Year 2: Homeless

There’s nothing more nerve-wracking, to a coach, than a schedule filled with road games. Unfamiliar gyms; the monotonous hours spent driving or flying to a new city. Thousands of fans who want nothing more than for you to fail. The dynamic of playing on the road versus playing at home is drastically different, as one might imagine.

There’s a name in the basketball world for those programs who play a lot of games on the road. Teams that go on the road, in a set of circumstances that aren’t ideal, and take care of business. They’re called “Road Warriors.”

If I had to characterize my second year in Akron, I would call myself a Road Warrior.

Due to a scheduling snafu, Akron plays all but 2 of our games in January on the road. We also have to play the toughest teams in our conference, on the road, in February…

We’ll need to be Road Warriors ourselves.

I knew at the end of last year that I could not live in the same house as year 1. It was too cramped, in a bad neighborhood and just not a good experience altogether. Fortunately, some graduate assistant friends of mine were also looking for a house.

I had moved home to Virginia for the summer since I didn’t have an income to justify staying in Akron. I always assumed they would find a place and I would just move in. But as August kept getting closer we didn’t have a plan for a house. It makes life a little uneasy when you’re moving 7 hours away from home and unsure of exactly where you’ll be staying or if you’ll have a house at all!

A couple weeks before moving day, I received a call telling me we had found a house. Relief…but it was only short-lived as we didn’t close on the deal a couple days before I was to move back. Here I am, 3 days before classes start and I don’t have anywhere to live! There was only one solution…one of my friends offered to let me live with his parents until we found a house.

I’m thinking this couldn’t be more than a month, and I had no other options, so I moved into their basement. What I didn’t realize was that my friend’s sister, her fiancée, and her 2 children from a previous relationship were also living in the home. I felt like such a burden. The basement was nice, but I had to sleep on a couch for the first month.

One night, I came home from work late, only to find that the couch I had been sleeping on had been moved out. I panicked, was I going to sleep on the floor? I didn’t want to make a fuss, it is not my home after all, and they were gracious enough to take me into their home when they clearly didn’t have much room to fit me into their lives. So for 2 hours I laid with my back on the pool table, staring at the ceiling weighing my options. Finally, my friend brought down a twin mattress from upstairs and laid it in the floor. So for the next two months I slept on a mattress in the floor that my feet hung off the edge of the bed. Still better than the house I lived in last year…

The bathroom in the basement didn’t work. If I wanted to use the bathroom I had to use the one next to the family room, which meant I would feel like I’m imposing on their personal space each time I wanted to use the bathroom. I began using the bathroom at the gym, and just holding it at night until I could get back to work in the morning.

Finally in early November, we were able to move into a house. A nice house in a different part of the city, with 3 friends. The rent was very cheap. I finally had a “home” I could call my own. I didn’t have to hold my pee at night! The only caveat (and the reason the rent was so cheap), was that the house was still on the market and had a chance of being sold, and we would have to move out. We reasoned that with winter coming up, the house market would slow down and we could possibly make it through the whole season in the house.

We were wrong…

In early January the house sold. I have to find a new house…again. And I only have 2 and a half weeks to find a place, then move all of my stuff to the new place. I got lucky again as the people we were renting from were amazing and helped me find a new place to live in, as well as returned all rent paid up to that point, and negotiated the same price for the new place that we were paying at the old place. I am currently moving to the new house. It seems nice…full deck, 3 floors, carpeted, nice neighborhood and a shorter commute to work.

During all of this, I still had to go to work every day, take care of my responsibilities and go about my business. Never really having a true “home.” No more than 3 months spent in one place. Always on the move…always on the road. A true “Road Warrior.”

In March I will be moving again, back to Virginia, leaving Akron for good, taking a new job. I’m excited for the next chapter in my life, but I’m certainly not finished with this one! We are having a great season, first place in the conference. We have a great team that could steal some wins in March if we take care of business. Thanks to our scheduling mishap, we’ve had to do it on the road. We’ve been Road Warriors…

I have a great opportunity ahead of me. I have learned from some great coaches the past 2 years. I made some great friends. I learned more about basketball than I could’ve imagined. I will learn from a set of great coaches next year as well. But I gotta take care of business on the road first, it makes coming home that much sweeter…

Year 1: NCAA Tournament

As I stated earlier, we had a successful season. At one point we were 12-10, everyone (including our own fans) had counted us out. We finished the season on a 7-2 run, entering our conference tournament as a 6 seed. Meaning we had to play in the first round of the conference tournament.

It was at this time that I received a call from my family saying my grandfather was very ill. He had been in the hospital weeks prior, but he just didn't get any better. He died the morning after our first-round win and I returned home to be with family. I had to watch the rest of the tournament play out on television. Our semifinal game was actually the night of the funeral. I didn't get very many chances to check my phone, but when I did it was a welcoming comfort to see we were winning, and eventually won and earned a spot to play in the final against Kent State, our arch rival.

I stayed home and watched the final from my couch. A heavyweight battle between the two most physically talented teams in the conference. It took overtime to decide the game, but Akron won after 2 blocked shots on one possession denied Kent State the opportunity to win the game. As the buzzer sounded I remember running through my house screaming. In my first year on the college basketball scene, I get to go to the Big Dance!! A much-needed relief from the events of the weeks prior.

I returned to Akron in time to make the trip to Chicago. A 6-hour car ride with a co-worker and his girlfriend. I played Angry Birds the entire way until we reached the city. For those of you who don't know, the NCAA actually selects which hotels its competing schools will stay in during the tournament. We stayed at an extremely nice hotel in downtown Chicago, something everyone should get a chance to experience.

