"Just get the ball to Louie!"

Jeff Nelligan • October 17, 2019

How your kid can develop confidence and self-awareness

The most remarkable coach the boys ever had was a guy named Mark Dubick, a Bethesda neighbor and a former member of the high-powered University of Maryland lacrosse team. The boys were aware of my total respect for the guy and once when the three of us were driving home from a practice, the eldest son asked, “Dad, why do you like Coach Dubick so much?” “Because he’s exactly like my old Drill Sergeant Harrison,” I responded, “Except Coach is short, white, and Jewish.”

Dubick personally selected a top-caliber lacrosse team from about 150 kids at tryouts. Yeah, “cuts” after a “competition” where kids were “judged” on their “abilities” – that is, a setting before which kids had practiced endless hours and weeks and months trying to improve their skills. Imagine that. Every kid on the final team was good; there was one kid who was great – Louie, Coach Dubick’s son.

When things in a game got tight, there was one hoarse, penetrating yell you could count on: “Just get the ball to Louie!” I can still hear it and see Coach Dubick, always unshaven, his wispy hair flying, gesturing wildly with his clipboard. Far from being some crazed Dad, he was exactly right. Louie was that rare player who could score at crunch time. He was one reason the team was 37-1-1. When the heat was on, Louie gave us the best chance to win and every kid and parent knew it. Driving back from games, we’d talk about it all and some-times mimic Coach Dubick. It wasn’t in jest because we all respected the guy.

It was a classic phrase and one day the old man decided to make a point. “You know guys, we always hear Coach yelling for Louie when the team’s in a hole. But you know why? Because,” and here I pointed at my eldest son, Louie’s teammate, “we know what he can do and you can’t do. Louie scores when it’s all on the line and you can’t. Yeah, you’re good and that’s why you’re on Dubick’s team. But the key is, in any kind of situation you are in, you gotta know how you fit into it all, how you can help the overall effort. You gotta be self-aware and that means, when you’re on the field, you gotta work to get the ball to Louie.”

That afternoon as we discussed what I’d said, the explanation began to make sense to them. The boys, like most boys, were in all sorts of activities at the time, including school, and they intuitively knew how good or not so good they were at each. The idea and phrase resonated with them because it gave them a foothold on understanding where and how they stood in the various stuff they did. Indeed, that’s a big part of a boy’s life: Knowing how and where he fits in.

And let me emphasize, this is a landscape way beyond the athletic fields – it’s the whole adolescent world.

The most obvious settings are the easiest: In a classroom, means respectful behavior, expending effort. In social situations, knowing your role means getting along, being genuine, contributing to a peer group with conversation and humor but also listening more than speaking. Self-awareness marks that kid who knows himself and hence, doesn’t yield to the pressure to do something stupid.

One of the most important conversations I ever had with my eldest son consisted of eight words. He called me from a friend’s house at 10 p.m., an hour before I was to pick him up. “Hey Dad, you need to come get me.” “Oscar Mike,” I replied reflexively, our family code for ‘on the move.’ Driving him home, my son explained that some unknown kids had showed up at the house and started drinking. My kid panicked: Totally illegal behavior, parents letting it slide, kids getting drunk. Maybe the Police. He knew his role alright – get the hell out of there.

He knew that if the worst happened, and it often does, that he’d be caught up in it. And then forget it: Forget all the achievements; forget the work in the class and on the fields. It wouldn’t be an asterisk on his record, it would be a big fat red check mark.

The point is, a kid who knows his role – who has perspective on his surroundings - who intuitively knows the next, right step - is not going to find himself in compromising situations.

The older they got, the more they were beginning to think for themselves, and a few times that meant big-time reproach for the old man. When the eldest was in 9th grade, I goaded – there’s no other word – him about running for a student government office at school. “Hey man, you have a lot of pals, you’re a pretty good talker, you really oughta run for something.” He kept demurring and of course, irritating Dad that I was, I kept at it, not even considering that he was fine with who he was at school and what he was doing.

