Year 4: Up All Night To Get Lucky

“Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it, and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work – and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.”

 – Lucille Ball

Before you categorize this article as an ode to the scandalous actions that take place after dark and ONLY after marriage in a loving home (hat tip: Daft Punk), I’d like to make it clear that I’m speaking of a different kind of “luck,” if such a thing exists outside of the lottery. The sports world has always had a fascination with the notion of luck. One team gets “lucky” and wins, the other just had “bad luck” and walked away losers. This, somehow, has become an acceptable form of explaining the outcome of sporting events. As to not sit on a high horse, I should disclose that I’ve been guilty of using luck to explain how things transpired in a competition. Whether it was coach-speak or I believed it, I was a perpetrator and not an officer of the law in this case.

One of the most common practices in our culture is to tell someone who has an event drawing near, “good luck.”

“Good luck on your test today!”

“Hey man, good luck in the game tonight!”

“Good luck with your job interview. You’ll do great, I’m sure!”

“You bought your wife a half-eaten box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day?! …Good luck!”

Luck insinuates that you haven’t done the preparation necessary to be successful in your opportunity; that you need to rely on some power that deals out “luck” to some but not to others (a “luck fairy” if you will). Preparation for, and recognition of, opportunities are the only way to make sure the Luck Fairy sprinkles her Luck Dust¹ upon you when you need it most.

Hey, I get it. People only mean well when they wish you luck. It means they care. “Good luck,” is a universal phrase meant to convey that you are hoping that person does well in their craft. I understand. My thoughts aren’t directed at those who use the phrase as much as it is to those who believe it. You cannot bank on luck. You have to do the work necessary to perform a task, as you won’t walk blindly into success. What you’ll find is that if you do the work before your opportunity arrives, “luck” will have found you.

Last season, I coached a team that went 4-21. This season, I coached a team that went 17-8 and finished 3rd place in the same conference as last season’s 12^th place finish. I’d like to say it was due to our staff’s ability to come up with the right play or say the right thing, but it is really a credit to how our players prepared themselves for their moment. Their skill development, conditioning level, and their attention to detail all played major roles in their success. Want proof?

In 25 games this season, we played in 12 games where the final score was decided by 9 points or less. In those 12 games, we went 11-1 (including 2-0 when the game went to overtime). That’s the difference between our 17-8 season and a “bad luck” season of 6-19; that’s a HUGE difference!

So, as a coach, what do we do to facilitate these opportunities? We watch countless hours of film, looking for correctable deficiencies in our players, and exploitable tendencies in our opponents. We spend hours each week coming up with plans for practice to help correct our problems. We spend the bulk of our time on the road recruiting players who (hopefully) have strengths where we need to be stronger. When we get home at 1am from a long road trip, when everyone else has gone to sleep, we download, upload, cut, merge, watch and clip film so we can watch film with our players the next day. The only time I’ve ever dared to count the amount of hours we worked in a week it was 101 hours (we didn’t even get any Dalmations!). Regular are the nights where I see the strike of midnight from the confines of my desk or the open road returning from a recruiting trip.

We, quite literally, stay up all night…just to get “lucky”.

¹ – “Luck Dust” can be bought at your local Target. It only costs your credit card information and your first-born child. Batteries sold separately.

Year 4: ~1.53% and Beating the Odds

"In the back of my mind, I can never forget this could be gone tomorrow - and at this point I think the odds are against me... the chances of succeeding in this business are slim to none; there's only a handful of people that have long careers. You have to put in the work, you can never be satisfied, never take it for granted."

- Zac Efron


Coaches who have ever spent any amount of time looking for a job (i.e. all of them), know just how hard it is to get in the door, but many of them know it is equally as hard to keep that door open. I'm not a big Zac Efron fan, as I'm not a 14-year-old girl, but the quote makes a lot of sense with regards to coaching, as I'm sure it does in many other walks of life as well. 

