Let's Get Together: A Game for All Seasons
By Carole Novak, Northern Illinois University

As visions go, it was a simple one: a group of women would come together each January at the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) convention and talk about what it's like to be football coaches' wives. They would share experiences and offer support and companionship. They would invite other coaches' wives to join the group, and they would publish a newsletter for those who couldn't attend convention. They would eat a few donuts, drink a lot of coffee, and probably go shopping at some point.

The Game Plan

Patti Edwards, whose husband, Lavell, is head coach at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, remembers the beginnings of the football coaches' wives group as not much more than an inkling. She was hosting the University of Pittsburgh coaches' wives when they visited for the BYU-Pitt football game in the fall of 1987. At one point, Jackie Harbaugh (husband Jack was an assistant at Pitt then) said, "Wouldn't it be great if we could have get-togethers like this more often?" So Patti devised a game plan: she would offer to write a newsletter for interested coaches' wives, a small group to begin with and mostly reached by word-of-mouth.

The next step took place in January 1988 in Atlanta, Georgia, when six women, including Patti -- all Division IA head coaches' wives -- gathered around a table to have coffee and talk. Patti mentioned her newsletter idea and asked if anyone else was interested in forming a group. Ellie Mallory (Bill, Indiana U.) remembers being amazed that all of the other women said they had been thinking about that very thing -- forming a kind of support group for football coaches' wives. "Each of us wanted to help out the younger coaches' wives, to give back something of our experience to make their lives a little easier," she says.

The more experienced head coaches' wives knew that they could help newer coaches' wives by offering ideas for handling family affairs and dealing with football crises. "The perception is that the conferences are so different, that we don't have much in common," Patti says, "but when the wives get together, they dispel that notion. We really are quite a sorority."

But cost was a consideration. Patti offered to pay for printing and distributing a one- to two-page newsletter, and Dorothy Faye McClendon, whose husband, Charlie, was executive director of AFCA at the time, said she would "talk to Charles" about securing a hospitality room. True to form, Charlie arranged for a room, complete with speaker's podium, coffee, sodas and refreshments, and tables to sit and talk at, courtesy of AFCA.

Patti assigned topics for roundtable discussions to get the ball rolling. Donell Teaff (Grant, Baylor U.) talked about "Sharing Your Husband"; Janice Walden's (Jim, Iowa State U.) topic was "Moving"; Ellie Mallory's, "Life after Firing"; and Carol James (Don, U. of Washington) led the discussion on "Children in this Coaching Life." By word-of-mouth, they invited the other coaches' wives attending that year's convention to join them. Ellie remembers the core group again being amazed to find 50 women show up the next day for an informal meeting. Those women voted to look into organizing a coaches' wives group that would meet concurrently with the AFCA annual meetings.

Step two entailed another meeting of the core group of six women in Dallas, Texas, where they discussed what they saw as the purpose of the proposed organization. It was to support coaches' wives around the country, at all levels of football coaching, head coaches' wives and assistant coaches' wives; to offer a place where they could gather during convention to renew old friendships and forge new ones; to provide information about coaching and family issues; and to have a little fun. That's where the shopping would come in.

The Opening Kickoff

Those six brave pioneers are now affectionately called the Founding Mothers of the American Football Coaches' Wives Association (AFCWA), which was formally approved at convention in Nashville, Tennessee, in January 1989. Seventy women attended that meeting and approved the bylaws -- meticulously written and presented by Ellie Mallory -- in what has been termed "a donnybrook" at the Opryland Hotel. It was a long meeting in which we all had our say, and a lot was accomplished. The decision to incorporate as a dues-paying organization was approved, the first board of directors was elected, and we approved the wording of our mission: "What we are all about is camaraderie, support, information, and service." Appropriately, we voted to adopt a service project. The members of AFCWA would plan to visit the local children's hospital when we attend convention, taking our school caps, t-shirts and toy mascots to the kids.

When the raucous business meeting was adjourned, everyone finally went shopping!

Everyone but the new board of directors, that is. "I remember asking the board members to join hands and pray," recalls Ellie, who was elected AFCWA's first president, "because I really was scared! I didn't know what to do first." She didn't waste much time, though. The first action the board took was to elect its officers and delegate work for the coming year, especially plans for convention 1990 in San Francisco.

The organization was up and running. Little did we -- or the first board or the Founding Mothers -- know how much work, dedication, and downright fun AFCWA would be. But that's another story.