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This article was published 10/3/2012 (3124 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Blue Bombers head coach Paul LaPolice and wife Tina LaPolice with daughter Payton, 4, and son Joshua, 15 months. The family is rooted here in River City.

In the throes of giving birth to their second child, in their mad dash to St. Boniface Hospital, Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Paul and his wife Tina LaPolice heard a beep, beep. It came from a nearby car when they had stopped at a red light.

"I was in full-on labour and thinking I was going to have our child in the car," Tina said of that anxious mid-October night in 2010. "We look over and in the car next to us is a guy giving us the thumbs up. He rolls down his window and says, 'Good luck, coach. Way to go.' I'm thinking, 'Wait a second, I'm the one having the baby here.' "

Paul told this story about the birth of their son Joshua, now 15 months old, at a recent luncheon in honour of his coach-of-the-year award nomination, an award subsequently won by B.C. Lions head coach Wally Buono earlier this year.

Paul, who is from Nashua, N.H., told the tale to illustrate the depth of the province's passion for its CFL team, to emphasize the extent to which local fans care about all aspects of this community-owned organization.

Of course, the story also suggests the degree to which this young coach -- he's only 41 years old -- and his family, Tina, 39, daughter Payton, 4, and son Joshua, have connected with the community. A closer look at this connection gives a sense of the commitment and character of a coach entering the pressure-drenched and hyper-scrutinized third and final year of his contract.

Context matters and it particularly mattered when it came to hiring LaPolice as Winnipeg's new head coach in the winter of 2010. Mike Kelly, who preceded LaPolice, directed the club to a 7-11 record in 2009. Kelly's acerbic and combative approach, which a winning record might have made more palatable, left many offended, both within and outside of the organization. When Kelly was fired with two years remaining on his three-year deal, then Bombers chairman Ken Hildahl said it was based on an evaluation of Kelly's performance. That hours before being axed, Kelly had been arrested and charged with assault, charges that were ultimately dropped, had no bearing on the decision, Hildahl insisted. Shortly before Kelly's release, Bombers CEO Lyle Bauer resigned.

Standing amid this scorched turf, Hildahl vowed that, "The people we put into both of these positions we want to be rock solid... somebody that's going to come and repair some of the damage done to the brand of the football club. I want to say to the fans that these moves are made to try and re-establish the trust they should have in this football club."

It's in this crucible that the Bombers board selected its new general manager, Joe Mack, and through Mack, LaPolice.

"(Paul) is unfailingly polite," said CJOB sports broadcaster Bob Irving, who has covered the team since 1973 and co-hosts the coach's radio call-in show. "With the callers on our show, he's just respectful. It is as simple as that. I think he's doing that because that is the kind of guy he is, first of all. But secondly, he understands that he's the head coach of a community-owned football club and it's an important part of the role he has."

Irving added, "I've been around a lot of coaches here and they sort of come in all shapes and sizes, but Paul is as good a guy as you'll ever encounter. And, again given that this is a community-owned organization, and has been forever, it is important that the people representing it, represent it in the right way. Paul does that as well as anyone I've seen in that role."

Paul has a not-so-secret weapon in helping him mesh with Bombers fandom: his Selkirk-born and raised wife, Tina. Perhaps not since recently deceased coach Cal Murphy has the football club had a head coach so personally invested in the community.

"My biggest form of connection is that I'm married to someone from Manitoba," LaPolice said. "And everybody seems to know it."

But Tina's much more than merely "someone from Manitoba." She's a former Bombers head cheerleading coach and a lifelong fan of the team.

She's also not timid when it comes to sharing her passion for the Blue and Gold, as many fans learned last summer thanks to a playful tweet directed at Hamilton Tiger-Cats receiver Dave Stala. She razzed Stala by calling him a "hacky sack boy" after he mocked the Bombers' discovery of "Swaggerville."

While the exchange garnered an inordinate amount of media attention -- perhaps, in part, because Tina wasn't behaving like a voiceless cardboard cutout, the cliché of a good coach's wife -- and it required her to reconfigure her Twitter account, her tweeting did clearly signal her solidarity with fans.

"I've been a Bombers fan for as long as I can remember," she said. "We'd drive into the city with our parents, grab a hotdog three hours before a game, and settle in. I'm definitely aware of the passion that the fans feel and the need for a Grey Cup. I know and (she laughs) Paul knows."

Before Paul met Tina, before he became the Bombers head coach, LaPolice came to Winnipeg as an offensive co-ordinator in 2002. Even then it was important for him to buy a house and live year-round in the city. "I was a single guy in Linden Woods with a 2,000-square-foot home and everyone with families was looking at me," he said, chuckling. "I always felt that you had to be in the community because there was so much work to be done. That's just my philosophy. I'm fortunate today that the majority of our staff live in the community and it shows a lot: It shows commitment to the club, commitment to the belief in what we are doing, and commitment to the community."

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Tina said buying a house in each CFL city that his job has taken them is a result of Paul's "all-in" attitude.

"I'm absolutely all in," Paul said, sitting comfortably, but not too comfortably, in his office. Behind him a sign, "I am Responsible," is tacked to a board beside pictures of his family. "Do I understand people's emotions as it relates to this? I do," he said. "How can I not? This is what I do for a living. This is what my mortgage is based on. As head coach, I am fully invested. So I understand the emotions going on. But I also understand that I am the best guy for the job, the guy who knows more than everyone except for maybe Joe Mack. I'm confident in what I'm doing."

At the end of the 2005 season, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats released Paul as their receivers coach. For Tina, it drove home a hard lesson, one that most coaches and players learn early in their careers: "This is a great game, but sometimes it can be a pretty crappy business." In Hamilton, "I was doing charity work and promotional work the day before they released Paul from his contract. And I just remember feeling so hurt," Tina said. "Paul had given so much time and I had given so much time, but yet they did not renew his contract. It's just one of those things you learn: It's a business; sometimes change is needed; and people move on."

Paul's response to this painful, pernicious and persistent uncertainty is not to run scared. He's no quitter. And that's not about to change. He also knows brooding over such things is an unhealthy way for him to work and his family to live.

"People sometimes ask me, 'Geez, aren't you worried about your contract?' " said LaPolice, fully cognizant of the current chatter that absent a contract extension he's a "lame duck" coach. "I tell these people, 'If you start worrying about that, you might be at a place for seven years and never establish roots.' That's not the world I, or my family, want to live in."

gdicresce@yahoo.com