Any coach will tell you that third and long and coming back from down 20 in the second half are the easy parts of their jobs.
But talking to young, grieving student athletes about the death of a teammate - that's the real challenge.
Members of a community fractured will need each other to heal to come back together again.
Candles seen from a distance, this grieving Winchester, Massachusetts, community asking their space be respected as they remember 17-year-old Patrick Gill.
The well-liked senior football captain died Saturday morning in a crash along Manomet Road.
"It was yesterday morning about 7:30, I got a phone call, and we weren't sure what was happening at that point in time. And then you get another phone call and I had a pit in my stomach," Winchester High School head football coach Wally Dembowski said.
That pit represented Dembowski's unimaginable sadness at hearing the sudden news about one of his guys, a kid who everybody looked up to.
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"Patrick was the glue to all the kids, where he could relate to freshmen as well as seniors," Dembowski said.
He knows Patrick, a star wide receiver, had a bright future ahead of him.
He scored a touchdown Friday night and was likely going to play football and lacrosse at the next level.
Coaches always have stories to tell about their players, able to find humor and solace in memories of the best times, now passed by.
"We had a little meeting last year about a route that he didn't always run right. And I kind of bumped the wall a little firm and something fell off the wall. And I said, you have to clean that up because you made me do that so he kind of smiles and said, 'yup, you get it done.' So he was a shining star in the wall of many shining stars in this building," Coach Dembowski said.
Dembowski will talk to the team tomorrow, but it seems likely they will practice and, in his words, try to find some sense of normalcy and play their game this weekend.
They'll have the initials PG, for Patrick Gill, on the back of their helmets.
