A member of the Foothills Composite Falcons’ first football team back in the days of Miami Vice and Tears for Fears is now coaching at his alma mater.
Foothills defensive back coach Bill Toso has a reminder of how long ago the 1980s actually were — and then some. He is now coaching his son, Falcons defensive captain Dallas, who is graduating from Foothills Composite in the spring.
Bill has coached Dallas for seven years, the last three at the high school level with the Falcons.
“Having my dad as a coach is nice — it makes it easier for me to remember things like little keys and tips to make the team and myself better,” Dallas said. “We talk about football all the time. Three hours of football practice and then we go home and talk football all night long. My mom (Nancy) gets a little annoyed.”
The Grade 12 student is careful to pick the times he calls the coach ‘dad.’
“I don’t think of him as ‘dad’ on the football field, but I do call him dad to get his attention every once and a while,” Dallas said. “He is my position coach, so I do have to deal with him quite a bit. He knows his stuff. He played for the first Falcons’ team and he has gone to a lot of clinics.”
Bill was a member of the Foothills Falcons’ inaugural team, the 1985 Falcons under the tutelage of two-time Grey Cup champion and former Montreal Alouette Ray Watrin, who is presently on Okotoks town council.
“I played wide receiver and defensive back,” Bill said. “That’s similar to what Dallas is doing now, but he is a lot better than I was… Ray was a great coach. Of course, he had that great big Grey Cup ring that he always wore that always got our attention.”
The Falcons went undefeated that first year, however, at that time Foothills did not go on to the provincial level.
Years later, Bill just happened to be watching one of Dallas’ Peewee football practices when he was asked to coach.
“I initially was just pulling up a chair and watching Dallas practice and then coach Cam Burbank came up and said: ‘Hey, we see you are here all the time, would you mind helping up us?’” Bill said. “I told him ‘I’m out here anyway, I might as well help… I love coaching kids. I had coached wrestling before that when neither one of my kids were involved.
“There was a stretch when during the year I would basically just have a little bit of July off. I would coach football, wrestling and then I would coach lacrosse.”
It’s better for Bill to be involved, rather than stressing from the stands.
“I like to be involved and to be honest, I’m a horrible fan,” Bill said. “I will be on the side yelling. So I might as well be on the sidelines and have some interaction in the game.”
He has, for the most part, been able to dodge coaching Dallas specifically. However, with Dallas playing both offence and defence that has become a lot harder to accomplish.
Bill has coached the Falcons’ DBs the last two seasons.
“To be honest, I probably yell at Dallas more than the other players because I expect more,” Bill said.
Dallas is following in his father’s footsteps as he has also started his coaching career. He stepped up to coach an Okotoks minor lacrosse team when it was in need last spring.
Coaching isn’t the only thing Dallas and Bill share. They are both highly competitive.
“The biggest trait that is similar to both of us is we hate to lose,” Bill said. “Everything Dallas does is competition both in sports and life. If we go fishing, it’s who catches the biggest fish.”
That competitive edge has helped Dallas in the classroom.
Dallas is an honour student and hopes to study nursing at post-secondary school in order to work overseas, possibly in a third-world country, in the future.
