I know what you are thinking and no, this is actually reserved for the coach that I had my senior year of high school. I use the term senior year here loosely as I could only manage being part of the team for 4 games. Gather around kids and hear the tales of de-motivation, lack of organization, general incompetency and nepotism. So it started back in 8th grade when I experienced the worst teacher of my academic career (this dude flat out hated me from the jump for some reason, I mean I'm a likeable guy, right?) in industrial arts. Industrial arts you say, that must have been a sleeper class for an A, huh? Not exactly. You basically had to copy drawings with an industrial layout, that had dimensions and different things, think your basic floor plan, and that was the class. Literally nothing to this class, and I end up pulling a D. No idea why, don't remember, just glad to be done with that class and this moron forever. Well as luck would have it the head coach of the basketball team, decides that he is going to go to another school to coach one of the good players from our team that is transferring. Don't blame him, he had made a really deep run into the playoffs before and Beallsville was about to experience a serious drought on talent. So we get new coaches for Freshman year and guess who gets named to the reserve coach role... yep you guessed it the one guy I thought I would be done with. Fortunately freshman rarely played JV and mostly just played Freshman team. So that is what I did. Nothing spectacular about the year. Sophomore season starts and reality hits home. Now that Freshman year is over the only option to play is varsity or JV. Well the varsity team is pretty well set with seniors and juniors and maybe one guy from my class getting some reserve run and that is about it. I'm buried deep on the JV bench and am not enjoying the game at all. Now a little background here - my parents were waaaay older than most peoples parents, at this point 62 and 69 years old and they were not athletic and never really cared about sports, even when I played when I was younger. My Dad did make a basket for me when I was in second grade though, and when I say "made" he literally went into the woods, cut down a tree, and built the backboard out of wood with home made supports and put it in the ground next to the car port. This was awesome by my Dad and something I was shooting around on as much as 38 years later, but that was about all he could do for me, he couldn't teach me fundamentals, couldn't coach a team couldn't even play me one-on-one really. So now that I'm deep on the bench with no way off and no real way to improve I faced a difficult decision. You see I had always liked basketball, enjoyed playing with my friends, enjoyed shooting at home (because during the summer there was literally nothing else to do, I would just practice for an hour, come in the house to cool off, then go back out for another hour later), but now it was unenjoyable to do. I don't remember the specifics, but I would say I was pretty out of shape and about the height I was in 8th grade. Side note: I was always tall for my age, but I hit that last growth spurt early and now everyone is catching up, also I was the youngest in my class, so even though I'm a Sophomore I started the year at 14. That's right go ahead and project that out. Side Side note: Mom started me in school early (I believe because she wanted me out of the house ;) j/k ).
Ok, back to the story. So I quit my Sophomore year. I don't remember how many practices or games or if I played any games, but I remember coming out to the truck after practice one day and telling my Dad that I was going to quit. He did not put up a fight. Like I said my parents weren't into sports, so not having to pick me up every day was probably a blessing to the them. Anyway I came back out for my junior year. I broke my wrist fairly early in the season, running a sprint retreat. A sprint retreat is one of the worst drills I have ever done and couple it with a dusty gym floor it is basically the perfect recipe for me to break something. I was out for the requisite 6 weeks before returning to play JV. I don't remember much about this season other than at one point on the road at Hundred High School in WV (it's named Hundred because that's how many miles it feels like you drove to get there) at the end of the game we won and I asked how many a player from the other team had because I felt like I played good D. The coach said 6, and that it was a good idea to keep track of who we played against to keep track of such things. This was the coach I couldn't stand BTW, but that did seem like an obvious thing that a coach would do, foreshadowing perhaps. The rest of Junior year was uneventful until tourney time and the final varsity roster was put together, me being a junior I figure I would be added for deep bench duty, but was passed over for a freshman that at that point hadn't played a whole lot of varsity if any, but was a golfer so the JV coached liked him better automatically since he was also the golf coach. Now to be perfectly fair, the kid was probably a better athlete, but that really stung. I shouldn't have had any lofty goal of playing after that, but I was dumb and didn't understand the system, also no one told me anything to work on or what my game was lacking. But that is likely due to them not knowing what my game lacked either.
