VESTAVIA HILLS — A packed-out Vestavia Country Club was treated to a night of fun stories and banter from U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) and ESPN radio host Paul Finebaum in a CoachSafely Foundation event that raised $100,000 to go toward reducing the millions of preventable injuries sustained by young athletes each year.
Alabama's CoachSafely is a nonprofit organization that specializes in policy advocacy, research, and science-based education to advance its mission of reducing injuries in youth sports while keeping sports fun for children. After the Coach Safely Act, sponsored by State Sen. Jabo Waggoner (R-Vestavia Hills), was passed in Alabama in April 2018, the CoachSafely Foundation was formed as a nonprofit to advance the law in the state.
Tuberville and Finebaum, who have a long history dating back to Tuberville's time as a coach at Ole Miss and then Auburn, took friendly jabs at each other on Tuesday night over Tuberville's residency question, his run for governor, his coaching career and his time in Washington, D.C.
Finebaum congratulated Tuberville on his new national championship, which Auburn University recently claimed as one of its now-nine football championships. Tuberville had his ring on him and was proud to show it off at any mention of the 2004 season.
CoachSafely Foundation president Bill Clark noted that it was important to train coaches on how to protect kids who are playing sports while also fostering a love for the game they're playing. He wants Alabama to lead the way with the safety training program.
"Our big deal ... is so [kids] will play, and that's kind of my vision for what we're doing is that all of the things with youth sports is to get them out [playing] and keep them out," Clark stated.
"We've trained 70,000 coaches and affected over 1 million kids, and we just want it to grow from there and take it nationwide," he added.
Tuberville praised the foundation's efforts and described kids as the "number one commodity" and enhancing their interest in sports.
"I've always said there's two things that take the place of parents, even if you've got parents or you don't have parents, the two things that really generate discipline, hard work, effort, time constraint, working with other people, learning how to win, learning how to lose, it's coaches and it's sports," he outlined. "And so, this is just another advantage that I think we can use."
He said CoachSafely was teaching coaches and parents the right way to make sports have a lasting impact on everyone.
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