My first two job searches were long, drawn out events that made me intolerable to be around. Rejection after rejection, many times having nothing to do with qualifications or a good fit. So this spring I decided I wouldn't actively chase jobs. If a school approached me, I would listen, and then weigh my options. Even coming off of a disappointing season, I was comfortable making a return to Emory & Henry. I love the players there, I loved the people I worked with, it was close to home, and I truly feel they can win there. Our head coach stepped down, and I applied for the head coaching position, knowing it to be a long shot. I made the initial cut from over 100 down to 30, and I'm unsure where I stood on that list, but I did not wind up getting the job...not totally unsuspected.

During the waiting period on that job, though, I was contacted by a college to come in and interview. They had heard about me from two different sources and wanted to bring me in. I went in for the interview, I liked the head coach, the area seemed nice, I was enjoying myself. Towards the end of the interview, however, the coach decided to explain to me just how hard it was to make it in this business. He basically urged me to get out while I still could. The scary thing was he actually made some compelling arguments. 

I left the interview feeling uneasy, but saw that I had a voicemail. The message was from a different school wanting me to interview. This school, Guilford College, had been a school I really liked while getting to know the schools in our conference. Guilford has been to 2 Final Fours in the last 7 years. They have had 2 National Players of the Year. They have sent multiple players overseas to play professionally, and even had one player who had a tryout with the Los Angeles Lakers and is still currently in the NBA Developmental League. It is a great program in a city environment (Greensboro, NC), that is also home to four other colleges/universities. I can be surrounded by people my age, in a city environment while winning games at a high level...oh, and it pays more than my previous job? Yeah...I want this job.

I go into the interview hoping to impress. I find out I like the people I would be working with, and really like the area. I am unsure of their interest in me, however, as many people would like to have this job. I leave the interview to head back home not knowing how things would turn out. As I'm sitting in my car, plugging my home address into my GPS, I get a tap on my window. It is coach Palombo, the head coach, and he asks me to think about accepting the position on my way home. I was floored. It is a three-and-a-half hour drive home. I only took one hour of that to call my inner circle before accepting the job. My "search" was done...in May, no less!

I've had a great summer recruiting for Guilford, but that experience will be for my next blog. For now, I wanted to concentrate on beating the odds...

One of the questions I get asked a lot in interviews is, "where do you see yourself in (x amount of) years?" My reply is always some variation of being on a staff at the Division 1 level. The subsequent question is always, "why Division 1?" That question is a little tougher, but my answer is that I want to compete at the highest level, and for college basketball, Division 1 is the king of the mountain.

I'm not alone in this dream. Many others just like me have the same dream. They work hard, they network, just like me. They've tried to put themselves in a position to succeed and move to the next level, just like me. So what sets apart those who are at the D1 level from those wishing to get there? Well, outside of more experience being at that level, not much really.

Now, I'm not naive enough to think that if a kid named Mike Krzyzewski Jr. wanted to be a coach, that he would have the same amount of odds as Joe Normalguy. This is seen in the fact that Richard Pitino Jr. went from Manager to Head Coach at the D1 level in 7 years. That just won't ever happen for ol' Joe.

So some have greater odds than others, but for the majority of coaches in this business, it all comes down to a lucky break, and then how you've prepared yourself for that break, and/or your ability to put yourself in positions where lucky breaks are more likely to happen.

Thinking on this, I decided to do a little research in May on what exactly the odds are that I'll end up as an assistant at the D1 level as well as a head coach. It should be noted that many of the statistics needed to get an exact number are not available to me, so I will do my best to try and note where I've taken some liberty with what the correct statistic would be. Regardless, the number won't be too far off from what it would be if the statistics were available.

So here are some concrete statistics:

There are 340 Division 1 schools.
There are 312 Division 2 schools.
There are 442 Division 3 schools.
There are 251 NAIA schools.
There are 444 (recognized) Junior College schools.

Each of these schools has exactly 1 Head Coach, so there are 1,789 coaches at least who are potentially looking to be Division 1 HC's or trying to keep their current HC job.

Division 1 schools typically have 3 assistant coaches and a Director of Basketball Operations. Some schools have Directors of Player Personnel and things of that nature but they are much harder to track. So for the sake of being fair to poorer schools, I will say Division 1 has an average of 3.5 "non-head-coach coaches" per school. At 340 schools, this means there are 1,190 assistant positions available at the D1 level, and 1,530 positions when you include head coaches.