On to Senior year and the redemption arc... or not. My high school was very limited in sports offerings for kids, for fall it was Football or Golf, Winter was Basketball or wrestling and Spring was Baseball although they did start a track team my Senior or Junior year. Anyway since cross country didn't exist (I feel like I could have been decent at this in High School) my friend and I did some running before school a couple of times to get into shape for basketball since we didn't play fall sports. Granted we played as much as possible for being in a rural area without a whole lot of opportunities to just go play, and in all honesty I was probably in the best shape of my life up to that point. One other thing to note in this story is that I was 16 at the very beginning of my senior year of school, and there were actually about 3 other people that were in a similar situation, I turned 17 in the first month, but by Ohio rules I could have actually played high school sports for another 2 years. Not that it makes a difference in coaching, but in the timeline of things, being a young senior isn't optimal for sports success. So the season starts and I don't remember the exact time frame (sorry it's been 30 years), but me and another guy were brought into the coach's office. He sits us down and proceeds to explain to us that we probably aren't going to play. Actually matter-of-fact that we were not going to play. Now this is a small school (~45 kids per class), so cutting kids is something that is almost unthinkable, but making it miserable enough for people to not want to play is completely an option. Didn't say it was a good option, but yeah as a coach you could do that if you were so inclined, and this guy was definitely inclined. Keep in mind, this is his first head coaching gig in basketball at the high school varsity level and there are no guarantees that this team is going to be great or how many games we should win, so why just tell 2 guys who have played basketball for 10 years and are hungry to get on the floor that you don't need them? You don't know if you need me. And that is the crux of the whole thing, a coach that comes in with that much hubris, with exactly 0 wins to his name is basically doomed to failure. I realize this now, but it took a while then. So even though I was told I wouldn't get in, I still remained optimistic that if I got in a game I could show something and then the PT would grow. Well after 4 games I had gotten in about 2 minutes of a 40 point blow out (scored 2) and that would be the extent of my varsity basketball career. "Okay", you say, no big deal, what was the record after 4 games...0-4. At one point one of my buddies and a couple of football players got to be on the court together, as the "hustle team". Unfortunately they never told the guys that was their job to run around and cause turn overs and run outs, so they didn't do that, they just played normal basketball. It's one of those things you think back on and wonder why they even said that out loud after the fact it didn't work. Would I have made a difference in those games... short answer is no. I was no where near good enough to make up for the train wreck on the bench, but I could have at least had fun.
So after 4 games me and my other friend (not the one who was told he wouldn't play, one that actually played some) decided to quit. This was actually the point were pay-to-play had to be paid, but since I wasn't actually playing and $45 seemed like a lot back then, it seemed like the perfect time to cut bait. And since my friend was walking out at the same time it seemed right. At that very moment when we walked out and declared to other people we were done, something happened that I'll never forget. The head football coaches son told my friend that he should not quit, but that I - "Yeah you should quit". And the delivery was even more heartless than it reads. Here was my interpretation of this exchange - here is someone who played wide receiver for his Dad and got all the recognition in football because he would run the deep patterns and my friend would run all the short patterns and take all the hits over the middle, and this coach's son who had been coddled in football, and given a starting spot in basketball was telling me I wasn't good enough. GIVEN A STARTING ROLE. Little emphasis there. There was no try out for starters there was no shuffling the starters around to jump start the offense/defense - nothing, and this guy didn't have to earn anything. It was disheartening to say the least but indicative of the kind of person he was and the kind of leader he was - aka not a leader. Okay, so you had a coach that didn't like you, never gave you a shot and made you want to quit, that doesn't mean he is a bad coach. No that alone would not him a horrible coach, the fact that he would not win a game the entire season (0-21) and lost to an 0-8 team at home kind of seals his fate as a horrible coach. Needless to say this guy was one and done, but it just so happened that the one corresponded to the one year senior year that I had.
It was incredibly disappointing from an athletic standpoint, but I have always enjoyed basketball, still do. I fixed my shot after high school and have become pretty decent at diagnosing shot inefficiencies and how to correct them. I also understand defensive positioning now and help coach in the church league for K-6. Would I ever tell a kid "you can't play"? No. One you never know what a kid is capable of truly until you put them in the game situation. Two, that sucked horribly when I was in school. I don't know if it was personal or not, but it became personal. I would rather build a kid up and even if I thought someone was terrible at the sport and I eventually got them to the point they could play in a Varsity game, then I would have really thought I did a good job as a coach. Not this guy though, oh and one time he brought in a rope that he used to string up deer (still had blood stains on it), to illustrate visually ball-rim-you principles and how it always made a triangle. I remember this because he put the rope through the hoop, but the concept makes no sense, which makes all the sense now. The actual concept is called Ball-you-man for off ball defense, and positioning your self between the person you are guarding and the ball, while keeping your back to the basket, but that was well beyond this guy. Think that's all for this one, hope you never run into anyone this bad both tactically and as a person.
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