The Tulsa World published the first of a multi-part series on the city's public high school football coaches out on Wednesday.
I strongly encourage you to read the entire piece, but I'll post this passage to whet your appetite.
“Coming back from passing league in Glenpool one night, I had a couple boys say, ‘Can we stop at McDonald's and pick up a burger and a drink?’” Munden says. “We get there and four or five kids in the back are just sitting there.
“I go, ‘Are you all not going in?’ ‘Coach, we didn’t bring any money. We didn’t know we were gonna stop.’ One kid goes, ‘I doubt I would have had money to stop anyway.’
“I go, ‘Get up there in line, order what you want.’ They order and I swipe my card. It’s heartbreaking.”
“In Claremore most everybody had two parents at home,” says Rob Gilbreath, who was at Claremore before taking over at Rogers last year. “Here, hardly any of them do. I’ve got one kid that has four siblings and his mom, and he’s like the dad. You’ve got to be understanding of that. He’s a great athlete, but what do you do? You have to be flexible. ‘Coach, I missed practice because I had three siblings at home that had to be fed, bathed and put to bed.’”