‘THE GOOD STUFF’
Coaching dads share bond with daughters on diamond
David Dinger and Vic Grider are longtime local high school coaches who have spent half their lives giving guidance to teenage boys as they head toward adulthood. But as dads of only-child daughters, their professional lives have taken a different path in recent years.
Grider has spent 24 years coaching football at South Pittsburg, 18 as the guy in charge. Dinger has been on a football sideline for 29 seasons — six as a head coach early in his career at Lookout Valley — and 22 of his 23 years as a head baseball coach were spent leading the Yellow Jackets’ program.
Welcome to the world of girls’ fastpitch softball.
“It’s a great game,” said Dinger, whose daughter, Katie, is a junior at Lookout Valley. “It’s clean. It’s fast. As far as having to do a sport with girls, I’d say it’s the one I’d want to do most.”
Victoria Grider is a senior second baseman at South Pittsburg. Katie plays second base and pitches for Lookout Valley.
Both teams compete in District 6-A, but they’ll also be competing this weekend in the Lookout Valley Invitational at Lookout Valley Elementary.
Coach Grider had some experience coaching softball before his daughter was born. The Lady Pirates’ only softball state-tournament appearance was under his guidance in the early 1990s.
“I was the guy that just got hired,” he said. “I was coaching the middle school football team. The softball coach had just left, and they said, ‘Hey, you’re going to do this.’
“Really, they kind of taught me more than I taught them. Then next thing you know, we were in the state tournament at Warner Park.”
Victoria was in seventh grade when her father accepted the position the second time around. She became eligible to play on the high school varsity the next season.
“It’s really been a lot more fun than people expected,” said Victoria, who also knows her father’s work ethic from football, remembering being a third-grader the first time she saw the Pirates win a state championship.
“I knew because of the way he is at home. I know there’s a time to be serious. I think everyone mostly knows how competitive he is and knows he wants us to go win. But also, they get to see the other side of him that I know but not everyone on my team knew.”
Coach Grider, who played football at South Pittsburg for his father, the late Don Grider, said his father was good about treating everyone equally, and he tries not to be harder on his child — the emphasis on “tries.” She sees it a little different, but with the emphasis on “little.”
The two ride to away games together in dad’s truck. Sometimes they lose.
“When that happens,” Victoria said, “I normally ride home with Mom.”
Victoria also played volleyball, but softball is her favorite sport. Katie played basketball in middle school, but that was two arthoscopic knee surgeries ago. Since then she’s also had a shoulder scoped and said she feels totally healthy now playing her favorite sport.
Both girls began honing their softball skills at home, right about the time they started school, if not before. Katie took pitching lessons at one time from local select softball coach Jeremy Higdon, but the other parts of her game she learned from Dad.
“We’ve played ball in the yard for years,” Katie said. “We still do. We practice turning double plays. We do a lot of work.”
Coach Dinger is a former catcher. Katie has accepted that she’s the team’s “emergency catcher.”
“I love having him around,” said Katie, who has three older step siblings. “He helps me so much. I get so much more practice in. I feel like I would not be as good without him around.”
Said her father: “I’ve been pretty lucky. Not too many fathers and teenage daughters have a common thing to spend time with. Luckily we kind of have that bond.”
Katie said her biggest thrill in softball to date was as a freshman scoring the winning run in a victory over a good Whitwell team and ended up getting a spontaneous big hug from Dad in the celebration afterward.
Victoria remembers well this year’s season opener against Chattanooga Christian.
“I think that’s the coldest I’ve ever been, other than at a football game,” she said. “After the game he told me I did a good job and he was really proud of me. I always want to make him proud.” And he is. “I remember that first year when she was in eighth grade,” Coach Grider said. “It’s been was a lot of fun, and a lot of work. Now here she is two months from graduating high school. Where does the time go? I know I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
We’ve had a lot of father-daughter memories I won’t ever forget.”
Coach Grider may choose to stick with football after this school year. That’s provided the school can find someone who will take care of the program the way he wants it done.
Coach Dinger has this year and next to continue coaching his daughter. And like Grider did in his early stages as a softball coach, he’s still learning.
“I try not to bring it home,” Coach Dinger said. “What happens at the field, stays at the field. We talk about the good stuff a lot, but don’t bring the bad stuff home. You’ve got to live with them, so …”
“I’ve been pretty lucky. Not too many fathers and teenage daughters have a common thing to spend time with. Luckily we kind of have that bond.”
— DAVID DINGER