A Quarter Century Later

In 2000, I coached a team. I remember every single player. I remember their faces, their voices, their quirks—the way they stood in a huddle or sat on the bench. I remember how they tied their laces, the nervous energy before matches, and the way the light fell across the pitch at certain times of day. I remember it all like it just happened.

But that was 25 years ago.

It doesn’t feel like 25 years. The math tells me it is, but the mind doesn’t track time that way. Memory is nonlinear. Some moments feel closer than they have any right to be. Others disappear without warning.

Those players? They’re in their 40s now. I imagine some of them with children, jobs, stories that stretch far beyond anything we could have predicted back then. I wonder if they remember that season. Maybe just a detail. Maybe the feeling of being seen, of mattering. Maybe nothing. Or maybe more than I’ll ever know.

That’s the strange thing about legacy. It’s not always visible. You don’t always get to know what stays with someone. Sometimes, it’s just the presence, the belief, the time shared. And sometimes, that’s enough.

I used to think legacy was something you built intentionally. Now I think it’s quieter than that. More accidental. Something you leave behind simply by being there, by caring, by showing up day after day—even when you didn’t know how much it mattered.

I’m stepping away in ten days. Retiring from something that has shaped nearly every corner of who I am. And the closer it gets, the more I find myself looking back. Not just to mark the years, but to understand what they meant.

We remember people who no longer exist in the form we knew them. Not because they’re gone, but because they’ve changed. We all have. That’s what time does. It doesn’t ask for permission. It just moves.

Twenty-five years. A quarter century.

I can still see their faces.

They probably wouldn’t recognize the man I’ve become either.

But maybe—just maybe—some part of what we shared still lives in them.

And maybe that’s the real measure of it all.