
Coiro with Principal Melissa Scott. These two like each other and confer often. Coiro’s office, at rear, has a private entrance into the principal’s office.
its spectacular views of the Gulf. “It was as if they were family,” Coiro said. “They made us feel as if we belonged.” The next few days were spent taking inventory of the football equipment, a formidable task according to Monnot, visiting the gym (actually, the Marco Fitness Club, privately owned, and made available free of charge to MIA students – MIA has no gym of its own), and exploring the island. Now they were really hooked.
Coiro was taking over a team that, in their four years of existence, had never had a winning season. The MIA Rays went a combined 4 and 16 in 2012-2013, and 6 and 14 in 2014-2015. The season before Coiro took over, the team had slipped to 2 and 8. Coiro would try the philosophy that had worked so well at Grimsley High School, in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he took over a team that had won only one game the season before and improved the record every year of his tenure there. He views his main job as helping

Coach Coiro was called out of a meeting with the author to do some emergency taping for the MIA girls soccer team before an afternoon away game.
At Grimsley, as at MIA last year (where he went 3 and 7), Coiro’s teams took an initial pounding while he was teaching his players and infusing them with his philosophy. He wants them to take pride in what they do. “Sometimes you will be good enough to win and sometimes you might not,” he tells them, “I ask only that you win with grace and lose with dignity.” In the big picture, these are the lessons that matter, Coiro says.
So how is he doing? Has he made a difference in the year that he has been here? Kelly Monnot, until recently MIA’s athletic director, certainly thinks so. She believes that Coach Coiro is playing a major role in changing the athletic

At dawn’s early light, MIA football players congregate, awaiting assignments to referee flag football games of over 100 kids. Giving up most of their Saturday mornings during fall, they know their coach will be there too.
CJ Noel, an MIA senior left tackle, just might be Exhibit A for the impact Coach Coiro is having. Until this year, Noel was not interested in playing football for MIA and hadn’t played since the fifth grade. He did have friends on

Coiro watches as Kyle Ginther leads the team in prayer after a home game. For Breast Cancer Awareness Week, players and cheerleaders raised money to buy pink socks, shirts, pompoms, and letter M’s for the football helmets. Photos by Jenny Cartwright
Coiro sends his players out into the Marco Island community to volunteer and make some friends at community events, such as A Taste of Marco, The Pet Parade, and

Coach Coiro kneels to offer encouragement to quarterback Matt Grille, who was having a rough night.
“Right now, we are not the most competitive program on the field,” says Coiro, “We are however servants to the community, with great academic skill [3.144 GPA – team average], each working daily to have great character and display selfdiscipline. That in itself will translate into wins on the scoreboard. In terms of changes, we will continue to do what we do. It is my goal to change the lives of all of our student athletes for the better, not just our football players.” As A.D., he just might do it.
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