Division 2 schools average about 3 coaches on their basketball staff including head coaches.
Division 3, NAIA and Junior College schools average about 2.5 coaches on their basketball staff including head coaches. 

Most Division 1, and some lower level schools have Graduate Assistants and Managers. Some of them only want school paid for and do not have the desire to become a coach, but many do, so this number will skew the results as it would be impossible to figure out how many of them want to move up.

If you were to take the positions available from all of these levels, this would give you a pool of  11,917 coaches for 340 coaching jobs as a Head Coach and 1,530 total at the Division 1 level. This leaves the percentages from that fact alone at:

Odds to become a Division 1 Head Coach: 1 out of 35 (2.85%)
Odds to become a Division 1 Assistant Coach: 1 out of 8 (12.5%)

Then you add in that it will take the typical coach around 10 years to become qualified for a head coaching position and by then you have added ~10,093 more graduate assistants and managers to the pool, while the current ones have moved up a level as well.

This number would push the percentages down to:

Assistant Coach: 1 out of 14 (7%)
Head Coach: 1 out of 65 (1.53%)

So there it is...all things equal, I have a 1.53% chance of becoming a Division 1 Head Coach. There are things I have in my corner that push that percentage up a little (I've had 6 years of experience and contacts at the Division 1 level already), but that is a pretty good estimate. None of this takes into account the number of high school coaches, AAU coaches and people who work with recruiting services who are trying to get their foot in the door as well.

Some sobering statistics:

Odds of dying of heart disease: 1 in 5 (20%)
Odds of dying of cancer: 1 in 7 (14.2%)
Odds of dying of a stroke: 1 in 23 (4.3%)
Odds of it raining today: 1 in 2 (50%) 
Odds of Alex Rodriguez taking steroids: 2 in 1 (200%)

It should be noted that I have a higher chance of dying of a cancerous stroke than I do of becoming a Head Coach at the Division 1 level. I bring this up not to say that I have given up on the dream, or that others should give up (though, that would increase my chances... #GiveUp), but rather to show you just how big of an accomplishment it is for those who have made it to that level, and how much of a thrill it will be when I finally make it myself.

Statistics many times give us better understanding of things that we can't easily comprehend. But statistics can be deceiving, especially when all the facts aren't readily available. But what were the chances that VCU makes a run from barely making the NCAA Tournament all the way to the Final Four? Florida Gulf Coast? Norfolk State? Odds are stacked against people all the time, not just in sports. You just have to find a way to curb the odds in your favor until you catch a break.

Overwhelming odds happen all the time in our daily lives. It's why Zac Efron's quote rings true for many professions, not just the entertainment business. But he's right, you can never take it for granted, you can never relax. There are always going to be a new crop of workers looking to knock you off of your spot.

For these reasons, a Zac Efron quote is relevant in an article about coaching basketball...and what are the odds of that?

Year 3: My First Final Four

Atlanta, Georgia....my favorite city!

Back in April, I decided to make the trek down to Georgia to take part in the NCAA Final Four festivities. As a coach, being at the final four is a big deal socially and professionally. The National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) holds their annual meetings during the weekend of the final four, so that comes with all kinds of meetings, seminars, and social events tailored to coaches. The biggest part in landing a job in the coaching field is your connections with your peers. These connections go a long way toward getting your foot in the door all the way to landing the job outright. With over 3,000 coaches in town for the festivities, the weekend is a must for those serious about advancing in the business.

The events begin on Thursday, and conclude with the national championship game the following Monday. I arrived Thursday evening with a "Young Coaches Social" at a local bar set to begin at 6:30. The weekend didn't start off as planned, as it was 6:15 and I was still sitting in traffic, a couple exits away from my hotel. I decided to call a cab service to have them meet me at my hotel and take me to the event.

Months prior to the event, my fellow assistant at Emory & Henry made the reservations for the hotel I would be staying in for the weekend. I had no clue what to expect, other than knowing it wasn't in the best of regions within the city. I arrived at the hotel at 6:35, parked my car and ran inside to check in. My plan was to throw my things in my room and meet the cab in the parking lot. The cab was already in the lot by the time I arrived and I asked him to wait for me for 10 minutes as I checked in.

