AS PER PEARLSUJAM.....
Being the wife of a big-time college football coach can be challenging, with the long hours and heavy commitments, but Fumi says they have found their sweet spot in Happy Valley.
“I went to school at Washington State and this reminds me of Pullman, so this is a good speed for us. I like that we can get to James pretty quickly and pretty conveniently,” she says. “Because sometimes he’ll have free time and call and say, ‘What are you guys doing, can you come up for dinner?’ And we have lived places where that is a 45-minute drive, versus a 10-minute drive. So for our family, it works really well.
“It is nice; it is a small community, it is easy to get around, parents and kids know each other,” she adds. “Sports teams, you kind of know the coaches. It works for us. Especially with where our kids are right now, it is a good fit.”
Fumi says she probably has a thicker skin than most others when it comes to dealing with some of the negative talk that comes with the territory.
“I’m a big believer in sort of living in our own world where the things that define James to us are different than the job that he does,” she says. “I always say that being a football coach is what he does, but being a father and a person is who he is.”
She adds later, “I think of the conversations that we have with our kids. One’s in middle school, the other one’s going to be starting middle school, and so they are kind of at an age where they hear the positive and the negative. So we have a lot of conversations about leading the right way and that their dad’s commitment is to the person and the young man that they’re mentoring and that he will never sacrifice their well-being off the field or on the field for the game.
“Our fear with our kids was always the amount of time that James would have to spend away from home because of his career. And I think being somewhere that has been so accepting of our family and that is a community that is so supportive of the university in general and of the football program, sort of validates what he does for our girls. And I think that that makes them feel very much like they’re a part of the program. It is not just what happens here, but out in the community when people have nice things to say and they get to hear that or they see that football poster on the wall in places around town, it makes them feel like they are part of something special.”
And while James might be perceived as the tough-minded football coach, Fumi says he is the more sensitive parent.
“He is pretty similar (as a parent) to the kind of coach he is,” she says. “He cares a lot. He is in the details. He’s paying attention. He is ambitious in his career, but I think he’s equally ambitious to provide a happy home for me and for our girls and a stable home for us. So I think with James, what you see is what you get. I mean, he’s the nicer, the more sensitive one of us, the warmer, the less sarcastic one of us. So, I would probably say the more patient one of us.”
“It is funny though,” James says, “because I don’t know that people would think that when they think of the football coach. People will come up to Fumi all the time and say, ‘Is he yelling and screaming and running around?’ because that is how they view me or view a coach, and it’s very different than that.”
“Yeah. I mean, James at home is pretty easygoing. I mean, he still has some OCD tendencies, but I just ignore them and at home he just has to let it go,” Fumi says with a laugh.