For every high school coach who also happens to be a husband and a father, or a wife and a mother, finding the right balance between family and the job can be a challenge. Choose one, and you’re bound to feel like you’re short-changing the other.
Marc Tracy can certainly relate.
“There were times during the season when I’d go two or three days and nights in a row without seeing my children awake,” said Tracy, who just last month wrapped up his second season as head girls basketball coach at Tharptown. “Some coaches, that doesn’t bother them, but I don’t see how it doesn’t. It bothered me, and I just couldn’t continue to do it.”
With that in mind, Tracy, a 2004 graduate of Phil Campbell High School, resigned his duties as coach of the Lady Wildcats last week. He and his wife Bethany live in Florence with their two young children, two-year-old Samuel and 10-month-old Ella.
“I couldn’t give the program the right amount of time—really, I couldn’t give the time to my family or the team that I needed to,” Tracy said. “I wasn’t doing either one of them justice. I sat down with Mr. Laster [Barry, Tharptown’s principal] about two weeks after the season and told him this was something I had been thinking about. He’s a family guy himself and a former coach, so he understands. I felt like it was a good decision.
“When I first took the job at Tharptown, we only had the one child. In the time since I’ve been here, we had our second child. She was born last June, and she’s almost a year old. The strain on my family of me being gone so long and so much during basketball season was tough, especially with me driving from Florence every day. If I lived right there by the school, it probably wouldn’t be such a big deal. But with the drive, along with the responsibilities of my family, it just came to be too much for us. I felt like it was the right thing to do.”
Tracy, who had previously served as head girls basketball coach at Fayette County High School and had also coached B-team boys basketball for three years at Straughn High School in south Alabama, will continue with his duties as an assistant football coach at Tharptown.
“I didn’t give that up,” said Tracy, who worked with receivers and linebackers for the Wildcats as a member of head coach Kevin Lacey’s staff in 2016. “Not being the head coach and not having as much responsibility on that end of it makes a difference. Plus, football season is not quite as long, and you’re not playing two or three or four nights a week.”
Children, of course, grow up, and Tracy said he was leaving the door open to coach basketball again at some point down the road.
“I would think so. I don’t think this is something that’s permanent,” he said. “Once my children get older, it just depends on if I’m ready to get back into it or not. I don’t know what the future holds as far as basketball goes. I love the game. This was just something I had to do.”
The Lady Wildcats finished just 6-17 in Tracy’s second season, but he believes the program can take a significant step forward behind a solid collection of young talent led by rising sophomore post player Brooke Daily (10.1 points and 9.6 rebounds per game as a freshman in 2016-17).
“I appreciate the girls. They did everything I asked them to do during the two years I was their coach,” Tracy said. “They’ve got a good group of talented players still here at Tharptown. The cupboard is definitely not bare. There are three or four upcoming tenth-graders who should be contributors next year, plus a couple of seniors in Ameliah [Dawson] and Linda [Bahena] and a junior in Catie Dawson who shot the ball well late in the season and should be good next year. They have some talent, and I definitely think they can be competitive in that area.”