I walk in the door, and a ragged-looking lady and a guy wearing all Jordan gear from head to toe are standing in line in front of me. The Jordan-clad man was growing restless with how long the clerk was taking to service them, so he started demanding his ID. Confused, I looked at the sign above the (assumingly bullet-proof) window that read "if you are a guest of a tenant, please leave your ID at the front desk." At this point, I knew I was in trouble.

A lady, who I can assure you wasn't in any danger of winning beauty pageants, stumbles out from behind a metal door, passing between myself and the mystery couple, almost falling out of the hotel front door. I don't have many options at this point, changing hotels certainly isn't one. It's final four weekend and every hotel has been booked solid for months. I'm also growing later for the social event I was scheduled to attend. Begrudgingly, I tell myself I won't be in the room much anyway, check in, throw my things in my room (smallest, most run-down room I've ever come across), and head out. On my way out, I'm walking down the halls and notice many of the doors on the hall are cracked enough to take a good look inside. I notice that in each of them there is either a woman, or a couple, laying on the bed, looking straight at the door. Only some of the rooms had the small, box television turned on, others just waited for "clients."

I finally get out of Hotel California only to find my cabbie has left me. Not wanting to go back into Hotel Rwanda, I decide to walk to the street corner to call the cab service again. While I'm on the phone, a dark red lowrider drives up beside me. The window rolls down and a guy with long dreadlocks starts to yell to me...

"Hey Buddy!!"

I don't acknowledge the guy, I'm clearly on the phone bro...

"Hey BUDDY!!"

I turn turn to him, give him a heads up, then go back to my phone conversation...

"Hey Buddy, you got a minute?!"

I finally ask him what's up, his response was "Ay man, where's your truck at? I got your stuff." I assure him I'm not who he thinks I am and go back to my conversation yet again. He drives off and I hang up, another cab on the way in 7 minutes. It's 6:48 and I'm very late.

Not 2 minutes after I hang up, another ragged lady comes by and asks me if I'm trying to buy. Not a fan of her sales pitch, I tell her no thanks. She leaves, making way for a couple walking in the opposite direction to approach me. The woman talks to her "man," and says "I bet THIS guy would like some." Now while they may fall for that pitch on the tv show Shark Tank, I wasn't intrigued.

7 minutes and I'm propositioned for drugs/sex 3 times...

Lowrider pulls back up, now with a passenger..."hey buddy! you sure you ain't want his stuff anyway?"

"I'm good..."

Make that 4 times...

The cab finally comes, drives me to the event, I have some much-needed drinks and an hour later I grab my things out of the hotel and beg my cousin to stay at her place (DURING the week of her wedding). Fortunately she's a saint and didn't mind to take me in, without even offering me a bump of cocaine.

I head back out downtown, determined to network and have a good time. I head to a couple bars with coaching friends and wind up having a good time. Despite the rough start, the rest of the weekend goes great.

Some highlights:

Attending some seminars/panels with many interesting coaches and new technology to help coaches

Dinner with alumni of coaching staff of Emory & Henry years past who have moved on to other schools

Concerts in the park (Zac Brown Band, Dave Matthews, Flo-Rida, Ludacris, Macklemore, Muse)

Division II and Division III final four

All of this while catching up with friends in and out of the coaching business, making some new contacts and having a great time. Unlike everyone else, on Monday as they were leaving to return home, I was staying in town for my cousin/concierge's wedding the following weekend. It was during this time that I got a chance to go play golf in Peachtree City, Georgia with my cousin's fiancee and his friends. By "play golf" I mean that we played best-ball and we used like 3 of my putts. Otherwise I spent 4 hours hitting boomerangs disguised as golf balls.

But easily the highlight of my time in Atlanta came when a college friend of mine caught up with me and asked me if I wanted to go to an Atlanta Hawks event. He is a season ticket holder, and they were having a function for the ticket holders at the arena. I got to shoot around on the court and take part in some skills events. I won the contests for Knockout and Free Throws, and came in second during the skills challenge. For my effort, they gave me two signed basketballs by Al Horford and Zaza Pachulia. Afterwards we got a free dinner in the clubhouse and some party gifts, a good time was had by all.

