Rats, cockroach coffee and the lack of cleanliness

Fight Club articles are real stories sent in from our members highlighting the realities of youth and high school sports.

"I spent seven years coaching soccer and football at a local high school in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. Each of the seven years I was present, I dealt with some of the most disgusting conditions imaginable. Every single year we were "promised" with changes that never happened.

To start, the school had a rat problem. When I say a rat, I don't mean a small, cute mouse, I am talk about a large rat. Every day I would walk into work and find rat droppings and pee over my desks. I had to consistently buy wet wipes and hand sanitizer to clean my coaching desk, classroom desk and all my items I had out. If you ever left a single item of food (like a bag of chips) you would walk into a disaster zone of epic proportions, finding the bag destroyed and covered in rat droppings and pee. It was a soup kitchen buffet for rats. I locked my food into a cabinet and made sure my mini-fridge was closed, because if you accidentally left either of these open, you were a victim of a rat crime.

One night after a varsity football game, we were up late uploading film and I knew I had to be back early in the morning, so I decided to sleep on a couch in the coach’s office. I woke up in the middle of the night, and I can only describe the sounds I heard as a "thousand footsteps" all around me. I got up, flipped on a light, and found dozens of rates scurrying around the office trying to get away. I've never once stayed in this building overnight again. I might have vomited in a toilet somewhere.

The cockroach problem was worse. These weren't small roaches, these were "hood roaches" as I called them. They couldn't die, no matter what you did. The roaches were everywhere and got into everything. They would crawl into your backpack, climb into your jackets, pants, or any clothes you left out. I would come home and find a roach in the house and scare my family half to death. My wife would scream bloody murder and I knew exactly what it was every time. I used to own an older Keurig machine, one that had a water container on the side with a small opening to let you take the lid off with ease. Daily, the roaches would crawl into the Keurig water container, fall in and drown. I used to do daily cleanings anytime I used the Keurig and would wash the water container every single time I made coffee whether a roach was present or not. Also, I was notorious for leaving a mug out with a little bit of coffee in it. I was always loved the drink, but never finished the entire cup. Anytime I would come back into the office, I would find multiple dead roaches inside the coffee mug just floating in the brown liquid. If I ever stepped outside of the office for a few minutes, I always did a swirl to make sure a roach wasn't in the liquid. One time, I left a coffee mug with coffee over a Christmas break. I came back weeks later to find 6 dead roaches in the cup, as the coffee had encrusted into a paste with roach bodies. Henceforth, my fellow coaches and I coined the term "Cockroach Coffee" or "Roach Coffee" for short.

I could describe a million more details, but our admins, athletic directors, principals, and district officials always promised us that they would treat the issue, but it was never dealt with. I contemplated collecting video, photos and sending it anonymously to the news media, but felt I would end up being fired. I can honestly say it was the most disgusting thing I ever had to deal with, and luckily, I have moved to a new school district where this isn't a problem anymore.