When Coach Loses a Bet Against High School Girls
Did y’all have a teacher, coach, or youth pastor that made a bet with you in order to inspire you to achieve a goal, at the expense of their physical appearance?
I will never forget my dad during his youth pastor days, agreeing with his small-town youth group, if they could get over 100 students to their weekly programming, he would shave his legs. My mom and her best friend did the counting, and made sure to “accidentally” include the adult leaders in the count to hit their goal. My dad had baby smooth legs and it was horrifyingly creepy, but I remember that bet today, about 15 years later.
My husband recently made a similar agreement with his girls’ soccer team at the high school he works for. The girls were… uninspired. Extremely talented, but not really willing to work very hard. So Devin came to this genius agreement to help boost their motivation…
Hey, just win more games this season than the boys. If you do that, I’ll buy you guys dinner from anywhere and you can do anything you want to my hair.
Well I almost at once put a stop to this whole “dinner from anywhere” craziness. I told the girls I’d cook for them, but I agreed to the hair for sure.
Obviously, this year went a bit crazy thanks to our little friend known by Covid-19. Our heart broke for our seniors at Devin’s school. His girls were having an insane and unexpected win record. They were like 9-0-1 for the whole season. They beat the boys by a landslide. There’s a very good chance the girls would’ve gone to and possibly won state. But here we are, all the way into June, and Devin decided to set finally a date to honor their original agreement.
We invited the senior soccer girls to our home on a Sunday evening and they came ready to ROLL. Their Walgreen bags were swinging with multiple box-dyes and they were beaming with excitement.
We fellowshipped together over pizza and guacamole. They were the sweetest girls, touring around my home, asking questions about our wedding pictures, paint colors, and kitty cat.
These are the moments that Devin and I work hard for. Our passion is for students. We believe so strongly that creating a foundational relationship with them is so important. The adults that I had this kind of personal relationship with in my teenage years are the ones I went to when I was in trouble, or anxious, or struggling. Devin and I commit to being the best leaders we can be to the students we encounter, in hopes of generating genuine, deep friendships with them so they have a trustworthy, non-judging, safe adult they can come to when they need it.
I’m getting mushy about how much we care about kids. Let’s move on to the fun part.
The girls decided not to tell Devin what they were doing. They showed me a picture and I helped them along the way.
We buzzed his hair down to a 3. The girls were absolutely cracking me up trying to buzz his hair. They were so scared they were going to cut him or hurt him. I had to go back and clean up quite an interesting, patchy cut job before moving on. Next, they bleached it all to a horrifying orangey blonde. After it washed out and dried, two of the girls used a brown and black dye to create the cheetah-print look that has been freaking hilarious to look at the last couple days.
Here is the final product.
We honestly were so impressed! Leave it up to teenage girls to take this opportunity to make it so artistic and hilarious, instead of just shaving the whole thing.
Unfortunately, we didn’t really think out the next few dates after the hair job… Our 3 year anniversary was 2 days later, so we spent a very private anniversary in the confines of our home. No worries though. I think we’d do it all over again just the same if we had the chance.
We can’t wait to see the graduated seniors continue in their college careers and begin their adult lives. We also can’t wait to get back to school and see the teams for next year. We continue to pray for healing and normalcy in our world, and the chance to gather together once again. Until next time, friends!