North Olmsted Citizen Spotlight: Brian Donahue

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NORTH OLMSTED – This weeks North Olmsted Citizen Spotlight shines upon Brian Donahue. Donahue, a Lakewood class of 1998 graduate is a current North Olmsted resident and coach. He is a father of four and a coach of multiple sports in the city. He has owned his own business since 2007 that was originally landscaping but has since evolved to construction as he does mostly tile work and floors and bathrooms. This gives him the flexibility to coach and be a large part of his children’s lives. He has four kids that are 12, 11, and his twins are about to be 10 on May 7th.

In past years he’s coached volleyball while this past winter he coached 5^th and 6^th grade girls’ basketball to a championship.

He is also coaching the first season of Girls Flag Football the North Olmsted Rec Center that has just began being offered. He is the head coach of both 3/4th grade team and the head coach of the 5/6th grade team. All of this, while raising four children as a very involved father.

Donahue had this to say about his love of coaching and what brought him into it, “ I was big into sports when I was younger so that’s definitely something I wanted them to do. But had to let my children do it naturally and as they started getting into volleyball and basketball. I did assistant coaching for volleyball with another parent in North Olmsted. Then I did head coaching for basketball for the last couple years and now I’m doing it for the flag football for the girls as well.

The main reason of getting into coaching was definitely my children but I also just love kids in general. I could never be a teacher but coaching is something that I just feel like I’m naturally good at. It helps that I was good at sports obviously and as I have gotten into it I have developed relationships with a bunch of my daughter’s friends and we have done a lot of different sports together and it’s just been amazing throughout.

I really invest in every single kid that I coach and try to teach them to be good humans as well and teach them the humility of sports and good sportsmanship etc. Throughout the last couple years I have definitely gotten a ton of texts and emails from parents saying how much they appreciate what I’ve done for their kids and how much I’ve made their kids love the sport even more and coaches in general which always touches my heart.

I actually had gotten chosen a little while back through some of the Avon Lake leagues I was coaching for my daughter’s in basketball through the Cavs League and got to go do some coaching with the actual Cavs coaches from a bunch of parents that voted for me.

I think coaching is just something that comes naturally to me and I absolutely love it and it fills my heart. The competitive nature in me also just loves going out there and winning with my daughter and her friends.”

Parents of players he has coached have amazing things to say about him in terms of the time he devotes his time and his love of coaching. He goes the extra mile with the kids in that he does the extra things like

Creating personalized playbooks for each kids to have and keep so they could learn at home.
He makes sure his players thank the refs and officials after each game.
He makes good sportsmanship and humility a main value in all of his teams.

You can see it in his face how much joy he experiences from coaching and in many parents’ opinions he epitomizes all that a coach, father, and man should be. It is not the common trait most of us think it should be, and that is truly humbling.

I think I speak for everyone when I say, “THANK YOU COACH DONAHUE!”