After successfully guiding Queen’s record-breaking offence to an 8-0 season and making the shortlist for the head coach position with the University of Toronto Varsity Blues, Gaels’ offensive co-ordinator Warren Goldie has decided it’s time to leave football behind.
Because the positions he held (quarterback coach, receivers coach and offensive co-ordinator) at Queen’s are all part-time, Goldie also worked as a real estate agent to make ends meet. He said after nine years he couldn’t maintain his commitment to Queen’s football.
“For eight to nine years I thought I was pretty good at juggling the sacrifices and the benefits,” he said. “But after nine years the sacrifices started overwhelming the benefits. I’ve taken the 100 hours a week out of my coaching which I’ll be putting towards real estate.”
Goldie said the new responsibilities that came with providing for a young family forced him to choose between careers.
“I made the decision at the end of last year,” he said. “It was very difficult to make up my financial responsibilities [while working as a part-time coach and real estate agent]. I needed to concentrate on a single career, which would have been possible with the U of T job. But I didn’t get that so I’m concentrating on the real estate.”
Football head coach Pat Sheahan said it was difficult for Goldie to maintain his focus on football given other financial commitments.
“Warren has been in a limited earnings position for years,” he said. “You can only go on so long in that capacity. He had a passion and hoped it would continue into full-time. … When we came back in the New Year, there were some new forces in his life. He doubles as a real estate guy. He was finding it difficult in the current market not to put more time into real estate; football has taken an inordinate amount of time.”
Sheahan said Goldie was unsure of his ability to continue coaching football when he was forced to face working part-time for another year.
“When he didn’t get the job with U of T he was left wondering [about] his future in the sport,” Sheahan said. “Opportunities for the young coach in the football paradigm are few and far between. … This is unfortunately the plight of the young coach. They can only chance the coaching dream for so long. It got to the point where it wasn’t a financial option anymore.”
Even though Goldie was hugely successful at the helm of Queen’s offense, guiding them to a 4-4 season in his first year in the position, 6-2 in the second and 8-0 in the third, Sheahan said he wasn’t worried about the future of his offensive machine.
“I’m the architect of the whole package we’ve used the past few years,” he said. “I gave him room to modify it slightly but we stuck to a system for exactly this possibility. There are some capable offensive coaches who remain on staff. There’s reason to be optimistic about next year’s offence.”
Since Goldie has worked with the Gaels offence, a large number of players have gotten shots at the CFL, including Craig Spear, Brad Smith, Rob Bagg, Scott Valberg and Mike Giffin. Sheahan said Queen’s football’s ability to develop CFL-calibre players won’t end with Goldie’s leaving.
“He’s not the only set of hands there,” he said. “Warren played a big hand there, but it’s a team approach. I’d like to think that the way we played offence over the past eight years has had a hand in player development. My expectation, even though Warren is moving on, is that we’ll continue to develop great players.”
Leslie Dal Cin, director of Queen’s Athletics and Recreation, said there was no available funding for another full-time coach given the amount of resources already going into the football team.
“Our football program has two full-time coaches,” she said. “I would say that regardless of whether a coach is full-time, part-time or seasonal, the hours they spend is far more than anything we could pay them.”
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