I’ve been thinking a lot about soccer these days.

I know a little bit about soccer moms – heck, I’m married to one – and I know a little more about coaches’ wives.

I thought today might be as good a time as any to elaborate on those women who stand by their coaching men.

In my own coaching life, I’ve been blessed to have a devoted lady who has put up with all the idiosyncrasies of being married to a head coach. To say nothing of all the associated mood swings that come with winning and losing, a coach’s wife has to be the ultimate sounding board for the coach because she spends the most time with him away from the field of play.

If you follow this space, then you know that soccer is not my favorite sport. I have succumbed, however, to the love for the game that each of my three sons has shared. In fact, my own wife coached soccer at John Bapst Memorial High School briefly when they needed a support coach in Billy Meehan’s successful girls program in the 1980s.

I have met many fine soccer coaches and their wives along the way.

One summer, our oldest boy Scott was on a team with Maine soccer guru Billy Ashby. It was one of those summer travel squads and Bill was acting as a player-coach, a combination which affords the older guys a chance to keep their hand, er, foot in it and still coach and evaluate players for their own college programs.

I also had the opportunity to spend a little time with Bill’s lovely wife, Pam.

No quiet sideline fan, this woman was vocal toward all participants, yelling encouragement or rebuking poor technique. After all, she was a decent athlete herself at Easton High and the University of Maine-Machias, and she knew the score in terms of hustle and style.

Pam is a UMM grad, a place she first met her husband, who was the head men’s soccer coach there at the time.

An Easton native, Pam Ashby has followed Bill and his career to such wayward haunts as Bismarck, N.D., at the University of Mary and Owensboro, Ky., at Brescia University, but when the positions of athletic director and head men’s soccer coach opened at the University of Maine-Fort Kent, the Ashbys agreed that it was “time to come home.”

Pam, who runs her own accounting business, was succinct in her appraisal of her successful husband’s career.

“Our goal was always to finish Bill’s career in Maine,” she said.

In fact, coach Ashby’s current Bengals squad is off to an undefeated 12-0 start and is currently ranked No. 1 in NAIA Region X.

The recipient of numerous conference and national awards for his coaching prowess, the Lubec native told the BDN recently that he “tries to build an attacking style of soccer.”

On the sidelines sits his dutiful wife, Pam, who knows a little about soccer but a whole lot more about building a family. The Ashbys have two children, Kennedy and Jackson, who is already out on the soccer field honing his own skills.

Yes, she is now an official soccer mom.

At home, she’s enjoying every minute of juggling all the associated duties of parenting, running a business, and providing a shoulder for her ever-successful husband, win or lose.

“Life is good,” said Pam. “We’re finally home.”

And Maine soccer is better for having the Ashbys back here.

30-Second Time Out

I don’t know what I enjoyed more this past weekend, seeing the Red Sox sweep the Angels in the ALDS or watching the “Frank TV” 30-second spots, promoting comedian Frank Caliendo’s new half-hour comedy on WTBS.

Caliendo is best known for his dead-on John Madden impersonation, a talent that the real Madden, a current NBC football analyst, says he does not like.

The show debuts Nov. 20.

BDN columnist Ron Brown, a retired high school basketball coach, can be reached at bdnsports@bangordailynews.net