This is one in a series of posts reflecting on the most recent basketball season. My goal in each of the next several posts is to look at a separate aspect of what made this year such a memorable experience for me personally.
I'm not a very good assistant coach, but I've been an assistant for the past 6 years of my coaching career. It is not a natural fit for me. I began my career as a head coach, and I like input. I like control. I'm a vision guy, a planner, someone who likes to have things his way. Therefore, it takes a special situation for me to make it work sitting in the 2nd seat. For my last four years of coaching varsity basketball in Mason City, I was the assistant coach for my best friend in the district. That worked. Well. And it worked because I got to spend 2 hours a day in a gym with that friend, and he trusted me and understood me and used what I had to bring to the table. I could have done that for the rest of my career and happily been an assistant coach. I was devastated when the situation there changed and we would no longer work together.
I'm not a very good assistant coach, but I've been an assistant for the past 6 years of my coaching career. It is not a natural fit for me. I began my career as a head coach, and I like input. I like control. I'm a vision guy, a planner, someone who likes to have things his way. Therefore, it takes a special situation for me to make it work sitting in the 2nd seat. For my last four years of coaching varsity basketball in Mason City, I was the assistant coach for my best friend in the district. That worked. Well. And it worked because I got to spend 2 hours a day in a gym with that friend, and he trusted me and understood me and used what I had to bring to the table. I could have done that for the rest of my career and happily been an assistant coach. I was devastated when the situation there changed and we would no longer work together.
A year later, my best friend from Nora Springs asked what I thought about coaching with him. He also understands me. He knows that I'm a head coach at heart, and he wanted me anyway. I carefully weighed the situation, and it didn't take me long to agree. It was another chance to be in a gym, sure; but I wasn't desperate for that. More than anything, it was a chance to spend every day for 4 months out of the year with my friend. There are probably only 4 or 5 total people in this world that I know I could happily be an assistant coach for. I'm not sure I could even name the others.
I knew when I said yes that it would be short term. Two years probably. Three at the most. Bob was at the end of his career, a topic we had discussed at length. He wanted me there for it. I wanted to be there too.
Bob and I live two houses apart. We've shared a lot in the last 13 years, very little of it basketball related. Marriages and miscarriages, death of family and the death of a school, road trips and casino trips, renovations and rental houses, to name a few. We've got stories. Adding daily basketball to the mix, something we both know and care about, seemed like a good idea. It was.
I knew going into the year that it was almost certainly going to be Bob's final year of coaching after 30+ years. I'm glad we got to do it together. I wanted to be there, to enjoy walking through it with him, and to do everything I could to help give him the experience he was looking for. As someone who has known him for a long time, I felt specially qualified and personally responsible. It was the kind of responsibility I took great pleasure in doing and doing well.
When you get to be an adult of a certain age, some things become rare. Working every day with your friend on something you both care deeply about is one of them. You have friends, but they are scattered throughout the country, or even the world. They have their own families, their jobs, their own responsibilities. You get together when you can, you plan trips together, you eat meals, you text. But working? Daily? On work that you love?That was the situation. It was our job, our responsibility, to email each other throughout the day with questions and comments, both serious and sarcastic; to call each other at night rehashing practice and games; to sit side by side and tell stories and make new ones; to keep each other sane; to appreciate these players and the opportunity to be together each day. Coaching is high risk, high reward, and the emotions at the end of game day are far-ranging. To coach with someone close to you is to guarantee a friend is there to share it all. A silent handshake at the end of a hard fought win carries with it volumes of unspoken words.
My friend and I will continue to be friends. We will take road trips. We will make stories and tell them. We don't need basketball to make that happen. But I will miss my friend. And I walked into every day of the past season knowing just how good we had it.
Previous Posts in this Series:
- Part 1: The People
- Part 2: The Grit
- Part 3: Chemistry
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