I know fire fighters, paramedics, police officers and soldiers are heroes. They go beyond putting their lives on the line everyday. What about coaches? You can compare them to comic book superheroes. The Batman and Spiderman have their logos they wear on their underoos. Coaches in schools wear the school logos on their clothes. Some years when coaches are up in age, it looks like they wear tights. Both Batman and Spider Man do not get paid for their heroics. While coaches don’t get paid extra for going beyond their duties. Fire fighters,  police officers, paramedics and soldiers’ jobs going in are to save lives.

When I was younger I played many organized sports. Lots of coaches were very good. One of them stood out the most out of any of the coaches I have played for. I played grammar school basketball. After two years without winning one single game, it was coming down to the year without an eighth grade basketball team. Finally somebody rose up when the season was on the brink, took the job and was paid no money. He took a rag tag group like the Bad News Bears and turned them around. That year was special because we won three games. It’s not the games we won or all the losses. Coach Mike Berry taught us to be better people. Taught us to be men. Taught us the fundamentals of the game. How to work as a team. The man molded young minds. The things he did beyond was pay his own money to get the team in tournaments to compete. Our own school higher-ups did not want to waste money on a group like us. We were just a bunch skinny white boys from the burbs playing a game we loved. No way none of us would soar into the NBA. But as a group we have been friends forever. Mike Berry was not shy about inviting the group to his house to break bread with him and his own family.

This week a nasty school shooting occurred in Florida. It was a massacre with 17 dead. You can say what you want or who’s to blame. You can say all the schools need armed security guards. The liberals will blame the Congress about the gun laws. The Republicans will respond that if everyone had guns these things would not occur like they have. I think they can make it a tad harder to get a gun. Not make it easy going through a drive thru while you order a burger. These things happen for many reasons. Some people have bad parenting that does not help. Plus the cries for help are not reported from people in authority or peers. It’s probably all of the above in some way. Everyone has their own set of opinions on the subject. But we can all agree that it is horrible. It needs to be stopped.

In these sticky situations, heroes rise up. A football coach who does security at the school he graduated from is a superhero that comes out of this horrible day. Aaron Feis who graduated from the school in 1999. As a student he played on the grid iron and loved the game of football. It did not take him long after he graduated to come back and be the football coach at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. He was head coach of the Junior Varsity team for 8 seasons. He’s been an assistant coach these days for the varsity team. He’s been coaching the offensive line. In which their job is protect the quarterback. He probably played offensive line in his own playing days. This was a man whose job and passion was to protect people. When the shit hit the fan people thought firecrackers were being lit. He had different thoughts as he ran towards the action. Then he came face to face with the danger. A mad man named Nikols Cruz. Like a quarterback that is about to be sacked, Aaron Feis became a human shield once again and this time it cost him his life. However all the lives he was able to save. Just like on the field all the quarterbacks that were able to continue the play. It is very sad but he goes out a Superhero. A real superhero. The people he saved could go on and do great things in this world. Maybe protect schools from this kind of nightmare. He was a guy that probably reached people on the playing field. He was a guy that you could stop in the office and shoot the shit. Those moments he probably made people better. He leaves a family that loved him. It tears their hearts out but they know what he has done for mankind. He was doing it for mankind way before this incident took place this week.

This brings me back to the coach I had named Mike Berry. This was a guy that gave you a mind set you can do anything you want in life, if you work hard for it. Keep dreaming because you can get there. Our Most Holy Redeemer Raiders rag tag group did very well in life. I can not speak for everyone but in my opinion I would like to say Mike Berry had something to do with that. We had a few guys go play high school basketball. One actually played overseas and grew a mustache after high school. This group came out with a fire fighter. It came out with a guy that helps fight forest fires, some would say a smoke jumper. We have some engineers. We even have a guy that went over to Iraq and fought for our country and saw lots of combat. We had some guy that helped the homeless and his work he did for the nursing program at a major University. We have the one guy with some radical ideas, but harmless. We even have some computer savvy men in our group of bad news bears. Those three wins are not many but it built something in every one of us. If Mike Berry did not take the team that year maybe basketball would have been over for most of us. Maybe without him molding us maybe some of us would have turned out different. Maybe some of us take the wrong road in life. I think Mike Berry would of done the same thing Aaron Feis did this week in Florida. Never underestimate a man that carries around a whistle. These are the real heroes that help make the world a good place. It’s too bad some fall through the cracks. Mike Berry and Aaron Feis are probably up in heaven coaching a game as you read this. Abraham Lincoln is probably doing a windmill dunk for one of the teams.