Part of our life

You notice the husband every Friday night, stalking the sidelines during a high school football game wearing headphones, consulting an ever-present clipboard and barking commands at all who step within his purview. They are head football coaches, the archetype for drive and intensity. Poster boys for single-minded determination. Walking ambassadors for the virtue of hard work and concentration. In other words, they are quintessential alpha males.

But enough about them. What about the wives who balance raising a family with a husband in the eye of football’s fall storm?

One of those wives, Pete (pronounced Petey) Giampietri, has been doing just that for more than 30 years. Her husband, Rick, enters his 12th season as head coach at Central Valley — a position he assumed after a long career as an assistant. Not a big fan of the game when they were first married, Giampietri said making family life work is something you just find a way to do. “I know there’s a lot of demand on your time,” she said. “But after a while, you just get used to it and it just becomes part of your life. I just think that, like any young marriage, you’re so busy it just happens. We were young enough it just didn’t matter.

“Early on, Rick was gone so much between working on his master’s degree and coaching after school, and I worked late hours. As we had kids, we just had a late dinner. I always believed that the kids needed to eat with their dad, so we didn’t eat until 8 o’clock. If you start out that way, I guess it’s a mind-set and it’s just the way it goes. Now that we’re older, it’s a little easier. We’re not trying to balance the whole family around it.”

Actually, three decades later, football Friday nights are a family reunion. “Rick’s mom is 80 and she’s still a big supporter,” Pete explained. “If it’s not too cold, she still goes to the games. When it turns cold, she waits here at the house and talks to all the coaches after the game.”

Rick’s brother is an assistant coach, and a grandson is the team’s ball boy.

MaryAnn Whitney understands. Her husband, Craig, started his first season as head coach at West Valley last Friday after serving as an assistant under Tim Trout for several seasons.

“Football has just always been part of our married life,” she said. “We just kind of grew into it. I like football, so that’s a good thing, I guess. I suppose there are a lot of women out there who aren’t football fans who make it work somehow.”

The couple has a 4-year-old son, Connor, who can’t wait to be the Eagles’ ball boy, and a daughter who was born on the first day of two-a-days practice last summer. “She’s still undecided about football,” Whitney quipped.

Whitney is clear: Having a husband coaching football makes raising little ones difficult. “Sometimes it’s hard not having him around with a couple little ones, but we make it work because this is what Craig wants to do,” she said. “It’s what he loves.”

Now, with her husband taking over as head coach, the demands have gotten heavier. “The phone rings a lot more,” she said with a laugh. “When football season starts, he’s definitely a more intense guy, but that’s even more true this year. He’s just got so many more things to think about.”

Game days can be long. “We see him Friday night after the game,” she said. “We say goodbye Friday morning and we don’t see him until after the game.”

“Winning and losing also has a bearing on how long the night will be.

“The kids get their daddy more on the weekend if they win,” Whitney said. “It makes a big difference. It’s hard for him to turn the game off, especially when the team loses. I don’t want to paint the wrong picture. Craig is very easygoing and a real family man. It bothers him when he loses, but he’s a good role model for how to be a good winner and a good loser.”

And there are some compromises that must be made around the house to accommodate the lifestyle, Whitney said. “Mostly the lawn suffers,” she said. “I don’t operate the mower. But the rest of it? We just make it work.”

One of the advantages of being a coach’s family is the admission to an extended family. “We’ve made really good friends,” Whitney said. “We’re really missing Tim Trout and his family. His kids were the same age as our kids. That’s kind of a void in our life this year, but (Craig) has a couple assistants who have been around for a long time, and one who he went to college with, Rick Kuhl. They both played together at Montana and have known each other for years.

“In all of the teams that Craig has been involved with, there is definitely a little family of coaches and their families that we get along with. West Valley is a great place because they’re an extended family all on its own.”

Both wives agree it’s good for the youngsters to be around the game and its players and coaches.

“We just have enjoyed having Connor around that environment,” Whitney said. “It’s a good place for him to be, running around with the guys.”

Pete Giampietri was even pleased to have her daughters dating Rick’s players. “We had one daughter who would never date football players and we could never figure that out,” she said. “There was a quarterback we thought she would really like, but she would never give him the time of day. I guess it all worked out. Five years later, she married him.”