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What We Know, and What We Don’t Know

Ralph Amsden

I woke up this morning still reeling from Friday’s news about the passing of Vista Grande Athletic Director Louie Ramirez.

Reading Jason Jewell’s thoughts right here on Sports360AZ, and I’m not sure I could sum things up any better. No one expected this. As Jewell perfectly put it- “anytime you ran across Louie Ramirez, it was all smiles and laughs.”

The news has me thinking about what we know, and what we don’t know.

I’ll speak for myself- I don’t know what happened, or why it happened. I know a friend to the Arizona football and educator community is gone. I know he shouldn’t be. I know it hurts.

And if it hurts for the people he encountered and befriended in classrooms and on sidelines, I know the pain for those he loved the most must be unimaginable.

Honestly, I don’t know if I should be writing about this. Writing has always been the way I’ve processed emotions, and tried to simplify the complex, but there’s nothing to understand here. There’s only grief.

But I do know that I met Louie Ramirez because of this gig. In fact, it was something I wrote for this website, 10 years ago this week, that led to our introduction.

From there, any time I saw him, it was either in service of others, or out of a desire to be close to the game of football.

Ramirez was the first assistant coach I’d met that would shuttle kids to combines and camps. He was at Mesquite at the time, and from the beginning it was clear that his enthusiasm for the promotion and development of young athletes was second to none.

I knew he was unique. I didn’t know, until he made waves for taking over the head coaching gig at Marana, that he was YOUNG. All of our interactions during his time on staff at Mesquite, Truman State, and Northern Arizona University, felt like dealing with a peer. One thing I’m sure anyone will tell you is that he carried himself as if he belonged. I probably spent a good three years assuming Louie Ramirez was ten years older than he actually was.

Maybe that’s part of why this hurts so much- because “he belongs here” is as accurate a phrase as I can come up with to describe Louie.

He belongs here, and he isn’t here.

I know Coach Ramirez didn’t get along with everyone. I mean, who does?

I assume that being a head coach far closer in age to your players than their parents couldn’t have been easy. Assimilating into cultures at five high schools and two colleges in seven very different cities probably wasn’t always smooth. But if he had those struggles, I don’t know the specifics, and that’s because every interaction I had with Louie was always the same:

  1. Strikingly firm handshake into a hug
  2. Wide-stance, arms folded turn toward the playing field
  3. A verbal list of athletes or colleagues he was proud of or excited for, and the reasons why

I don’t know how he kept track of so many athletes and colleagues, on top of his intimate knowledge of all things Arizona State football. I know how I do it. It’s my job. But Louie always seemed to know more than me, on top of his own full-time gig.

Speaking of Arizona State football… I don’t know how Louie always managed to find himself on the sidelines before games. Every week, for years, I’d see him on the sidelines of Frank Kush Field during the pregame festivities. He rarely had a credential, and I never asked how he pulled it off. He just belonged there I guess.

Another thing I know is that Louie Ramirez loved his kids.

I don’t know the road that lies ahead for his children, but I do know that most of the messages I’ve received from devastated members of the community have been about ways to help them. If I hear of any, I’ll certainly pass them along.

There’s so much I don’t know, but I keep coming back to what I do know.

I do know that Louis Ramirez was loved. I do know that Louis Ramirez made Arizona high school and college sidelines a better place to be.

And I do know, for so many of us, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this world was a much better place with him in it.

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