What are you doing over there?

I saw an announcement the other day that my high school soccer coach, Pablo Gutierrez, is retiring. I grew up and played prep soccer in Northern California, at Roseville High School, so this isn’t exactly breaking news in Las Cruces.

It is, however, a significant accomplishment that we just don’t see anymore. You see, I graduated from high school in 1982. Coach Gutierrez is just concluding his 50th season as the head coach at the same school.

He came from Mexico in his early 20s, started the boys soccer program at my high school, then a number of years later, he started the girls program. He coached both teams for 20 years until CIF, the NMAA of California, changed the calendar so that boys and girls soccer were in the same season.

When I played for Pablo, one thing I could always count on was hearing him yell at me across the field the question, “What are you doing over there?” It was his way of reminding me that I was straying beyond my role and hurting the team’s performance.

I learned a lot about soccer from Coach Gutierrez during the four years I played for him. He allowed me to gain the love of the game and the understanding that fueled my own coaching later on. I loved coaching soccer, in part, because of playing for him.

Now, my sons coach, including the one who lives right here in Las Cruces and assists his wife with a club that provides an opportunity to play the game to four of my granddaughters. I think a little bit of Pablo did make its way to Las Cruces after all.

Communication breakdown

On another topic, I spent a lot of time the past few days talking to people and covering the story that is in today’s Bulletin about the breakdown in the relationship between Las Cruces City and 828 Productions. Even in all the coverage and listening to the position of both entities, I don’t really understand what happened.

Here’s what I think I know, and I believe it is instructive to all of us in our personal and business relationships. This principle is really missing in the political discourse of the day.

I may be wrong, but I feel that the city and 828, in all of the back-and-forth emails and other discussions, talked a lot past each other and very little TO each other. For an example, listen to politicians at the Roundhouse or the U.S. capitol. No one is really communicating.

It seems to me after the bit of data I was able to gather that the situation that led to the cancellation of the agreement between 828 and the city could have been avoided if they had just found a way to really communicate with each other along the way.