For the sake of my family, I should probably say the highlight was my cousin's wedding (it was actually fun)...so yeah, it was my cousin's wedding...

..............
..............


Not bad for my first final four. Next year is in Dallas, Texas and I plan on being a little more prepared (and booking my OWN hotel). It's a great event, even if you aren't a basketball fan. If you can get tickets, I would highly recommend attending one. And if you can't get tickets, just become a college coach and get them for free!

Year 3: Adversity

Adversity is a mirror. Adversity has a way of letting you know exactly who you are. It reminds you what needs to be changed, removed and retooled. You can’t hide from adversity, it will find you in all aspects of life, not just on the basketball court. Adversity in basketball is most well-recognized on the court, during gameday. Everyone gets to see the struggle each team faces to win the game. But adversity can affect the game before it even happens.

A coach has many responsibilities, and if you have read my blog before, this isn’t a new concept. But sometimes these responsibilities pop up without any ability to prepare for them.

When I first started my new job in September, we had 20 players. Division III allows 18 players on a roster once practice begins, so we knew we would have to cut two of them anyway. The very first day on my job, one of our top players was dismissed from school due to a legal issue. Soon after, another top player from the previous season decided not to return due to health issues. After that, the hits kept coming…

Knee injury to our most talented player, played in 2 games all year…

Player quits due to personal issues…

Player transfers to be closer to family/home…

Player quits due to playing time…

Another casualty due to playing time…

Player transfers for a career opportunity in another field…

3 players booted for violation of team rules…

We gained a player in December who had sat out the first semester due to academic issues, but the damage was done, we were down to 11 players. One of the players had actually quit, then came back when there was more playing time available.

So…

Adversity…

It’s easy to look from the outside at our 4-21 record and think we’re one of the worst programs in the country, but you’d be wrong. This is a team who has faced more adversity than any other I’ve ever been a part of. Those who stayed didn’t ask for this situation. They didn’t ask for their teammates, their family away from home, to quit on them. They didn’t ask for some of their peers to stop coming to the games when they didn’t like the overall result.

What they DID do was fight. Every day in practice, they gave every bit of themselves that we asked of them as coaches. And what happened because of it was they got better…WE got better. The reason it didn’t show in the win/loss column was by the time we started clicking as a unit, we ran into the toughest competition we would face all year. The last half of our season, we faced 8 (out of 12) teams who have won at least 18 games (out of 26), three of which were nationally ranked at some point in the season.

It did show, in a big way, if you were able to watch the games. We led at halftime in 6 of those 12 games, but our lack of depth usually gave way to mental and physical fatigue, and the sheer talent of the other programs were able to take advantage.

It was because of this fight, that I would not trade this year for spending time with any other program instead of Emory & Henry. I grew close to this group of guys. We were the ones taking our lumps each night, growing closer, when the easy thing to do would be to point fingers and blame others.

The most gratifying thing, to me, is seeing the light click in a player’s mind when he realizes “why” you do the things we ask you to do them, and not just “how” to do them. You get to see them grow as basketball players and learn life lessons through the game. Every one of these guys will face adversity after their careers are over. This is not the last time life will deal them a crippling blow. Chances are, it won’t even be the worst case of adversity they’ll face. What you hope for as a coach, though, is that you’ve given them the tools to stand up and deal with that adversity the same way we dealt with it together this year; to stand up and fight; to never point fingers; to never whine and complain about what is wrong, and change it to make it right.

It’s easy to be on the other side. Winning is all I’ve ever known. I made a plan when I started this whole coaching thing to never associate with a losing program. But this year has made me grow more as a coach (and as a man) than I’ve ever done with anyone else.

I needed to lose. I needed to be humbled.

We did. And I was.

You begin to find out that the only way to fight through adversity is to stop re-stating the problem. You have to come to the table with solutions. Everyone knows the problem. Fans can even recognize the problems. But they aren’t paid to come up with the solutions (thank God). That job is left for the coaches.

