Signing Day!

Today was National Signing Day for College football.  As a coach’s wife, it’s the completion of season two in our year.  Our year starts in September when football season starts, then it rolls quietly almost stealthfully, into recruiting season and then completes with spring football.  Recruiting season is always a dark ninja for me…..for real it feels like sometimes I’m warding off recruiting ninja stars being thrown in the night.  It kind of comes out of nowhere and before you know it, it has taken over.  All my friends that support us during the year cheer the victory we have as a family, that I have as a coach’s wife, when we get to the end of the football season as the rest of the world knows it….buuuuutttt…almost as a delayed left hook punch when you aren’t looking your husband flashes a plane ticket and the recruiting trail to California in your face for the day after season ends.  Thus the beginning of season two, recruiting season.  And ladies and gents coaches work hard to pull in these athletes.  It’s no joke, not easy and no coach is left without scars from the battle of recruitment.  It’s a tough game and everybody plays.  I absolutely indulge every tweet and retweet about every single recruit on a day like today.  Today my twitter feed is full of coaches tweeting about players that have signed the dotted line to join their vision.  Today is a big deal and I am SO proud of my husband and the coaching staff of Southwestern Oklahoma State University where we coach.  The head coach, Coach Cocannouer, has led his coaching staff to recruit an incredible group of athletes and it is an exciting time to be a Bulldog.I am still considered a very much “toddler” coach’s wife, only having weathered five recruiting seasons.  However, I feel as if with each new season we navigate, and navigate it well by continuing to praise the Lord, I raise a flag of victory and deeper wisdom as a coach’s wife.Toby and I pray about and ask the Lord’s direction on every one of his position guys.  This is immensely important.  Toby starts his recruiting season out asking that the Lord give him Divine wisdom and revelation.  Our hope is that he is led to the players that are top tier athletes, we ask to be led to the athletes that are just looking to take advantage of a great opportunity to begin building a better life for themselves, and to be lead to the coaches that will connect him to the right athletes that fit with Toby as a coach and the program as a whole.  We pray as a family that their “yes” would indeed be yes and their “no” be a for sure no.  We pray for their lives to be made better when they sign and that their families feel safe and assured of the opportunity that they are sending their boys into.  It is an incredible responsibility and we take it very serious as a family.Family time during recruiting season is tough.  Coach man and his phone have to have a relationship for months.  At times, as a coach’s wife, I start wishing I could actually BE his phone.   It becomes the “other woman” in his life.  Just keeping it real up in here, there have been some intense “discussions” over the amount of phone calls and texts that have to be made.  There have been times that family dinner has to be sacrificed to assure that looming question a recruit’s family is having.  It is hard, but it is necessary.  In order to succeed in this profession communication is necessary.  This is the place where the kids and I have to lay down our desires and we all have to decide to live for something that is bigger than ourselves.  We ALL have to be on-board.  My coach man does a tremendous job of balancing this aspect and has become incredibly good at being able to set the phone down, wait to make a call in order to really listen, and truly work as hard as stink and then be done with it.  When the day is finished, Toby has grown an ability to just be done.  We aren’t perfect with this, but we are navigating it better every year.For the way we have chosen to do the recruiting season as a family we have to be ready at a moment’s notice to attend a basketball game, dinner, lunch, or make a quick run up to campus just to meet parents and recruits.  Toby and I decided a long time ago when we started this coaching thing that it was a family love affair.  We are a team.  We actually call ourselves a tribe, the Trotter tribe.  We come together and if you sign the dotted line as a position player for Coach Trotter you sign up to be loved on by our whole family.Matter of fact, today when I picked up my son up from school he said that the teacher  had the kids pass a stuffed duck around the room and tell the class their news for the day.  Cade’s news?  “My dad signs football recruits to SWOSU today!!” proclaimed with extreme pride.  That is the greatest part about what we get to do…..CELEBRATE!!!  With everything we sacrifice, it pales in comparison to the celebration of today!  Today, breeds hope for tomorrow.  Today a whole new batch of athletes and coaches alongside their families stare into the hope of tomorrow.  So congrats to all those athletes and their families!  I say a HUGE congrats to all the coach’s wives and their kiddos out there that navigated our second season of the year!!!  You are to be commended.  With every encouragement you gave, with every late night meal you kept hot, with every tear you shed over missing your coach man, with every prayer you gave for the mommas letting go of their babies, for every night you tucked your kids in alone, for every moment you raced everyone out the door to meet a recruiting family…..you did it!!!!!  You made it and next season will be filled with great victory because of your sacrifices!!!!!  Enjoy today and just for fun go grab yourself a new bauble necklace like I did {smiles}!