RIP, J-C

How can you possibly sum up J-C Pritchard?
What mix of words could hope to encapsulate him?
He was an incredible man. Mythic, almost. Maybe the most intimidating person I’ve ever met and somehow simultaneously the most supportive.
We lost JC recently and I still can’t wrap my mind around a world without him. He seemed indestructible. I honestly assumed he would outlive me, even though he’s twenty years my senior. He was maybe the most freakishly physically fit person I’ve ever met. Maybe the toughest, too.
JC was a father, a husband, a son, a math teacher, a Ski Patrol Officer, a community leader, a role model, and an all around excellent human being.
But to me, he was a coach. Through and through. Some people just are who they are in their blood.
I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about JC and I don’t know quite where to put them. So I feel inclined to share them here. I’m in no position to eulogize or properly commemorate or even adequately provide an account of this man. All I can speak to is the stuff that I saw with my own eyes.
It was special. I still don’t fully understand why.
***
One of the first points of business at preseason every year was the speculation over which day we would run Red Rocks Amphitheater. We never knew exactly when, but there were always rumors. Then one day you show up and the vans are there and no matter how fit you were that summer a little voice in your head says “oh shit” because you knew you were in for it. It was the closest I ever came to being in the military. You were expected to always be ready. For any contingency. It’s a beautiful lesson. I’m grateful to have learned it under those circumstances.
We’d run the steps. We’d run the seats. We’d run the steps again. We’d run the seats again. JC would run every single sprint with us. He’d always finish in the top 10 no matter the distance. You might beat him once or twice but he’d remember and make sure you didn’t beat him the next time. He was twice the competitor any of us ever hoped to be. He had a total fearlessness. An ease and a willingness to confront exactly what’s inside of us and not run from it, but use it. Embrace your dark side. Let it fuel you. Find joy in your toughest challenges.
He didn’t have to run sprints with us, obviously. From a concrete perspective his fitness or participation in our conditioning drills didn’t make us a better team on the field. But he did it for good reason.
A boss says ‘go.’ A leader says ‘let’s go.’
I think this was the enduring lesson I learned from him. It’s the purest distillation of JC’s coaching style. He was next to you every step of the way, on and off the field.
And of course, you wanted to play your ass off for him.
***
I don’t think any player from any year was in as good a shape as he was. He had muscles like cables and on a field full of fair skin and shaggy blonde hair, he rocked dreadlocks with sunglasses and croakies. In an academic environment that was 90% white, he never shied away from being himself or speaking his mind. That intimidated some folks outside our locker room.
We loved it.
JC spoke passionately about civil rights and civil rights leaders, somehow making inspiring pre-game speeches civics lessons on Malcolm X one week and the Black Panthers the next. He’d walk into the locker room on game day with a boom box blasting A Tribe Called Quest. He loved that word: tribe. Without fetishizing or reducing the specificity of it, he invited us to be as inspired by black history as he was.
He invited us into a tribe.
Every now and then a racial slur would be hurled his way. Sometimes by other players. By opposing coaches. Occasionally from a ref or a parent. He kept his cool a lot more than I would have, and only used anger as a teaching opportunity — an amplification in the pursuit of justice, not revenge.
Every time it happened he emerged the bigger man. Every time he was baited by lesser individuals, he demonstrated the extent of his dignity.
I respected that deeply.
And he made croakies look cool.
I mean, come on.
Croakies.
***
I can think of few things less consequential out in the world than 3A Varsity Men’s Soccer in suburban Colorado. But it felt pretty big at the time. It felt like everything. Those clips you see on TV of small little football towns in Texas turning out on a Friday Night under the lights to support their young men in battle? That was us.
It felt bigger than soccer.
I was a career varsity backup goalie, which if that sounds pathetic, please know, it truly was. Tim O’Crowley was my year and he was just money. Tim played goalie with a fearlessness that I think was a direct reflection of JC’s presence. I think in a lot of ways Tim pushed JC to be daring and push the envelope with his coaching. Give Tim a two goal lead, lock it down. Maybe have the team play a zone and then go man to man and shadow their most dangerous forward with Charlie Miller the whole game. I’ve never seen or heard of that at any level of soccer. JC just dreamt it up and did it.