As a coach you have to take ownership of the losses, and reflect credit for the wins. You take the hit with the media and the fans when you lose, and when you win, you praise the efforts of the players, and the energy of the fans. It’s just how it is, and I accept that, it’s part of the job. I do find it comical how many “answers” come from people outside the program, and how sure they are their idea will work. I don’t look down on them, it’s not their job to fix our problems. They’re doctors, lawyers, accountants, customer service reps, etc. and I couldn’t do their jobs either. But I did get some funny “fixes”

“Why don’t you teach them to shoot free throws better?”

“You should spend more time on defense”

“You should play zone…no one ever scores on a zone”

“Have you tried scoring more points than the other team?”

Ok, so I made that last one up (or did I?). But sometimes I wonder what the general public thinks coaches do all day. Take naps and fart?¹ It’s my job to spend the 24 hours I have each day thinking of ways to make our program better, just as it is your job to make sure your company is more efficient/productive/better/etc. And I’ve taken the steps throughout my life to learn and study from those who have done it the right way to make certain I’m doing my job, at the very least, as good as you’re doing yours.

Coaches will always have critics though, you can’t run from it. You have to embrace it. I don’t know how many times I’ve been put in a verbal headlock by a fan or parent (or my own family) about how to make my team better, and sometimes they do bring up great points, so you can’t discount them all. I’m always reminded, however, of a quote by Teddy Roosevelt…

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Don’t be afraid to talk basketball with me (I know…fat chance now, right?). I do enjoy talking basketball at all times of the day. And if you’re particularly bold, I’ll even tell you why it is we do each thing we do and why we prefer that to other methods. Just don’t ever think we sit in the office and throw darts at a wall to come up with a plan. 

I only give you two pieces of advice if you wish to talk about my profession and why we do what we do:

Come with the knowledge that we don't make our decisions lightly. There's long hours of deliberation going into the smallest of decisions.

If you catch me after a loss, may God have mercy on your soul...

I won’t text my own mother back after some losses…ask her…I’m sure she’s reading this (Hi mom! Send $). I take my job seriously, and I treat each loss as a reflection of my abilities or inability to prepare my athletes. I’m not gonna ask anyone to prom on the bus ride home from a loss. (I’m 27…I’m not gonna ask anyone to prom…ever)²

The season is over. It is time to prepare for next year. Gotta get stronger. Gotta get faster. Gotta improve our fundamentals. But one thing we won’t have to teach during the off-season, is how to deal with adversity...

¹ _{– I’ve done both}

² _{– Except Kate Upton…but she isn’t returning my phone calls, texts or tweets… #HerLoss}

Year 3: In the Driver's Seat

One thing you learn as a manager or a graduate assistant is that you are to be seen and not heard. You are there to learn, not implement policy. The head coach doesn't care for your thoughts on some great zone defense or what your ideas are to improve offensive efficiency. He cares more about how well you check classes. He cares about your ideas to improve the efficiency of stuffing mail-outs. (I use the term "care" in the loosest sense imaginable...please, young coaches, don't walk into a meeting and put mail-out reform on the agenda).

You're a fly on the wall. You are there to do the dirty work, what no one else wants to do. You're there to do it for free and to pretend with all your might that you love doing it. What many GA's and managers don't realize is this grunt work helps prepare you for the next step. It helps you become a problem-solver without needing to ask for guidance every step of the way. It's also where you learn. You get to hear the parts of the game that those outside the program never witness. Many people sit on their couches or in the stands and watch a game studying the X's and O's and think they can become great coaches. (I thought so too, before I began). But those people aren't in the "War Room" to hear seasoned basketball minds come together to form a plan for practice, games and goals for the larger view of the season. In order to understand the game of basketball, you need to know the "how" and "why" you do things in certain situations. Watching X's and O's will only give you the "how," and you won't know the "why" without learning from great coaches who can convey that to his players and staff.

I can sit here and tell you a million times that you MUST rotate your point guards back to the top of the key on each offensive shot attempt, but without knowing the why, you're really just going to question whether it's even important. But if I explain to you that without a rotation, it will lead to easy buckets for the opposing team, it becomes a more valuable piece of information. This example is the most basic form of "knowing the why" that I'm talking about, but it conveys the message sufficiently without needing a 500-page entry on the intricacies of the game.

