Tari Wood has walked off the pitch as a coach with her Grandview girls soccer team with tears of joy on many occasions.
When she left the field May 25 after the Wolves’ 10-0 victory against Overland, it was with sadness.
Wood — who helped build the Grandview program into one of the state’s elite and guided the program to Class 5A state championships five times — coached her last game with her official retirement kicking in on June 1.
“It feels like I’ve been cheated a little and the girls have been cheated; we didn’t have all last year together (because of the pandemic) and they have a lot of growth to do,” she said.
It definitely isn’t the storybook ending that accomplished coaches envision, with COVID-19 creating circumstances that have turned out to be a spoiler.
Normally, the spring season is done before June 1, but that is not the case this season because of the affects of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Colorado High School Activities Association’s calendar for the athletic year — which was divided into four seasons instead of the usual three — pushed back the end of spring sports until the end of June, a debated decision that has created many ripples.
While that just altered the vacation plans of returning coaches, it had a much more far-reaching impact on a variety of veteran coaches like Wood, a science teacher who was one of many teachers that accepted the Cherry Creek School District’s early buyout offer for experienced teachers.
In order to collect retirement benefits, the state’s Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA) requires a 30-day break from an employer. Wood checked with the organization and got an unequivocal answer.
Wood explored the possibility of volunteer coaching, but that didn’t end up as a possibility, so she was left with the choice of continuing to coach through June and losing her significant PERA benefits for the month. That finally tipped the balance of continuing with the sacrifices that coaches make on a regular basis already.
“I told the girls this is the most likely possibility from day one of the season,” she said. “I can only do so much. I’m definitely hurt.”
So Wood will not be able to see a definitive conclusion to a career of 23 years at Grandview in which she guided the program to its first state championship in 2008 and then back-to-back crowns in 2015-16 and 2018-19. With its 5-2 start to this season, the Wolves are 88-9-8 in the last five-plus seasons alone.
After she guides the team for two final practices, Wood turns the program over to the capable hands of husband, Brian, for the upcoming Centennial League tournament and any postseason play the Wolves may earn. Brian Wood will take over, he just wishes a solution could have come.
“It’s not our fault that the season got pushed back; it’s not like we’re not trying to pull something on somebody, this is just what we have,” Brian Wood said.
Tari Wood plans to watch the remainder of the Wolves’ season remotely. A good portion will be from Texas, where she has a six-week-old grandchild that will help to take her mind off of the situation.
Grandview principal Lisa Roberts said the school will very much miss Wood.
“We’re very appreciative of Tari’s time and it is unfortunate that she doesn’t get to finish the season with her team,” Roberts said. “She is a legendary coach.”
Tom Southall, who has spent nearly three decades in CCSD in two stops at Eaglecrest and Cherokee Trail high schools, faced the same situation when the track season got pushed back.
Southall went so far as to contact Rod Bockenfeld — who represents portions of Adams and Arapahoe counties in the Colorado House of Representatives — to see if anything could be done for himself and his fellow coaches legislatively, especially in a time still affected by COVID-19.
To his surprise, he received a response, but Bockenfeld said after looking into the matter that nothing could be done in time to help, leaving the decision up to the coaches affected about how they would proceed.
“Everybody has their own personal situations that they are working through and dealing with,” Southall said. “It’s an unfortunate situation that we’ve been faced with and everybody just has to respond to it in their own way like they did with COVID.”
Southall felt compelled to continue to coach the Eaglecrest team through end of the Class 5A state track meet June 26, doing so at the expense of collecting his retirement benefits for the month of June.
It came down to more than money in Southall’s case, as he decided he needed to stay for many reasons, but none more important than for the program in the wake of the death of former coach John Green.
Leaving a group of athletes that lost last season completely without both coaches would have been too much.
“I was in this for the long term for personal reasons and wanting to finish the season with the kids and help carry on John’s legacy,” Southall said of Green, who died in March after a long fight with colon cancer.
Courtney Oakes is Sentinel Colorado Sports Editor. Reach him at sports@sentinelcolorado.com. Twitter: @aurorasports. IG: Sentinel Prep Sports
