Middle school football team has a singer on the sidelines

By Michael Kinney NORMAN, Okla. -- With 19 No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot Country chart, two feature movies and his own record label, Toby Keith leads a pretty spectacular life.



But while the Oklahoma native could probably go anywhere in the country to relax and enjoy a celebrity’s lifestyle, he spends three hours a day, six days a week, showing seventh-graders how to take on pulling guards and sack quarterbacks.



Keith is a member of Whittier Middle School’s seventh-grade football coaching staff in Norman.



"I have always been really, really close to football,” Keith said. “I know some people would be surprised that being a successful songwriter, that they would think he couldn’t coach. But we have been very successful at it."



This is Keith’s first year with the Warriors, but it’s not his first time coaching. His credentials extend to the days before he made it big in the music business.



"It’s a love for me,” Keith said. “The first thing I did when I got through playing with the (semi-pro) Oklahoma City Drillers, I had tryouts with the Oklahoma Outlaws in the USFL. I found out right there what level of player it takes to get to that next level.



"Even though I didn’t have a kid at the time, I ran right out and started coaching little league football. And then when my son came along, I said I will be there at day one. So I just routed my schedule around it.”



Keith’s arrival on the Whittier sidelines is no sign he wants to move up the coaching hierarchy. After coaching his son, Stelen Covel, throughout grade school, he simply wants to stay involved.



Enter Whittier head coach Robert Webb. In five years with the Warriors, Webb has encouraged parents to become part of their child's football experience. So, when Keith asked to join Webb’s staff, it was the same as if any dad asked.



“Coach Keith has been an absolute asset to the program,” Webb said. “In fact, he just kind of fits right in with what we do here.



"I feel like we need extra coaches out here to get done the quality of coaching that we want. So we are very committed to recruiting a lot of committed dads. We have 17 coaches all told between the seventh and eighth grade.”



Even more than teaching football, Webb and his coaches want to teach the players how to be men.



“We talk almost every day about how you’re one play away from never playing again,” Webb said. “While football is the greatest game ever, it’s just a game."



Keith said he shares those aspirations for his own son and all the boys he coaches.



“We teach them responsibility,” he said. “At this level here, you have to get your grades, you have to be eligible to play. They learn discipline. They learn responsibility.



"Football is the greatest sport on earth. It teaches you everything you need to know to go forward in life, as far as being a gentleman and good sportsmanship.”



Keith’s own football career began like those of the kids he coaches, on youth league fields. Later he was a defensive end at Moore High, then became semi-pro.



He said he learned the value of a good coach and wants to have the same affect on his players.



“All the way until I played for the Oklahoma City Drillers for two years in the ’80s, all the coaches I had meant something to me," he said. "But my junior high and little league, Optimist-level coaches were the most formidable to showing me what it was going to take.”



Michael Kinney writes for The Transcript in Norman, Okla. He can be reached at mkinney@normantranscript.com