As a graduate assistant you're always along for the ride. You're never in the driver's seat. You don't have the power to implement policy among the staff, and you don't have the clout to change an action by a player. You're not even a back seat driver; you're a baby in a carriage with a pacifier in its mouth. (A baby that changes the flat tires of the car, gets the oil checked, and fills up the gas...but a baby nonetheless).

So when I had the opportunity to become a graduate assistant (for the second time) at a middle-of-the-road low major school or become an assistant on a lower level, I jumped at the chance to hop to the front of the car. I'm ready to configure the engine, tweaking it to the standards I've learned from my time as a passenger. I'm ready to guide the vehicle and maneuver it to get to our destination.

Little did I know, hopping into the driver's seat at a Division 3 school, sometimes means to literally hop into the driver's seat...

Our first scrimmage of the year was planned to be at Concord University in West Virginia. It's about 2 and a half hours away. I had always taken buses or charter buses to away games, so I never thought twice about driving. I was informed the day before that I would be driving a 15-passenger van to the game. (Don't you need a license for that?) I didn't realize until then that I was responsible for 15 players and their safety. My actions behind the wheel have a direct consequence for those who are riding in my van. It was then I longed for the days of being a lowly passenger, being comfortable in having no outcome on the safety of other or how we get to our destination. I thought about how this bus ride is a perfect metaphor for my job this season. I am responsible for the growth of these individuals on our team. I'm responsible for their safety away from home.

5 hours and a scrimmage later, we arrived safely back at Emory & Henry. I let out a sigh of relief. We made it. After a couple minutes reflecting on a safe trip, I began to realize I could do this. I can be responsible for these young adults. I can guide them safely to our destination. I'll be learning as I go, but I have learned from some great bus drivers in my time.

As we travel this road through our season (and my larger road through my career), we will hit many obstacles...twists and turns will make for a bumpy ride. We'll compete against bigger and faster cars, so we'll need to know the course better than them. We'll need to know the how and why, and execute them at each turn. If we can find a way to do so, maybe, just maybe...we'll lead the pack from the driver's seat.

Year 3: Adjusting to Division 3

Coaches tend to have an idea of what their career path looks like ideally. Everyone starts at the bottom. Everyone wants to be a part of a staff at one of the power conferences on the Division 1 level. Well...my path has worked out the opposite way...sort of.

I started on the Division 1 level at an ACC school, one of the best, if not THE best, basketball conferences in the nation. My next job took me to a successful Mid-Major in Ohio. A step down in basketball prestige. My next move brings me to Emory & Henry College, a Division 3 school in Southwest Virginia.

Judging by the schools alone, this would seem to be a demotion. However, I'm still moving up the ladder. Somehow defying the laws of physics and moving forward and backward at the same time. (M.C. Escher would be so proud...#GoogleItIfYaDontKnowIt) I started as a manager, then a Graduate Assistant, and now an Assistant Coach. A step up in the coaching world.

The jump from Graduate Assistant to Assistant Coach is definitely an adjustment, but a move from being Division 1 my whole life down to Division 3 is equally as big of an adjustment.

I walked into the office on my first day, sat down with the head coach and talked about my duties. We met for over half an hour and I left with a long list of things to get done. I sit down at my desk (in an office shared with the Cross Country coach) and in walks an elderly gentleman wanting to talk sports. I do my best to oblige him (no, I don't know who started for Emory & Henry's Badminton team in 1937), but I'm ready to get my work done! I've waited months to get this job! I learned that with such a small school comes a group of alumni who are passionate about their university, and that's a good thing to have...let's just have it on a slow day, huh?

Next item on the agenda? Cutting a piece of string off my new jacket...I need scissors. I ask for a pair of scissors...

It seems on the D3 level, the entire athletic department uses one pair of scissors. And apparently everyone knows who has the scissors on any given day. I'm hoping there is a different policy in place for toilet paper...

