Following his retirement from Bothell High during the 1991 season, former football coach Dwight “Dee” Hawkes has busied himself with a number of sports-related projects to keep himself in the game.

Hawkes, 80, was inducted into the Bothell Wall of Honor in 2013 and recently completed his fifth book with a pair of books in the works.

Unlike the first four books, which focus on football, Hawkes, who led the Cougars for 18 seasons, wrote his latest work as a guide for the workers behind the sport — the coaches.

“What Every Coach Should Know” is written in Hawkes’ own voice, as though you were sitting next to the coaching veteran and hearing the words in person. The inspiration came while researching his last book on football. Hawkes came across coaches on his travels who surprised him in the way they treated their athletes, which made him wonder: are there books that teach coaches how to behave?

“I found nothing in research that said you put a different hat on when you go into coaching,” Hawkes said. “If you’re the president of a company, you can’t use the same kind of behaviors and get the same reactions from players if they’re a set of 20-year-old girls.”

“Just because you think you’re a coach, that doesn’t make you a coach,” he said. “It’s a lot of hard work.”

The book is centered around the mental image of a stop light, with green representing good coaching, yellow representing questionable coaching and so on.

Hawkes said he likes the “purity of the amateur game,” and that his biggest accomplishments weren’t about winning and losing. The book reflects Hawkes’ ideal, encouraging coaches to help athletes live up to potential rather than damaging a relationship to help win games.

“I honestly think every coach from Pete Carrol to Steve Kerr should read this book,” Hawkes said. Anybody should read it. The book requires [coaches] to check your own behavior, and check every year based on who they are. Adapt your coaching style to fit the personnel you have.”

Hawkes made one final request, something echoed on the inside cover of “What Every Coach Should Know.”

“I don’t want the book found in a thrift shop,” Hawkes said. “When you’re done reading it, give it to somebody else.”

The book is available on Amazon and through other major book sellers.