When Coach talks, kids listen.
At Jefferson School, Sandra Asimos is known simply as “Coach,” a physical education teacher with a commanding personality, a forceful tongue, a can-do attitude, and more pep than the Energizer Bunny. Only in her second year at Jefferson, she is the school’s reigning “Teacher of the Year.”
Asimos is passionate about physical fitness because she has been to its mountaintop and to the depths of its despair: She was an elite multisports youth star, a three-time soccer All-American who made the Women’s National Soccer Team in 1984 but later nearly lost it all, struggling for months to regain use of her legs after getting struck by a drunken driver.
By teaching physical education and by coaching after-school sports teams, Asimos said she is teaching kids about life, too: The importance of staying healthy, nutrition, exercising, setting goals, dedication, time management, collaboration, communication, teamwork, and other life skills.
“I try to make my activities or sports fun and challenging for all my students so they might continue to move their bodies as they grow up and make it a lifetime habit,” she said.
Not only does she teach physical education classes, Asimos coached Jefferson’s after-school flag football team and Leroy Greene Academy’s soccer team this fall. She’s preparing for Jefferson’s upcoming basketball season. She also coordinates an after-school fitness club and a running program that includes competing against two other schools in long-distance races – up to 3 miles long – and participating in a local “Runnin’ for Rhett” charity fundraiser.
Asimos said she only has three rules in physical education: Listen, follow direction, and try, always try. Don’t tell Coach you don’t have time to exercise. Where there’s a will, there’s a way: If you’re watching TV, do pushups when a commercial comes on. If you’re playing a video game, do situps when you lose a virtual life. ““Do something instead of just sitting the whole time,” she said.
Once Sacramento State University’s women’s soccer coach, Asimos joined the Natomas Unified School District in 2007 and served at Natomas High, Two Rivers Elementary, and Witter Ranch Elementary before coming to Jefferson last year.
Jefferson Principal Danisha Keeler described Asimos as an exemplary teacher with “an undying and admirable ability to work with all students and motivate them to achieve success.”
“Coach has a contagiously positive attitude each day that she comes to work, which transcends across the Jefferson campus,” Keeler said. “She knows how to hold students accountable with a smile and gets the desired outcomes. Staff members always walk away from a conversation with her feeling good. She is an asset to the team, school and district.”