In all seriousness I've loved my time here. The staff is young (average age of 27), the mood is relaxed and I genuinely like the kids I'm working with. The amount of responsibility I will have this year will help me grow as a coach and take some ownership of the program. I used the analogy with some people I talked with about taking this job and I talked about how I'm done being a fly on the wall. I'm done listening and learning while staying in the background. I want to affect a change. I want to help turn a program around. These are all opportunities I'll be afforded at Emory & Henry. I might succeed. I might fail, horribly. I might figure out Division 3 isn't all that bad. But all those questions will be answered in time. And I have a lot of time to prepare. For now, I only have one question...

WHERE ARE THOSE FREAKING SCISSORS!?!

Year 3: Rejection and Giving Thanks

"Through my illness I learned rejection. I was written off. That was the moment I thought, Okay, game on. No prisoners. Everybody's going down." - Lance Armstrong


Ah, finally! Year 3...

My plan had always been to stay at the University of Akron for a maximum of two years. Those two years expired in April, and I left Akron for a new challenge. In the winter, I had talked with an assistant coach at VCU about becoming a paid Graduate Assistant with their program. He was open to the idea and promised to talk more in the Spring. Spring rolls around and I continue talking with him and he assures me it shouldn't be a problem. Then it happened...

March rolls around, I give him a call...

No answer...

Texts, calls, voice mails...all unanswered.

Weeks later I get a call from him saying he had taken a job at his alma mater, and essentially my shot at a job now at VCU were slim. I was devastated. I had planned the entire time to be at VCU in the Fall, now I'm unemployed. From that moment, I was one step behind every job I applied for. Even the ones I became a finalist for, I lost out to someone who had built their relationships earlier than I had. I was reeling.

March became April...May...June...July...AUGUST

I honestly begin to re-evaluate my life plan. Should I go back to school and find a new career? The entire summer was one rejection after another. (And not only in my job search either.) I've never known just how humiliating cold-calling basketball offices to beg for a job can be. It was ridiculous. I'm sure they get tons of calls each year from random people looking for jobs, but it's hard being on the other end of that call.

Through the many rejections, I had to turn inward. What am I doing wrong? Why am I not on a staff? I was angry. I was upset. I was hurt. It was purely coincidence that at the same time I began to lose some of the people I cared about the most. Some had to walk out of my life due to circumstance, some did so voluntarily...

At the end of the Summer of Rejection was a light at the end of the tunnel. I met with the basketball staff at King College, and they offered me a job on the spot as an assistant coach. I could recruit, coach, and be a part of a staff. I was relieved. An entire summer's worth of stress, finally lifted from my shoulders. I wanted to accept on the spot, but took some time to think about it.

Days later, an email came from the head coach at Emory & Henry College to come in for an interview. Another interview begat another offer. Suddenly I have options! I weigh the pros and cons for over a week. It will be really hard to tell either staff no. I have decided to make my decision for good tomorrow morning. I will meet with both staffs, let them give their final pitch, then make my decision and start W-O-R-K-I-N-G.

Before I make my decision however, I would like to take some time to give thanks...

Thank you to the programs who told me no:

VCU
Richmond
Randolph-Macon
George Washington
Virginia Tech (my alma mater, no less)
Belmont Abbey
Fishburne Military Academy
East Tennessee State
Old Dominion University
James Madison University

Thank you for giving me some extra fuel to make myself better as a coach and human being. Without the rejection, I would be staring complacency in the face. For that, I give thanks...

Thank you to the 37 programs who never bothered to pick up the phone the multiple times I called, or give a call back. I don't think enough of you to even mention your names. I plan to schedule each of you in my career...

A genuine thank you to the people who have helped me through the process...

Greg Mason - Centre College
Keith Dambrot, Dan Peters, Rick McFadden, Charles Thomas, Terry Weigand - Akron
Jamion Christian - Mount St. Mary's
my high school coaches Scott Vermillion and Greg Ervin
James Johnson and Bill Old - Virginia Tech

A heartfelt thank you to my friends and family who have undoubtedly felt the brunt of my stress during this process. I appreciate the kind words, the input, or just the time away from the job search and making me smile. I will not forget each of you, and you are very important to my journey.

So here's to a new year, in a new town, with a new program. There will be new challenges, making way for new opportunities and new triumphs...

And without a doubt...new rejection...