“I worked, coached, and then came home to sleep,” Minnis said. “Then I got up, played with my son. We did that for a while.”

Juggling a job at the meat company, duties as a father, and a coaching position was no easy feat.

Working at the meat company was grueling, physically demanding work.

Minnis regularly woke up at 2 a.m. to get in early shifts so that he could get off work early enough to start coaching in the afternoon and see his son.

Five years after his son Josh was born, Minnis filed for divorce from his wife, and when Josh turned 10, he gained full custody of his son.

“I was off and on with my mom and dad until I was 10 years old,” Josh Minnis said. “After 10, I started staying with my dad during the week and visiting my mom on weekends. He didn’t raise me by himself, my mom also helped, [but] my dad has always been there for me. He made sacrifices like not going to college because he had to make sure there was food on the table.”

While Minnis found himself a single father at an early age, he stresses that he had help along the way.

“I was very lucky because all my family is in the Bay Area; I was lucky to have that support,” Minnis says. “[My ex-wife] would see him every other weekend. It wasn’t like she was a deadbeat mom. Yeah things were cramped, we probably got on each others nerves, but [Josh is] a very good kid, and he always made it easy on me.”

Although his situation was difficult at times, Minnis seems to have kept a positive outlook on his life.

“For me, I just did what came naturally as a dad,” Minnis said. “People were always amazed that I had full custody of him and he lived with me. My friends always tell me ‘your life should be a movie.’ And I always respond, ‘I don’t know, I’m just doing me.’”

One day, opportunity came knocking at Minnis’ door. The Castilleja School, an independent girls school in Palo Alto, offered him a full-time coaching gig.

“I decided that I couldn’t throw a hundred pounds of meat on my shoulder for the rest of my life,” Minnis said. “I wanted to get paid for what I could do and not what I could lift, [so] I actually went back to school and [received] an opportunity [to work] at the Castilleja School.”

Minnis arrived at the Castilleja School in the late ’90s.  There, Minnis coached everything from middle school softball to high school basketball for 11 years. He served as the middle school director athletic director and before he left Castilleja, he served as the interim high school athletic director while athletic director Jez McIntosh was on a sabbatical at Stanford helping out with the Stanford women’s basketball team.

“Ted rebuilt the water polo program at Castilleja,” McIntosh said. “We had a strong program in the 80s, but it kind of deteriorated. [Ted] was brought in in ‘98 and reestablished a competitive program here. He was a true ambassador for the sport; he probably approached every girl on campus to try water polo.”

While working at Castilleja, Minnis also coached for the Stanford University women’s water polo club team with current Stanford women’s water polo head coach John Tanner while attending classes at San Jose State University.