The Plan to Save Our Coach

Andrew DeWitt

The Plan to Save Our Coach

It was my junior year of basketball.  Our coach, Paul Meuser, had been in and out of the hospital all year and had even missed a few games because of his health.  That’s when we knew something was serious.  After many trips back and forth to the hospital and a few blood transfusions, he came back with results showing that he had an abnormally weak immune system.  Although we knew how serious a blood transfusion was a big deal, he would always brush it off and say, “Ah, it’s nothing.”  We were always worrying about him and when he brought up his bucket list, it only made it worse.  We had never made it to state, yet coach had been a number of times, let alone won many as well.  It was our dream to be the first basketball team from Tuttle High School to make it to the Big House.  Every day we had him back as a coach pushed us harder and harder in practice.  We were, without a doubt, going to be his first team here to make it to state.  It was about that time and we were the hosts’ of the regional winner’s bracket game.  If we won that game, we would have made it to the area tournament and later on, the state tournament.  We had been successful all year and slid under the radar most of the season.  Coming up to the tournament, we had a record of 21-2.  We had just recently broke the top ten in Class 4A and moved to eighth in the state.  We won the regional tournament and were headed to the area tournament, just one step closer to the state tournament.  We knew that area was going to be hard, but even through all of his sickness, Coach pushed us harder and harder.  We play our first game of area and got beat out of nowhere.  It was up to us to make it to state and we had one more chance to go.  As long as we won our next game, we would be able to make it.  It was time.  Anadarko, one of the big names in 4A basketball was in the line of sight for the Tuttle Tigers.  We spent all week pushing like never before, watching film, and getting ourselves mentally and physically prepared.  The game is here and after a struggle of a game, they beat us by only a couple of points.  We were devastated.  We wanted to win for not only ourselves and our school, but for Coach.  We didn’t know how much longer we had before he couldn’t coach us.  The school year continued just as it always did; however, so did the health of our coach.  He talked to us about his health for quite a long time and told us he was basically going to have to live off of blood transfusions for a while.  It wasn’t long after that the Oklahoma Blood Institute was coming to our school for the bi-annual blood drive.  A few of us teammates gathered in the locker room after practice one day and came up with an idea.  What if we got the school to promote the blood drive and have all of the blood given be given to coach for his transfusions?  We discussed it with the principal, who later worked it out with the Blood Institute.  We made it public knowledge and pushed our peers and teachers to give blood if they had the ability.  We must have made history for the most units donated because it was as if every qualified person donated.  It wasn’t hard to convince anyone because coach was loved throughout the school.  In the end we had received over 150 units of blood that would go to our beloved coach.  I don’t know if there was a dry eye in the auditorium when coach gave a little shout out to everybody that donated.  He was so touched that we would do that for him.  I haven’t heard many stories about people needing direct transfusions from students at their school, but when you personally know someone that needs them, it almost seems as if it’s a no-brainer to donate to the Oklahoma Blood Institute.  It makes a difference whether you know the person or not, but you never know whose life you could save.