There are a lot of jobs that people are either crazy or courageous, or maybe both, to do.

Firefighters, war correspondents, fishermen, Mark LaFlamme’s book publicist. Noble professions all, except LaFlamme’s agent, which usually involves letting him bum all of your cigarettes so he won’t blow off a book signing to watch his beloved Royals get shut out by the Mariners. The man’s a nervous wreck over a .448 baseball team. Try managing that.

While dangerous, each of those jobs does have some level of appeal – excitement, adventure, a sense that one is making a difference in the world. One might not be able to see themselves plying those trades, but one could understand how the rewards far outweighed the hardship when the job was done right.

There is one profession, however, where it’s getting tougher to justify the grief they put themselves and, too often their families through. There is one job that I could have seen myself doing only a decade ago, but now couldn’t be forced into at gunpoint.

Coaching.

I can understand why people used to coach, back in the days before a sense of entitlement started contaminating virtually every segment of the sporting world. Certainly, coaches could make a difference in the lives of youngsters, just as other mentors did. And they could do it while simultaneously feeding their own competitive fires.

Coaching still has those rewards, but it’s just a matter of time before someone comes along to make you pull your hair out or drive your blood pressure up 30 points and you start wondering if becoming a scoutmaster would be a better option. I don’t care what level you’re coaching, either, unless it’s the tee ball team, where you can at least laugh off your left fielder digging up worms to eat while a ball rolls right past him.

Coach the high school hockey team and you’re besieged with parents constantly in your ear about their son’s ice time and lobbying the athletic director to confiscate your whistle and clip board.

Coach the college baseball team and you’re competing with peers breaking every rule in the book to recruit a shortstop.

Coach in the big leagues and you’re baby-sitting prima donnas who may grab you or your general manager or your geriatric traveling secretary by the throat because their lunch was interrupted or they didn’t get tickets for their cousin’s boss’ wife’s gynecologist.

It’s no wonder Terry Francona has circulation problems. Dealing with Manny Ramirez would constrict anyone’s arteries faster than eating a pound of salami every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

At least Francona has six figures in his bank account at the end of the year and doesn’t have messages from Manny’s mommy and daddy in his voice mail. Given the time commitment/compensation ratio of high school coaches, though, it remains a mystery to me why anyone would get into the high school coaching game in the first place, let alone jump back into it the way Jamie Belleau and Tim Farrar did for Lewiston High School earlier this week.

Belleau, who led Edward Little to back-to-back state hockey championships in 2003 and 2004, is returning to his alma mater to coach hockey. He’s replacing Norm Gagne, who was unceremoniously, um, how to put this, dumped in May after allowing the storied program to decay to such a point that it lost three straight state finals under his watch.

Belleau steps into a position where the meddlesome hockey parents who pushed Gagne out the door are no doubt emboldened by their successful spring coup. Belleau knows this. He’s a very bright guy, an attorney, and, as his record proves, a good coach. Despite his success in maroon and white, he still bleeds blue and white. The opportunity to coach his alma mater, the opportunity of a lifetime, was too good to pass up.

Farrar has bled green and gold most of his life, having played at Oxford Hills and coached at Fort Kent. He’s taking over the varsity boys’ basketball job at Lewiston to bring him and his family back closer to their roots and to take on the challenge of coaching a Class A program.

The word “challenge” doesn’t even scratch the surface on how difficult an undertaking the Lewiston varsity boys’ basketball team has been for over a decade. Anyone who saw how last year’s team, one of the most talented in the KVAC, disintegrated at the end of the season, knows this. After talking to Jason Fuller, Fern Masse and his mentor from Oxford Hills, Scott Graffam, Farrar knows it, too.

Years of player dissension, poor discipline, coach and parental-enabling and community apathy caught up with the Blue Devils last year. Interviewing Farrar earlier this week, it didn’t sound like he would tolerate a lot of nonsense. Of course, a certain hockey coach would tell him that guarantees nothing but a one-way ticket on the next train out of Lewiston.

But coaching is as much about believing in yourself and your ideals as believing in your players. All the x’s and o’s in the world are meaningless without principles and a spine.

Farrar and Belleau know far better than you or I what they’ve gotten themselves into. But if you think they’re crazy or courageous, or both, to do it, you aren’t the only one.

Randy Whitehouse is a staff writer. He can be reached at [email protected].