Then one day, in the midst of another round of my nagging, he looked at me long and hard and said, “Dad, I’m getting the ball to Louie.” I was stunned, and silenced. And that was that.
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Flag duty and the end of 30 years in politics

By Jeff Nelligan • January 29, 2026

It's 8:30 a.m. on a humid August Tuesday and I’m on the roof of the U.S. Capitol, the Dome rising 280 feet directly above. In my arms is a stack of thin boxes and I’m navigating a plywood gangplank leading to a rusted 15-foot flagpole. A colleague joins me carrying more boxes. She opens one and hands me a 2’ by 4’ American flag which I affix to the pole’s lanyard, raise and lower quickly, unfasten and hand to her as she hands me another. A third colleague brings out more boxes and retrieves the ones containing flown flags. This little dance continues for three straight hours. Afterwards, my colleagues and I carefully re-fold each flag and affix to it a “Certificate of Authenticity from the Architect of the Capitol” reading “This flag was flown over the U.S. Capitol in honor of____” and fill in the blank: “The Greater Bakersfield, California Chamber of Commerce”…the 80 th birthday of Wilbert Robinson of Bowie, Maryland, proud veteran of the Vietnam War…” We will perform this task for five days a week until Congress returns from recess. This is my very first job in Washington, D.C. and obviously, I have what it takes. *** Flag duty began my 32-year run in politics and government, which ended last week. It included four tours of duty on Capitol Hill working for three Members of Congress, two Presidential appointments serving Cabinet officers in the Departments of State and Health and Human Services, posts at two independent agencies, and a career position at FDA. The jobs were a mix of purely political positions where being on the south side of an election meant cleaning out your desk and getting good at catchy LinkedIn posts – twice that happened - and career federal government stints where the stakes were less exhilarating. *** I worked principally as press secretary and special assistant. The former job, a common D.C. occupation, was transformed in 2008 with the onset of social media, morphing from daily pronouncements of your boss’s wisdom on the issues of the day to rapid-fire postings on the obvious unreasonableness, even cruelties of your opponents. Sound familiar? As for the latter occupational specialty, special assistant, the terms ‘bagman’ or ‘fixer’ are more apt: A guy always two steps behind the principal but always ready to step up and fix whatever problem arose in daily political life. Need a special vegan lunch for Congressman Busybody, White House tour tickets for the Big Bad High volleyball team, or the personal phone number of the executive assistant to a heavy-duty lobbyist? I was your guy. Every leader needs a fixer. Like anyone else who works in D.C., I occasionally participated in a glam political moment – you know, that unique, epic event that would never ever be forgotten in D.C. history Until it was. *** The best part about government life was working for many men and women who were at the top of their game in the D.C. Swamp, one of the toughest arenas on the planet. Their success, from the vantage point of your humble correspondent, was attributable to four simple rules of life. “If you can’t measure it, it didn’t happen.” Every office I was in kept metrics on virtually every aspect of the principal’s week – how many meetings and events attended, X posts, interviews, committee votes, constituent letters, action items completed from memos?! Numbers, numbers, and always keeping score – and always the quest to improve. “Never lose it.” In a lifetime of political jobs, I may have heard a boss raise her or his voice half a dozen times, even during and after major-league setbacks. Self-control was their hallmark. One boss, a powerful House Committee chairman once confided to me, “I’m fine that 80 precent of my job is humoring these guys, no matter how crazy they get.” An equally valuable corollary skill: Humility. The ability of these individuals to admit to colleagues and staff when wrong on a particular issue. Which counterintuitively only upped their long-term credibility. “Something’s always gonna go south.” Always the need for a plan C. Every initiative during an upcoming day was scoured for what elements would interfere and how, if they occurred, they could be ameliorated. Hence, in the rare times when things did go south, there was always preparation in advance for getting to 80 percent of what was needed. “Good is not good enough.” Successful politicians and government leaders – and their staffs – never get complacent. If they do, they’re not long for the Swamp. Everyone is always hustling for the edge. A useful corollary learned from an NCO when I was in the Army: Always have your hand up. Volunteering is at the heart of the hustle, the cheerful willingness to take on the new and unknown and do whatever it takes. *** And that’s how it all started. On the second day of my first congressional tour the Member solicited volunteers “for a fun recess job that’ll get you out of the office.” It was flag duty and from that day onwards my government career could only go up. *****