Normally, whatever that means, in early January I would be flitting from place to place around the country. Taking offspring back to school, heading to CES to learn more and more about the business we are in, and in recent years, a stop in the Nation’s Capitol to glean from our good friends at Monumental Sports and Entertainment, or the Philly for a stop with any number of students or business partners.
The first few weeks of January have always been a great kickoff to what is next.
This year? Meh. Well, we did make a 13 hour drive to take our daughter back to grad school at the University of Georgia, and this weekend will take our son to Drexel to start his socially distanced final half of his senior year, but it is nowhere near the travel and learning of the last few years. Instead of Vegas we got Zoom. However, through all that time in front of the laptop, or laptops, there were always some shining lights that have arisen.
One of those, realized on a cold Friday, was the gift that some of my colleagues, deft storytellers at places like the New York Daily News, have passed down to their offspring.
It is what another longtime friend and colleague, Scott Layden, refers to as greatness skipping a generation, and it came to a head this past week.
Wayne Coffey is a longtime friend, and I have been lucky enough to have gotten to know at two of his kids who have ventured into the media business, his son Sean, now working in TV in Wilkes Barre, Pa. and his daughter Alex, a rising star of a storyteller at The Athletic, where she is currently covering the Oakland A’s from a distance. However, it was Alex’s talented writing, combined with the great news of Wayne’s other daughter, Samantha, that brought us to this celebratory point. On Wednesday, Sam, a superstar student-athlete at Penn State, was selected with the 12th pick by the Portland Thorns in the NWSL Draft, and Alex, wrote about it. You can read the paywalled account here, but I pulled a few pieces of her story below.
Coffey: What it is like to see your sister selected in the NWSL draft; By Alex Coffey Jan 14, 2021 22
On Wednesday night, the Portland Thorns selected my little sister as the 12th overall pick in the NWSL draft. For as long as I have known her, Sam has been an elite athlete, a phenomenon that once made little sense to me. This was a girl with a six-pack, sculpted legs and minimal body fat, who was also wolfing down a bowl of Lucky Charms, polishing it off with a buttered roll, and maybe a waffle or three. (Do not worry, Thorns, her diet has cleaned up considerably in the past few years). Here was that same little girl, years later, beaming back at me from her bedroom at Penn State, among the top players selected in one of the best women’s leagues in the world.
So, Wednesday was exhilarating, but it was also emotional; the culmination of nearly two decades of work geared towards a goal which did not always seem attainable. Sam was a gifted player growing up — she was able to do things like juggle a soccer ball 7,100 times when she was 12 or 13, for example — but she was undersized and often under-looked. She was never on a powerhouse club team. She was not a ‘name.’ When it came time for U.S. and regional youth team selections, she never got the call. Like many athletes, she was recruited for college when she had barely started high school, but her choice turned out to not be the best fit. She eventually found a perfect program for her in Penn State, but not without a lot of tears and turmoil.
Then came the happy mayhem of hearing her name called on Wednesday night.
It was silly, illogical. We are sisters. We love each other. So how could this happen – not quite a standoff, but a drifting apart? At the root of it, I think, was something simple, something human. We wanted to matter. We wanted each other’s affirmation but were not sure how to ask for it. And it was Samantha Grace Coffey, five years younger than me, who gradually put an end to this. A top-tier midfielder with Olympic and World Cup aspirations began to find the time to ask me how my day was, what stories I was writing, and (laughably) took an interest in my own athletic pursuits (the occasional half marathon). So, I began to follow suit. I tracked her career, and really tried to soak up what she had accomplished, and what she could in the future…
And on Wednesday night, when they said “Samantha Coffey,” I swelled with an unconditional pride that was so refreshingly simple and sweet. Gone were the needless comparisons, the feelings of resentment and gone they will stay. This is my sister – a goofball who has ruined many a family Christmas card by purposefully crossing her eyes when my mother snaps the photo. My sister, who I can always count on to binge-watch Law and Order SVU. My sister, who is such an ABBA superfan, that she dressed up like them for Halloween. My sister, an elite professional athlete, a future NWSL midfielder, who at 22, is one of the best young players in the country.
And guess what, Portland? She is an even better person.
Good luck finding greater confluence of sports storytelling.
But wait, let us go another step. One of Wayne’s mentors and bosses at the Daily News was Dave Kaplan, and as all this played out there was Dave’s daughter Emily, now a writer for ESPN, front and center on my screen (next to another crusty older friend of ours and a Daily News alum, Frank Isola, on Around The Horn. How great is it to see another talent young person in storytelling, making her mark as another offspring gets drafted and it is chronicled by her sister?
But wait, let us go another step. Last week Steph Bondy, son of another Daily News alum, Filip Bondy, penned a great piece for the News on my longtime high school friend and media personality Jack Armstrong, for the still existing Daily News.
Another example of that greatness skipped.
Now I was not around the newsroom, which used to be just west of Madison Square Garden, but whatever was in the water for these old friends as they made it home to their wives must have been pretty special to have such great storytelling and such great talent, make it to a next generation.
Then again, maybe the kids saw the brilliance in what their old men were doing and decided to give it a try.
Regardless, it was a gratifying way to see all these stories be amplified by a new generation., that is what gives us old guys hope, the next gang, all adept at skill and learning, and more importantly, teaching and impressing all of us.
Thanks Sean, Alex, Emily, Sam and Steph. It was great to know your dads, but it is even better to revel in your own success as you rise the ladder. Greatness skips a generation Scott? It is actually passed on, at least in storytelling!
