[Ed Law]

In our rookie year, we had a very small budget so I had to watch every penny. I was alarmed how many pairs of safety glasses were lost. Students dropped them down the open bleachers at competitions. They took them home and forgot to bring them back. I don't have the luxury to say if you don't have safety glasses with you, you are going home. It was a very small team. I used to get upset over it. Then I got some good advice from a veteran coach. I learned to choose my battle and focus my energy on more important things. The advice was to put safety glasses into the budget for the team, as part of the team fee.

Now I even told parents at the membership information meetings that the team fee covers the team shirt, team social events expense, end of year banquet, safety glasses, replacement safety glasses and all the things that they are going to break accidentally. In recent years, we don't really lose that many pairs of safety glasses each year and they are $2 each. When you put too much focus on something, it is easy to make a small issue into a big one.