PHOTOS BY MARIE WHITTINGTON Vickie McQueen, wife of Lampasas head football coach Joey McQueen, cheers for the Badgers against Pflugerville Hendrickson during the team’s district-opener earlier this year. Joey and Vickie McQueen are on the same page, both literally and figuratively.

And it’s been that way for years.

Back in 1989, the coach’s wife began chronicling the couple’s adventures -- and misadventures -- as they jumped from one small Texas town to another.

While her writings are still in a premature stage, Mrs. McQueen hopes one day to have the stories published, with each chapter representing one of their stops along the head coaching highway.

It is a journey filled not only with the thrill of victory and the despair of defeat on the field, but Mrs. McQueen also expands on the sacrifice, selflessness, passion and dedication involved in being a coach’s wife.

Since coming to Lampasas, Vickie McQueen has added a number of members to her ever-expanding “coaching family.” Clockwise from top left are Terri Porter, McQueen, Margaret Lovett, Cammy Burns and Mindy Weyman with son Hayes. After all, a football coach’s job is not limited to four 12-minute quarters on Friday nights.

But Mrs. McQueen is not alone in her experiences.

Coaching staffs spend countless hours away from home. Film breakdowns, practices, traveling, scouting trips, training and game planning all occur on weekends or after a full day of teaching inside the classroom for most.

McQueen, who serves the dual role of athletic director and head football coach at Lampasas High School, admits to spending an average of 70 hours a week working. The number grows even larger during football season.

That level of all-encompassing involvement often leaves the significant others with the burden of holding down the homestead.

“I’m writing this book because a good coach’s wife is going to understand,” Mrs. McQueen said. “We become the cook, the babysitter, the accountant, and we have to wear many, many hats.

“It’s [common] for Joey to put in 18-, 19-, 20-hour days, and [I’ll] get to say ‘Good morning,’ or ‘Good night,’ or ‘I’m glad you’re home,’ or ‘I’m glad you’re safe,’ and that’s about it.

“It’s difficult, but you have to love it. If I didn’t love it so much, I’d have to say, ‘Please, this is enough,’ but I hope we can enjoy it for many years.”

After nearly a lifetime together, with a large chunk of Mrs. McQueen’s being spent viewing the action from ‘In the Stands’ -- a potential title for the book -- there is little doubt the couple will endure.

The two grew up in Ballinger, where they first met in kindergarten.

In high school, McQueen was the school’s quarterback, and she, the head cheerleader, was crowned football sweetheart by her future husband with a helmet.

Football has been part of her life ever since.

Married at age 18, the newlyweds attended Angelo State University, where Mrs. McQueen suffered an unexpected illness, spent a month in the hospital and had one of her kidneys removed.

With no insurance, the two dropped out of college for a semester but eventually graduated together.

Then the couple fully immersed themselves in the world of coaching.

In 1980, a wet-behind-the-ears McQueen began his first coaching gig at Wink High School, where he served as an assistant. The couple stayed for three and a half years before making the first of many moves to come.

Since then, there have been nine pit stops en route to Lampasas. Each one filled with memories.

From the birth of their children -- Ashley and Janda -- to a brief stint in the roofing business to the 213 career games coached by McQueen -- all of which his wife attended, including one from behind the end zone in a lawn chair after she underwent surgery that day for bone spurs in her foot -- the stops have been unique.

But each has a common thread. They have given the McQueens a “coaching family.”

“Every one of them is special to us,” Mrs. McQueen said. “This last move from Smithville to here was very hard because we left a family there that we had picked up in Howe [15 years earlier].

“Our girls were the same age. We went through the ups and downs of their teenage years together, the marriages, the births, everything. They went to all the schools we did from Howe [to Mason to Reagan County to San Angelo Lakeview and] all the way to Smithville. Back and forth, back and forth.

“I stayed with them the last four months when Joey came to Lampasas, and I still cry when I think about them. It’s very hard.”

Although difficult, the transition is something Mrs. McQueen has dealt with on numerous occasions.

It is not just the separation from friends and family that makes the moves so emotional. On many occasions, the coach’s wife has temporarily lost her husband as he works to build a foundation in the next destination.

After the relocation from Lakeview to Smithville, the couple drove approximately 250 miles one way every weekend to spend what little time they could together.

Eventually, however, they would reunite.

“We’re a package deal,” Mrs. McQueen, a teacher, said. “[Interested school districts] have to take both of us.”

Currently, Mrs. McQueen teaches sixth grade at Lampasas Middle School.

“She’s a great teacher, and I’m not saying that because she’s my wife. She really is,” McQueen said. “She has given up stuff for me more than I have ever given up for her.

“It is kind of natural because my position will pay more, and with my position sometimes you have to move to make a better living. Hers is in the teaching profession, and she could teach under a rock and still do good.

“She leaves because of me, but when we get there, we get to stay because of her.”

Since arriving in Lampasas in 2007, a new chapter in the couple’s biography has been written by the reading teacher.

After serving two years as the athletic director, McQueen was named head football coach of a team that went 0-20 over the previous two seasons.

In his first year, the varsity program went 4-6 in the regular season and reached the playoffs for the first time in a decade. The junior varsity team was 9-1, and the freshmen finished the season on a four-game winning streak.

Led by McQueen, Lampasas split the all-district Coaching Staff of the Year accolade with state powerhouse Lake Travis, a threetime state champion that is riding a 46-game win streak.

But even if the Badgers’ losing skid had extended to 30 games this past season, Mrs. McQueen said she would still look back with fondness on the year because, in the big picture, success is not about wins and losses.

“I want people to know that [I] cared about the coaching profession, and all of us are making an impact on the lives of kids,” she said. “[Despite] the hours and the emotions and everything that comes along with [the coaching lifestyle], it is all worth it.

“I wouldn’t give up being a coach’s wife for anything.”