The day before the game we held practice at the University of Illinois-Chicago. We got a police escort on the bus, and a warm welcome from the UIC staff. We then had to have a "shootaround" at the United Center, which is more for the fans and press than it is for the players. One cool aspect of it, however, was walking into the United Center, where my boyhood idol (99% of basketball followers' idol) played.

I got to walk into the largest basketball stadium I've ever been in, and the school I worked for was the main attraction! The thrill of taking the court while the fans watch you warm-up is something I can't begin to describe. Chill bumps would be a severe understatement. The shootaround went well and we returned to the hotel for rest.

The next day we were in the lobby of the hotel, preparing to leave for the United Center, when our Director of Basketball Operations told us that we had to go to a meeting 3 floors up. If you haven't crammed 15 division-1 basketball athletes, 12 staff members, and 2 radio commentators onto 3 elevators, you haven't lived! We arrived on the third floor and were led down the hall to the left. As we got closer one of the staff members in the front opened 2 large doors leading to a ballroom.

Music started blaring, it sounded like our alma mater...

We get closer to the room, the music sounds as though our band is actually crammed into a hotel room practicing for the game that afternoon. I get closer to the doors, then I begin to hear chants and cheers from our cheerleading squad.

How cute, they've gathered to wish us off...what, all 15 of them?

I turn the corner, and to my surprise, it seems as if every Zip fan in the nation was crammed into this ballroom, a room much bigger than I anticipated. As the players made their way into the room the fans erupted with shouting and clapping. Goosebumps again...

Coach Dambrot gave a short speech and then we left to board the bus. Police escort through the city again. People stopping, turning, squinting their eyes to see if they could make out who the important people inside the bus were. "Who needs a police escort?" they had to be asking themselves. Little did they know it was a 15-seeded mid-major from Northeast Ohio...they would've been so disappointed.

The game itself was much tighter than Notre Dame wanted, with only a 4 point lead at halftime. In the second half, a poor shooting night for the Zips proved to be too much to overcome, losing 73-64.

Thus ended my first season as a Zip, and began my journey towards reaching my goals...

Year 1: Middle-aged women and The Dump

My first season in the college basketball world went very well. The Akron Zips finished 23-13, winning the MAC tournament, advancing to the NCAA Tournament in Chicago. The Zips ultimately lost to Notre Dame in the first round, but made a great showing, especially for a 15 seed. This makes 6 seasons in a row where the Zips have won 20+ games, as well as the fifth season in a row reaching the conference championship game (a feat only Butler and Gonzaga can also claim).

I spent the year as a volunteer assistant. No financial help from the school, a whole lot of burden on the parents. I took a second job on the side as a barback at a local bar that doubled as a catering company to the university. I spent my mornings in practice; my afternoons spent making sure players were in class. My nights were spent loading and unloading kegs, changing taps, taking out the garbage, and the worst part: getting hit on by drunk middle-aged women. Don't get me wrong, I'm not jaded to the notion of getting hit on, but when the pick-up line comes out of the mouth of a middle-aged woman and it involves "taking out THEIR 'trash'" and making sure I get proper "payment," the whole song-and-dance gets old.

Side Note: I've long wondered about the thought process in a pick-up line. Does it always need to be work-related? Will someone come up to me someday and ask to "coach" my "team" to a "championship"...? Can we just make an agreement, ladies of the world, if you wanna throw a pick-up line my way, that it not involve my occupation? In return, I promise I won't ask to flame-broil your burger...if ya know what I mean...

I didn't realize, until 3 months into the second job, that I was supposed to be getting tips (outside from the drunkies wanting to "tap my keg") from the bartenders. I estimated the loss to be around $300...bummer.

I had a third job...unofficially, that is. I was placed in a home with a kid we had recruited but was a non-qualifier and had to sit out his freshman season. My job was to keep him out of trouble and get him to class...make him eligible. He is an enormously talented kid, a Big East-caliber talent. But he only does things on "his" terms and if your agenda doesn't fall in line with "his" terms, then you're just out of luck.

I use quotations around "his" because many times "his" terms were not even that of his own, but an ever-changing mix of the girl he wanted to be with, his buddies from home, his new-found Akron friends, and sometimes the Akron staff....sometimes.

I thought I could balance all three jobs, but as the year went on and the season picked up, my roommate began to miss more and more classes. I couldn't leave him alone, he needed to get to his late classes. I couldn't carry all three jobs. I tried to reason my way through the problem. I didn't come to Akron to be a barback, the only paying job I had had to go...

The place we lived was a dump...

On the first day we arrived, we got a pamphlet from the landlord stating the house was filled with lead paint, and we couldn't sue if we ingested said paint. Way to set the tone...There was no living room. I had to donate my couch to a friend-of-a-friend because the doorways were too narrow to bring it in. No air conditioning. The bathroom had a peep-hole (presumably carved by middle-aged patrons of the bar). The stove stayed on the entire time we lived there, impossible to shut off, it was never used. The longest hallway was 7 feet long and just under 2 and a half feet wide. Our neighbor across from us committed suicide halfway through the year. The steps might as well have been a slip-n-slide in the winter. We had to carry our clothes outside, in the snow, to the basement, in order to do laundry. My roommate fell through the steps when one of the steps collapsed.

Fortunately for me, the people I worked with were as good as my house was bad. Genuinely good people, and a whole lot of basketball knowledge to learn from them...