Coach Perfect
One game a year for the past 15 seasons, Eleanor Gow has been coach of the McMaster Marauders football team. She’s never lost. Not once.
IT
WAS IN the aftermath of the latest victory by likely the only unbeaten coach in Canada — and maybe all of North America — that the players considered grabbing the Gatorade bucket and giving the unsuspecting boss an icy shower.
It is, after all, one of football’s unique and muchloved traditions.
And a 15-0 record is worthy of something special.
But before getting too far with the plan, the McMaster Marauders gave it some sober second thought and pulled the plug on the entire operation. Because, really, would it be cool to douse a 76-year-old woman with several gallons of a freezing cold, sticky sports drink?
“Sure,” Eleanor Gow says, dismissing their chivalrous concerns. “It was a hot day and there were ice cubes in it.”
Yes, you read Eleanor Gow. Yes, you read 76 years old. And yes, you read, coach.
For 15 straight years, the Burlington resident and former Mac director of investments has attended the football team’s annual fundraising gala. In each of those years there’s been a silent auction. In each of those auctions, there’s been a Be-theCoach-for-a-Day prize.
You get where this is going, right?
SHE’S
BEEN A FAN of the game since high school. That was back in the Dark Ages, she jokes. Elvis was leaving the army, and Kennedy and Nixon had the first televised presidential debate in her final year.
Football was taught as part of the phys-ed curriculum and she decided it would be fun to coach someday. But
she was a girl. You may have noticed there aren’t a lot of them on the sidelines. Then or now.
Twenty-four years later, she found herself working at McMaster as director of investments and so she dragged her husband out to a game.
Mac won 65-6. She still remembers the score. It turned them both into Marauder fans. Still though, no coaching.
Yet, when she showed up at the 2003 football gala and looked at the auction table, here was her chance. It wasn’t coaching coaching, but it was as close as she’d get. So she scribbled down a bid and won. Not a small bid, either.
“I am not cheap,” she laughs. “It’s not like I’m paying 10 bucks.”
Nope. Five hundred. Same every year since. It’s hefty enough that nobody else even bothers trying to top her anymore.
And if they did?
“If someone is going to put in a second bid, I know some large linemen,” she quips.
Each year she leaves it up to the coach — first Marcello Campanaro and then Stef Ptaszek and now Greg Knox — to decide which game works best for them. In the days leading up to it, she’ll practise squirting the water bottle into her mouth (the first time she tried, it got all over her shirt, she chuckles). The day before kickoff she goes to meet the team. Sometimes she gives a little speech.
On game day, she’s part of the team. She gets into the huddles on the sidelines. She reacts with a vigorous “Rats” — her expletive of choice — when things don’t go well. Despite the buckets of sweat pouring out of the players and the resulting aromatic bouquet, Gow still hugs them when they do something good. She’s even in and out of the dressing room.
“Not while they’re dressing,” she clarifies. “They do not need some strange old woman watching them.”
No, she’s not drawing up plays, but she’s not afraid to speak up on the sideline. One year, the Marauders weren’t having a good game and were winning just 6-0 near halftime.
“I turned around and said to them, ‘Guys, if we weren’t making so many stupid mistakes we’d be killing these guys.’ ”
And?
“We ended up killing them.”
It’s made her part of the football family. She loves telling the story of the time she was leaving a Mac basketball fundraiser — she supports that program, too. In fact, she and her husband, Neil, are hosting a barbecue for the women’s team this weekend — after her first year on the sideline.
She was telling a friend about the experience and how the players call her “Coach.” Her friend didn’t believe it.
As they walked into the campus pub for a post-event refreshment, one of the Marauders working as a bouncer that night said, “Hi, Coach.”
“She just about fell over,” Gow howls.
So it’s all good. She’s having fun (she goes to all games including this Saturday’s home contest against Laurier at 1 p.m.), the team seems to like it and the program makes some money. That’s enough to make the whole exercise worthwhile.
But a funny thing happened en route to simply making this a fun annual hobby. She started winning. And winning. And winning and winning and winning.
Suddenly she’s 15 years in and had never lost a game. A record every coach in the world would envy but surely nobody else has.
Yeah, some victories were against terrible teams like Saturday’s against the University of Toronto. But there have been more than a few good teams she’s beaten, too.
Over the past decade and a half, Gow has become Kate Smith, Pyramid Power and the Lucky Loonie all wrapped up in one diminutive goodluck package.
“It’s a fun thing,” Knox says. “The fact that she’s a little old lady and that she’s a supporter of these big young men, the juxtaposition is pretty cool.”
This coaching thing has now taken on a life of its own. Even if somebody wanted to outbid her, everyone knows to steer clear. Coach Eleanor gets to buy it. Besides, who wants to tinker with a winning tradition?
As for the Gatorade shower, she says the guys shouldn’t have given it a second thought. If they wanted to douse her in celebration, she’d be fine with it. If they win again next year and she improves to 16-0, go ahead. Dump away.
“Unless of course, it’s freezing cold out.”
Of course.
She decided it would be fun to coach someday. But she was a girl.
You may have noticed there aren’t a lot of them on the sidelines. Then or now.