune.

Kevin Moon knows.

The Riverside High School boys soccer coach has added a moment of silence to the Rams’ pre-game routine this season.

Ten seconds, to remember Adam Guffin.

That’s the only thing Moon and his team knew to do. Moon is doing his best to help his players cope. He’s doing his best to cope himself.

“It was a new thing for me to deal with, I’ll tell you that,” Moon said.

Guffin, the team’s backup goalie, died Jan. 8 in a car accident near Deer Park on Highway 395. He was 18, a senior, popular at school.

“We take 10 seconds out of our game preparation to remember his face,” Moon said. “He worked just as hard in three years as the rest of those kids.”

It’s the last thing the Rams do before kickoff. Members of Guffin’s family still show up for games.

North Central coach Randy Cloke also had to deal with death this season when 15-year-old wrestler Gene Webb was killed in a separate car accident on Jan. 8, the same night Guffin died.

Cloke said losing Webb was like losing a son.

As a tribute, NC forfeited at Webb’s 103-pound weight class until late in the season. Wrestlers also wrote down stories about Webb and shared them with his parents.

Through it all, the team became a closer family, said senior captain Dan Harris.

“We spent a couple of practices just talking about Gene,” Harris said. “It was really, really tough. It was probably one of the hardest things I’ve gone through emotionally in my life, knowing that I’d never see him again and that I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

Last week in Okanogan, 17-year-old Sarah Novick, a pitcher for the Bulldogs softball team, died in a car accident. Another player was severely injured.

Students at NC and Riverside have poured out support to make sure that Webb and Guffin won’t be forgotten.

NC students are wearing ribbons on their letter jackets in Webb’s honor. The Riverside soccer team has ordered patches for its shorts.

“Even if it’s the last game, those patches will be on those shorts in his memory,” Moon said.

Patches are a nice gesture, but they don’t make facing reality any easier.

Riverside starting goalie Logan Krohn no longer has a practice partner.

“It’s different,” said Krohn, a senior. “Usually you have someone there to warm up with. I don’t have him there anymore. It’s hard.”

During the moment of silence, Krohn said he asks Guffin “to be with me and help me out through the game.”

When Riverside wins, Guffin wins, too. And the Rams have been winning. The Class 2A power is undefeated and in first place in the Great Northern League.

“He was a tremendous kid,” said Riverside principal Mark Gorman. “There’s no easy way to get over something like this. They still keep him in their thoughts and to those kids Adam is still there with them in spirit.

“It’s amazing how resilient kids are, how thoughtful they are. It’s been a tough one for everybody.”

The Rams wore their uniforms to the funeral. That’s where it set in that Guffin was gone, said senior midfielder Wink Hodgson.< Hodgson grew up playing baseball with Guffin.

“We just go and he comes with us,” Hodgson said. “We’re just playing for him and our team.”

When death hits teenagers in the face, they come to appreciate life.

“Everybody just can’t believe how quickly life ends,” Krohn said.

But Guffin’s life carries on through that 10-second moment of silence every time the Rams take the field.

That’s their way of coping.