We lost Tim a few years ago. I miss him. I’d like to think he and JC are running drills somewhere, JC cranking shot after shot his way, Tim making save after save with that damned grin on his face. Tom Skinner could be there too, serving crossing passes into the box. Maybe they’re on a field at sunset that looks a lot like 3800 South Pierce St.
That brings a smile to my face.
***
I remember a key game late in my senior season when James Sunderland ripped a shot from midfield just as time expired to win a crucial game heading into the playoffs. Any other coach might have breathed a sigh of relief and been content to let a lucky goal carry his team to a much needed victory.
Not JC.
He had a different theory.
He felt like James had made a choice. A deliberate calculation to step forward and carry the team in a moment when it needed him.
He asked us all to make that same choice. To put fate into our own hands.
I think, truth be told, none of us really believed we could do that. But we wanted to. So we decided to. We rode this strange belief, this connectivity and courage and companionship and blind faith that we were somehow tapped into destiny all the way to the Semi-Finals. Our roster wasn’t as talented as it had been in years past when it was stocked full of All-State standouts, but we had something special. Chemistry? Cohesion? Or maybe just good old fashioned magic JC Pritchard juju.
We would lose in Double OT to the eventual state champion. Pure heartbreak. Silent devastation on one half of the field, screaming celebration on the other.
Destiny undone.
But I remember JC pulling us aside in a huddle and taking a knee. He was crying, crying, and I don’t remember much of what he said because come on, I was crying too, but I remember he said this:
“Everyone wrote you off. No one outside this huddle believed in you. No one thought you’d make it this far. I’m proud of you. You should be proud too.”
And there it was. That militant tough guy image? A facade.
He cared.
A lot.
It was prep school soccer for teenage boys in the middle of America. But it was more. It mattered. He made it matter.
Twenty years later, his voice still sticks in my head.
I’ve struggled with internal battles. I think when things get rough his voice is still somewhere within me. I think it will always be there. Supporting. Screaming. Pushing. But always on my side.
I’m not sure it’s hyperbole to think that this voice has legitimately saved me from time to time.
I don’t think I’m alone on that.
***
Recently someone asked me my favorite memory of JC.
It’s this:
Another staple of our notorious preseason conditioning was an elevation run up a four mile hiking trail. I forget the name. A lot of elevation gain, really tough. Of course JC would run it with us.
As a goalie, especially a backup goalie, you catch a lot of flak from fellow field players because you don’t do half the running they do on any given day of practice. So one offseason, I wanted to get in peak condition just to shut up these habitual hecklers, if only for a day.
That year I finished first out of the whole program on this training run. That’s right, the backup goalie hit the top of the mountain before anyone else. Charlie Miller was right behind me. JC made it to the top about sixty seconds later. Out of breath, he kind of pointed to both of us asking “which one of you got here first?” Charlie nodded at me. I grinned.
JC stepped forward and shook my hand with a smile.
Didn’t say a word.
I felt like king for a day.
It was small, it was insignificant, it was an infinitely minute interaction that lasted maybe a second in my whole life. But it stuck with me.
I felt like I made him proud.
And I was proud of that.
Still am.
***
You couldn’t pay me to go back and relive High School.
But I would go back and relive every single damn second on that soccer field.
That was the power of JC.
Maybe that’s what made it special —
If we can run stairs at Red Rocks and survive two-a-days and push through pain to the point of physical failure and find a way to keep going for the guys next to you long after you’ve given up on yourself and find a way to get your ass back on the line after you puked up your lunch in the bushes last set of sprints and find a way to scratch and claw and out-coach and beat the teams that nobody thought you could beat and find a top gear in yourself greater than you ever thought possible…
If we can do all that, then what can’t we do?
Rest in Power, Jean-Claude Pritchard.
B.A.M.N.
