MARRIED TO THEIR JOBS : Husband-and-Wife Coaching Teams Combine Work and Play

The kind of thing you don’t often hear among welders: “Uh, honey? Hand me that blow torch.”

Married people don’t work together. They’re married, for the love of overkill.

So, you don’t get a lot of, “Scalpel. Thanks, Snooks.”

While spouses do gain influence when their significant others hold positions of favor with, say, the International Olympic Committee or the U.S. presidency, it is the rare couple whose 7 a.m. peck on the cheek doesn’t send husband and wife into entirely different series of traffic jams.

On playing fields and in gymnasiums in Orange County, however, some couples share roster decisions, game-clock decisions, playing-time decisions and, at the same time, laundry decisions, car payment decisions and who-walks-the-dog-tonight decisions.

Coaches’ wives have whistles.

Coaches’ husbands are dropping pylons every five feet.

Here are some of their stories.

*

A year ago, Jim and Cindy Cain arrived together at a soccer field tucked away behind a baseball diamond at Savanna High and introduced themselves as coaches to a couple dozen wary spirits.

We’re here to help, the Cains said. But the players, members of the school’s girls’ junior varsity team, were obviously unmoved. They eyed the couple suspiciously.

Not 10 minutes into their new jobs, the Cains had already discovered they possessed a certain survival instinct.

Through her teeth, Cindy said, “My gosh, what are we doing?”

“It was intimidating,” Jim said. “We looked at each other and said, ‘What did we get ourselves into?’ I could hear the girls saying, ‘Who is that girl over there?’ Well, that was my wife.”

The Cains came up through the ranks of AYSO, where their four children learned soccer and the couple learned first to love it, then to coach it. When Johnny Torres, the Savanna girls’ varsity coach, needed new direction in his lower-level program, they seemed a good fit.

Jim, 42, drives trucks. Cindy, 38, takes dining reservations at the Disneyland Hotel. He has daily trials on L.A.’s hypersensitive highways. She, experiences in the testy food industry. They have been married almost 18 years. Still, nothing prepared them for that first meeting with their team.

“Then,” Cindy said, “after a while, it was like a family.”

The faces before them gradually turned. The program showed signs of vigor again. The Cains’ family life bled into their practices, into the lives of their girls.

It could only have been repayment for what coaching had done for Jim and Cindy years before, when they, too, had become wary.

“It helped us,” Jim said. “Would I recommend it? You know, I would. There was a time after our first couple years of marriage where we hit that little hill where it could have easily led to us splitting up. We both stuck it out and now she is my soul mate and I’m her soul mate. I would recommend that.”

Said Cindy: “He’s tried coaching with other people and it hasn’t always worked out. It didn’t go as well. I said, ‘You need to be married to him.’ ”

*

Nearly 10 years ago, Kathy and Kirk Dennis considered their precious existence together, their personal lives and careers that offered little excess time, and arrived at a common conclusion.

They determined there would not be room for a child in their family.

Instead, they coach the girls’ tennis team at Santa Ana Valley, where a once-tired program is being transformed into a hale one.

“We decided that we were not going to have kids of our own,” Kirk said. “We were both very busy. I was very into coaching. We didn’t feel like we were going to have the time to be the kinds of parents we think people should be.”

Kirk, 42, and Kathy, 37, don’t regret it.

“By coaching,” he said, “one of the biggest parts we were both going to miss would be sitting in the stands watching our kids kick a soccer ball around, or whatever. The cool thing is, we still get to have that. We still get to sit there and watch kids that we’re pretty close to go out there and compete and win and lose and learn.”

Added Kathy: “Part of the reason we married each other is because we have common interests and common philosophies on how things should be. That carries over into coaching.

“Occasionally you have a brainstorm in the middle of the day and if you’re not living with your assistant coach you can’t bounce that idea off them.”

