Happily married to the game

Two wives of high school basketball coaches say their lives are mostly the game

By Sam Blackwell ~ Southeast Missourian

Friday's 1:30 p.m. game between Advance and Chaffee in the seMissourian Christmas Tournament had little interest for most basketball fans. Advance, 4-4, was playing Chaffee, 0-4, in the losers bracket. If everyone at the game sat together, they would have filled only three sections of the 48 at the Show Me Center. Yvonne Hall has been sitting on her husband's side of gymnasiums and arenas for 37 years of marriage. Across the court on the Chaffee side, Tori Mirly was in only her second year of the highs and lows of being married to the coach of a high school basketball team.

No game is just another game to a basketball coach's wife.

Hall has missed only three games in her husband's long career. One was for the birth of their daughter, Leigh Ann. Another was for the birth of their son, Chris. She reckons she must have been really sick to miss the third game.

Her husband, Jim, missed none of those games.

"Oh heavens no," she said.

Tori Mirly is just beginning the life of devotion to a sport Yvonne Hall knows so well. She is expecting the couples' first child in February.

Her husband, David, has been checking her due date against the basketball schedule.

"If it's on a Tuesday it's OK," she says. High schools don't play basketball games on Tuesdays.

Since both teams suffered first-round losses, neither Advance nor Chaffee can win the tournament, but each team had its own incentive to win this otherwise inconsequential game. Jim Hall was gunning for his 500th win as a high school basketball coach. Leigh Ann came from her home in Columbia; Chris drove down from St. Louis; the coach's brother, Ron Hall, came in from Lake of the Ozarks; and a nephew was visiting from Louisville, Ky. All had hopes of witnessing the milestone.

Coming into Friday's game, Hall's team had lost three straight, so it was uncertain whether everyone would go home happy. Fortunately for the Hall clan and Advance fans, the Hornets took a 13-point lead at the half and pulled away for an easy 66-39 victory.

'Old school' family

Hall says she and her husband are "from the old school." Their personal life revolves around basketball. If any member of the family had a birthday on a game night, the birthday celebration waited until the next day.

In past years, her husband earned a reputation for storming around the bench. "He used to be notorious," she says, recalling one instance when a security guard had to control him, and another when he got away with angrily throwing a towel onto the playing floor.

"He has mellowed a lot," she says.

"... I sometimes get more upset at losses than he does."

Indeed, during Friday's game he moved from his hunched over, comfortable-but-ready stance on the bench only occasionally.

Chaffee coach David Mirly is not particularly demonstrative either, though he seldom actually sits on the bench. Getting a technical foul is rare.

"He's gotten some," his 24-year-old wife said, wryly adding, "He didn't deserve them."

Dealing with loss

Her husband takes his team's losses hard, she says.

"Even though he knows they played hard, he is disappointed with a loss. You want them to win as much as they do."

She sometimes tries psychology to pick him up, but says, "He knows what I'm doing. A lot of times he'll change the subject."

Often the best thing is to leave him alone. "Sometimes if he stares at a wall awhile, he is better," she said.

Mirly herself looks for bright sides. "Nobody thought they'd be competitive," she said of this year's team. "They have been competitive even though they haven't won."

A life built around basketball games is not new to her. Her father, Tom Allen, was a high school basketball coach. She and David met when both were students at Jackson High School. He was a basketball player. She played volleyball. She now teaches business classes at the Jackson Junior High School.

The son on the way already is getting some coaching from his father.

"He already told him he's going to be left-handed and a good shooter," she said.

Jim Hall piled up most of his victories coaching at the Halls' alma mater, Dexter High School. He was lured out of retirement to coach at Advance five years ago because coaching is all the school requires of him.

He told her he would only coach one or two more years. "And here we are," she said, smiling.

She is an investigator for the state Division of Professional Registration, but a basketball coach's wife to the end. "It's all I've ever known," Hall said.

Advance plays Scott County Central at noon today in the semifinals of the losers bracket. Even though Chaffee was eliminated early in the afternoon, the Mirlys returned to the Show Me Center Friday night to watch Jackson, their alma mater, play Bell City.

If not for basketball, Mirly said, "I don't know what we'd do."

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182