A Viking Love Letter

February 19, 2020


Today a former student of mine posted a picture of some t-shirts from his high school debate career. He had stumbled onto them, and it has inspired a great deal of goodwill on the FB front. What it inspired in me is more than goodwill. It is a sea of memories of a time that I’ve never really wrapped my head around. I probably never will.


Coaching debate at Parkview from the late nineties to 2014 was—next to my biological children—the greatest gift of my life. I walk a fine line here: I quit after 18 years and some of my heroes and friends are still duking it out weekend after weekend. I didn’t split the atom or cure the cancer. I’m not in line for any hall of fame. And clichés aside: this is not about me. But for a slice of time, I got to cavort with some of the most splendid, talented, driven, brilliant kiddos around. We all came together at Parkview High School in rooms 301 and 237 (one with air conditioning and one without) and we created a team that was larger than any one of us. It was a wee bit magical, as I see it in my rearview mirror.


When I began teaching at Parkview, I was following two legends. Bob Bilyeu and Brett Miller were giants in speech and debate in the state and the nation, and I managed to weasel my way in on their coattails. The pressure I felt to continue a tradition of excellence was self-imposed and often backfired: my temper and my ego-driven need to prove myself sometimes hurt kids. I see those scenes in my mind’s eye and they pierce me still. I know that now and I knew it then as soon as it happened. But I wasn’t fully formed and my ambition was focused inward. That was the mistake.

I never dropped the ambition (I think my former students will agree), but as I grew up as a human being and as a coach, I began to see the damned forest AND the proverbial the trees. I saw people, not competitors. I saw pride in themselves, not in me. Not always. I’m still flawed Nance. I still hurt kids and kicked myself after. If you’re reading this and you’re among them (the likelihood is 100%, in all probability), I’m sorry. 


What happened, over time, and what I think happens to leaders in positions of success, is that I truly felt like I was along for the ride. We became symbiotic, those Vikings and me: I needed them, they needed me. And what that created was a special formula that I wish I could bottle. The unbottleable result, however, was weekend after weekend of kids who largely came from some variation of difficulty and who faced their counterparts throughout the state and the country without fear.  “When they hear you’re from Parkview,” I would tell them before the first tournament of the year, “they might pee a little.” The squad was proud of the reputation they carried with them. And the thing I hope they knew—and they know now, these years later as they triumph in their own adult lives—is what it meant to me to lead them off the bus and into the school where they would carry that confidence. I hope they carry it with them still.


So if you fine Vikings still have those “Undefeated” or “We bust ours so we can kick theirs” t-shirts, I hope you remember all the late nights and sketchy motels and bus rides and evidence-chasing and practices. And I hope you have some gilded memories of the moments for which you wouldn’t trade any of it. I sure do.