Kirk and Kathy have coached at Santa Ana Valley for less than two years, but their impact has been dramatic. Their team, its roster full, won the inaugural district tournament, which the Dennises founded. And not all of the lessons are about tennis.

“I would sure like to think that when our students and athletes look at us that they are seeing something they would like to have when they choose to spend the rest of their life with someone,” Kirk said. “I’d like to think kids look at us and think, ‘They’re married but they laugh a lot, they joke a lot, they laugh at each other’s stupid jokes.’ ”

Like the one about the husband and wife who coached together--and had hundreds of children instead of one.

*

Isaiah Aguirre gets a lot of gym time.

Especially for a 1-year-old.

Isaiah is the son of Ramon and Cristina Aguirre, girls’ basketball coaches for Los Amigos High.

Ramon works the graveyard shift as a computer operator for the Automobile Club of Southern California. Cristina is a claims examiner for an insurance company.

Married for three years, they coach at a school where the demographics are such that they frequently write personal checks for a player’s uniform, for entrance into a summer basketball league, and don’t expect to be repaid.

Despite full varsity and junior varsity rosters, the Aguirres can name only three parents who can be counted on to participate in fund-raisers and other activities.

“It’s so hard to get away because we’re so attached to the girls,” Cristina said. “It’s incredible how attached you get. We’re so addicted to these girls.”

Somewhat anxious over his first job as a varsity head coach, Ramon spends the slow hours at work scribbling down plays and creating drills. When Cristina drops off Isaiah, she is treated to all of the drawings. Three seasons ago, he was her assistant.

“We communicate even more through basketball,” said Ramon, who on most nights during the summer slept only from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. “We converse on everything. But, because of basketball, we talk about it, then we jump into how our lives have been.”

When they share a sideline, Ramon said, they typically play “good coach, bad coach” for the referees, an act that often brings muffled chuckles from the stands.

For the Aguirres, however, this is serious stuff. They only wish everyone knew.

“You need to be involved with your child, in academics and sports, to be very supportive,” Cristina said. “That’s very important for your child. But, what can we do? It’s to the point where these kids are like our family. During coaching season, we don’t see our close friends or family because we’re so busy.

“If they want to see us, where do they meet us? At the gym.”

*

So fresh from their own volleyball careers that the floor burns on their knees have yet to heal, Michelle and Coley Kyman, a wife-and-husband team for two years and a coach-and-assistant team for three months, stirred the girls’ volleyball program at El Toro High.

Then came a victory over Capistrano Valley High two weeks ago, a victory few expected.

“She’s worked her heart out,” Coley said. “We didn’t say anything. We just hugged.”

The former Michelle Mauney was a middle blocker at UCLA, and graduated in 1996. Coley Kyman was a three-time All-American middle blocker and a dynamic quarterback at Cal State Northridge until 1993. Destined probably for a lifetime of volleyball, she is a substitute teacher and he is a sales manager for an Irvine telecommunications company.

Michelle was hired as coach in August. The next day she hired Coley to be her only assistant.

“If there are problems on our team, if there’s something that needs to change, we can discuss it together,” Michelle said. “I listen to his input, he listens to mine, and we usually come to the same conclusion together.”

Usually, she said.

In El Toro’s first match against Trabuco Hills, Coley, the excitable one, could not contain himself during a late, critical moment. He leaped from the bench and shouted for a substitution. Michelle’s jaw almost hit the floor.

“I wasn’t ready for that,” she said.

Later, he apologized.

“It is her team and she is the reason this team is so good,” Coley said. “She has done wonders with this program in a measly three months. I’m just a part of it.”

These things arise between coaches. They arise within athletic programs. They don’t often end with a kiss and a hug behind the gym, and a hand-in-hand stroll to the car.

“We’re part of each other and we’re part of the team,” Coley said. “I don’t know how to say this, but the way Michelle and I care about each other, at a different level, is the way we care about these girls. I think they see the passion and the love we feel for each other, that we feel for the sport and that we feel for them.”