The Football Coach Who Became An ER Nurse (Rebroadcast)
The Lead
Wondery
3.9 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 26 November 2020
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This spring, Alex Charlton — a football coach at Division II Midwestern State in Texas — made a bold decision. He left behind his coaching job to work as a nurse in Manhattan — in a COVID section of the emergency room — at a time when the coronavirus pandemic in New York was particularly deadly. The Athletic’s Chris Vannini tells us Charlton’s story. (This episode originally aired on July 10, 2020)
Read Chris Vannini’s story about Alex Charlton: https://theathletic.com/1917145/2020/07/10/alex-charlton-midwestern-state-football-coach-nurse-covid-19-new-york/?source=theleadpodcast
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, prime members, you can listen to the lead ad-free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:04.9 | Download the app today. |
| 0:07.0 | Hey everyone, on this Thanksgiving day, when college sports are teetering on the edge and |
| 0:17.7 | COVID cases are setting record highs across the country, we wanted to replay an episode that |
| 0:22.4 | first aired on our show back in July. |
| 0:24.8 | It's about a college football coach who left his coaching position to work as an ER nurse |
| 0:29.5 | in Manhattan at a time when the situation there was extremely grim. |
| 0:34.1 | The athletics Chris Fennini told us his story. |
| 0:37.8 | Enjoy the episode, stay safe, and have a happy Thanksgiving. |
| 0:46.9 | So Chris, who is Alex Charlton? |
| 0:49.8 | He is a graduate assistant football coach at Midwestern State, a division two school in |
| 0:55.7 | Wichita Falls, Texas. He's in his late 20s. |
| 0:59.0 | He first started coaching as a student at the University of Kansas in 2009, and he's |
| 1:04.5 | been trying to find his break in the coaching world pretty much ever since. |
| 1:08.1 | It hasn't changed from back in the day. |
| 1:10.5 | My dream was always to be the head coach of the University of Kansas and obviously coached |
| 1:16.7 | the chiefs as well. |
| 1:18.0 | And then those are my local programs that have been born and raised in Kansas City. |
| 1:22.7 | So he's been coaching for a while trying to find that big break to get a bigger coaching |
| 1:26.9 | job. And right now it's taking him to a division two school. |
| 1:31.3 | So this spring after COVID-19 became this global pandemic that we're still in, Charlton |
| 1:38.2 | became a national story. |
... |
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