A dozen 2nd graders scurry around the second-floor gym at Thayer Middle School in Naperville, chasing after an orange foam soccer ball with black pentagons as it rolls across the wooden floor or bounces off the walls.
Some run with focused intent, kicking the ball with relish and hurrying to track it down again through the crush of players. Others appear more content to let the ball come to them. Often, the players swing their legs mightily but only graze or miss the moving sphere.
Parents are there, too, “oooh-ing” and “aaah-ing” with every sequence.
Ron McGathey, a volunteer coach for the Naperville Area YMCA indoor-soccer program, stands on the second row of the bleachers and encourages his young charges, who include his son, Maxx, 8.
“Go get it!” he tells a reluctant defenseman, who is standing glued to the spot as an opponent runs down an errant pass. “You guys gotta be running after the ball.”
A few heads on his team start to droop when it falls behind 2-0 late in the first quarter, but he exhorts the kids to continue their effort. “We’re gonna get it back right now, guys!” he says.
There will be no goals for McGathey’s team this half, but at least they keep the other side from scoring again.
“Good job, guys! Good job!” he tells the dozen boys and girls on his Blue Comets squad.
When play begins again, a Comets player launches a shot that barely misses an open corner of the net. McGathey turns his head away and grimaces in exasperation. Late in the third period, the Comets score. The players shout, and there is a loud roar from the stands.
The final quarter barely has begun when Maxx is hurt. McGathey rushes onto the court to check things out, then all but carries the boy back to the bleachers to rest. The game ends with a 2-1 score.
“You guys played good,” he tells them as they line up for the traditional handshake with the other team. His players don’t seem upset. They rush for the waiting snacks.
McGathey, 41, is oblivious to the outcome as well.
“At this young age, you want the kids to have fun,” he says. “That’s the main thing.”
He lives up to that ideal and proves that they’re not just idle words. His players repeat it over and over when talking about their coach.
“He’s fun,” says Jason Iskalis, 7. “He doesn’t yell.”
“He makes the game fun for us,” says Rachael Mohler, 8. “He’s good because he tells us what to do.”
McGathey didn’t know a lot about soccer when the family was living in Wheaton and the Park District asked him to lead his son’s team of 4-year-olds. He grew up playing traditional Baby Boomer sports such as baseball and football. But he picked up the basics and some practice techniques at a clinic staged by more experienced coaches.
After he and his wife, Brenda, and family moved to Naperville in 1994, he began volunteering at the YMCA’s Kroehler Family Center, 34 S. Washington St. He has coached indoor soccer and basketball for Maxx and his daughter, Veronica, 6. He also coaches the outdoor soccer and baseball teams his children play on in the Wheatland Athletic Association.
Coaching was an ideal way to integrate the family into its new community, McGathey says of why he started doing it.
Volunteer coaches for the YMCA must attend a training session during which the YMCA’s guiding principles are outlined. At the top of the list are: All kids must play, and they must be treated with respect, he says.
The YMCA also requires that coaches go through an accreditation program, which McGathey completed last fall. The intensive, three-hour class dealt with a wide range of subjects, including setting up more productive practices and dealing with parents. It also provided tips to make the sometimes unappreciated task more pleasant, he says.
One thing McGathey has put into practice is to insist that his players and their parents attend a team meeting at the start of a season, where he explains what they can expect from him and what he expects from them. Parents can expect to know the times of practice and how many there will be, how he’ll treat the kids and how much playing time each will get. He expects the parents to get their kids to the practices and games on time and to pick them up on time, not use him for a baby-sitter–and to be supportive and to cheer during the games.
McGathey grew up in a baseball team-sized family in East Hazel Crest. He is the middle child of nine children born to Richard and Rose Mary McGathey. His father is a retired maintenance engineer; and his mother was an office worker for the Illinois Central Railroad.
He graduated in 1974 from Thornwood High School in South Holland. After graduation, he took several business courses at Thornton Community College (now South Suburban College) in South Holland. While at Thornton, he landed a job in 1975 as a runner at the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. School was left behind as he moved up: He became a phone clerk and then a trade checker for different companies.
In 1984, with the help of his sister Virginia, he was hired by a firm at the Chicago Board of Trade looking for new traders. In 1987, he began trading for himself, in wheat options.
The market closes at 1:15 p.m., so McGathey is able to be home by 3. That makes it easier for him to be around for the once-a-week practices for YMCA sports. The games are played on weekends.
McGathey is among approximately 600 volunteer soccer, basketball and football coaches at the YMCA, says R.J. Bartels, youth and family director at the Kroehler Family Center. More than 3,000 children participate.
“He’s one of those guys (who is) really good with kids,” Bartels says of McGathey, adding, “He teaches sportsmanship and teamwork–the things we stress at the Y.”
Winning is far down on the list, which is the way McGathey likes it.
“I like the more fun aspect of it rather than the competitive,” he says.
That allows him to move players around and put the slower or less athletic ones on offense, where they have a chance to be a hero. Because the YMCA teams play their games in quarters rather than the traditional halves, everyone gets a fair amount of playing time.
Despite that play-for-fun credo, it can be frustrating at times, McGathey says.
There are always some children who are a bit behind the others.
“Even if they don’t listen or don’t do as I tell them, I don’t have the pressure of winning, so I don’t have to come down on the kids,” he says.
That can lead to situations like the one that happened earlier this season: A couple Comets got turned around and were kicking the ball toward their own goal and one of them kicked it in–meaning the opposing team got the point.
Many of his teammates and some of the parents were aghast, so McGathey went out to comfort him.
“To tell you the truth, it was his only goal of the season,” he says with a laugh. “I went over there and cheered him on so he didn’t feel bad about it. But he didn’t feel bad.”
Sometimes things can get comical, too, like an episode he had while coaching his son’s baseball.
His leftfielder kept plunging his throwing hand deep into his pants’ pocket, while his rightfielder was taking off her glove to pick dandelions. McGathey again and again tried to get them to stop.
“I was shouting back and forth, `Take your hand out of your pocket!’ `Put your mitt back on!’ ” he says with a chuckle. “Finally, I went and stood in center field just so I didn’t have to yell that loud.”
When a ball was hit her way, McGathey had to go tap the girl on the shoulder and tell her to go get it. By the time she recovered the ball, the batter had rounded the bases for a home run, he says.
That kind of play doesn’t bother McGathey and certainly won’t deter him from remaining on the bench.
He plans to coach as long as his children are participating in sports.
“I like being with my kids,” McGathey says. “My favorite time is not at work or out with the guys, it is being with my family.”
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For more information on the Naperville Area YMCA, call 420-6270.
