Working with true warriors

How many times have you heard a coach say it about one of his tough, hard-nosed players? “That kid’s just a warrior.”

No offense, but Tom Esslinger and Kile Putman coached real warriors.

Homewood’s Putman and Esslinger recently coached the Navy team in the 2014 Warrior Games.

The fifth annual Warrior Games were held Sept. 28-Oct. 4 at the U.S. Olympic Training Center and other facilities in Colorado Springs, Colorado, including Fort Carson and the U.S. Air Force Academy. 

More than 200 wounded, ill and injured service members and veterans competed in seven sports: archery, cycling, shooting, sitting volleyball, swimming, track and field and wheelchair basketball. Athletes represented the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Special Operations, with the Army winning its first Chairman’s Cup, an award given to the branch that has the best cumulative performance.

Putman, the head coach of the Navy team, brought along Esslinger, the track and field coach at Homewood High School, as an assistant.

Putman runs the Cahaba Distance Project, which is a highly competitive post-collegiate group that is made up of Olympic-level caliber athletes. But working with adaptive athletes is near to Putman’s heart, as two of his three children, Jody and Leslie, have special needs. Son Jody is at Homewood Middle School and is on track to become a Paralympic thrower. His daughter Allison, who runs cross-country at the University of Montevallo, came through Homewood High and was coached by Esslinger in the early part of her career. 

“Because I have worked with Lakeshore’s Youth Paralympic program, and through my connections there and understanding adaptive sport, is why I was picked to be involved with Team Navy,” Putman said. “I was able to bring on additional help, and I needed someone strong in the throws and the technical stuff, and Tom’s a wonderful technician.”

Being on staff required attending several training camps and trials across the country during the summer, but with the games themselves during Esslinger’s school year, he took a week of professional leave with the blessings of the school system.

“First of all, I was very appreciative to Kile just for the opportunity,” Esslinger said. “When he first told me about it, it sounded amazing, and it was something I really wanted to be a part of.

“I basically focused on the throws and the sprints and the relay, so it was a little bit different from track and field in that they didn’t have any jumps, no hurdles. And that’s where Kile’s background in adaptive throws came in, because I have no experience with adaptive sports or seated throws and things like that. Kile really took the lead on that part of it, and I worked more with the open guys or the single-amputee guys who were running. 

“I really enjoyed working with Kile, and it was just a great experience.”

As coaches will tell you, they sometimes learn more from the athletes than they teach them.

“The most interesting part to me,” Esslinger said, “was their stories. I teach history too, and hearing their stories, with the stuff that’s gone on with our country the past two decades or so, was so interesting. 

“The Navy provides the corpsmen and medics for the Marines, and most of the combat-related injuries were medics who were with the Marine units in Afghanistan and Iraq. [I talked to] one guy who stepped on an IED in Fallujah, another medic who basically got pinned down by an AK-47 and got hit with a three-round burst in the upper arm and a three-round burst in his femur. He was one of my favorite athletes, and he got a couple of silver medals. But when he started the program, he was in a race chair. To see how far he’s come from five years ago, now he’s able-bodied, running to get good enough to get a silver medal at these games. He was the kind of guy that, no matter what you told him, he’d be like, ‘Coach, I’m just happy to be running!’

“Just their desire to compete and train hard despite their injuries was awesome to be around.”

A documentary about this year’s games aired on the Universal Sports Network in October. Information about the documentary is available at universalsports.com/2014/10/17/2014-warrior-games/.