Doing what you love and loving what you are doing...
Whenever we spoke to our players about the next level recruiting process they were in- and there were many- we always said that from our point of view there were three major considerations that they should view in their choices in order of importance: 1. Who you would be playing for (coaches); 2. Who you would be playing with (teammates); 3. The location of the institution. The plain fact was that if number one or two were not right, number three wouldn’t really matter. You could be miserable in Hawai’i walking on a beach, if you didn’t get along with your coaches and/or teammates. Turns out that the same is true for coaching. I grew up in the Valley and, of course, I love it here. It is a great location. I also loved the assistant coaches that I worked with over the years. But, the biggest reason I moved from job to job over the years was not money, because for most of us coaches, the money is never that good. The reason was the leadership at the institution. Hell, I took a $12,000 a year pay cut to move from Camelback High School to Mountain Pointe High School in 1997, because the Pride were led by Harold Slemmer, and people I respected greatly said he was the best guy in the state to work for. At the end of my interview with Harold, he asked me if I had any questions for him. I said I had just one- “will you be here long term?” He said yes- MP was his baby. Two years later he left to become the director of the AIA. Most of the great Mountain Pointe coaches exited soon after, but I stuck around longer even though it was never the same. I did the same at MCC, but not for the same reasons. It was never the same after my suspension. I was doing what I loved, but I didn’t ever love to do it again there. Loyalty is a two way street.
My assistant in 2014-15 was Cory Hoff. I told him that this would be it for me and I did not want to coach at MCC anymore. He said he wanted the job and I told him that the best way he could get it would be if I waited until the following season’s first day of practice and then walked in say “I quit”. They would pretty much have to let Cory take over, probably on an interim basis, where he would have a chance to prove himself. Quitting on the first day of practice is kind of a sour move, but remember I was still smarting from the treatment I had gotten after the marijuana brownie incident.
Things began to develop well in our plan through the spring of 2015, as I let Cory take a big role in our spring PE class, so the shock of a change would be less to the players. In fact, the class was in Cory’s name so he could get paid, so many days I just stayed in the office during class time. I had a large filing cabinet in our office and I began to clean it out of nearly 35 years of papers, pictures, practice schedules, and the like. The athletic secretary took notice and asked me if I was retiring, but I said no, so the cat would stay in the bag. As summer approached, Cory came to me with a bombshell. He had been offered the position of Associate Head Coach at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa, and was going to accept it. So much for our plan.
This began a sequence of events that would go on for the next six years. Each year I would get another assistant coach, and each year they would agree to the same plan that I had devised for Cory, and each year they would get another job before realization of the plan. Ernest Shand took an assistant’s position at an NCAA D2 school, Albany State. Then Josh Kutchinski came back with the idea of taking over, but he left for the head coaching position at Jackson College in his home state of Michigan and took my son Jordan with him. Next up was Jimmy Herrera, a guy from California who had spent twelve years already as a juco assistant.
I had begun to not be involved at all in recruiting- after the brownie suspension, I never went to another high school game on behalf of MCC. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite and try to sell a school that I no longer believed in, or establish relationships with players and families that would be broken. However, each time an assistant left, I still felt a sense of attachment to the players and did not want to just leave them in the hands of whoever the AD wanted to bring in. Our records would indicate my continued lack of involvement in the program and the recruiting over the next five years. The first seven years before being suspended we were 144-66 playing a tough schedule every year and having very little to offer financially, and using primarily great Arizona kids. Particularly satisfying was our 113-43 ACCAC record, knowing that they knew we were D1 in name only. The next five after the suspension we were 79-70. We played our usual tough Division 1 schedules during these years, and kept the Fiesta Bowl going barely, even upsetting two more number 1 ranked teams along the way. But, I was definitely not looking at this as anything more than a job, which is not how coaching should be. I spent very little time in the office, which was right next door to the athletic director, choosing to watch film and do most of the coaching work in a little room next to the team lockers in the gym.
Each of those years, I figured was going to be my last. I was trying to get out, but was also trying to have one triumph over MCC before leaving. In the 2019-20 season, the AD called me into his office to tell me that the new college president had decided to move us out of our locker room and take us completely out of the gym to a new general athletic area where we would share lockers with other teams. It was claimed to be a Title IX issue. In my mind, it was an idiotic idea to have us dress in another building with less privacy, especially since visiting teams would still use a locker room in the gym. Now, I was determined to walk away no matter what, but wanted to make sure that Jimmy would follow the plan. If he couldn’t, then I would have stepped down at the end of 2019-20 season. Jimmy swore up and down that he wanted the job and would not leave early. Because of that commitment, I would again wait until the first day of practice to quit, in order to give him the best chance of getting the job. So, this was it- when practice started in 2020-21, I would quit and they would have to hire Jimmy and he would get his shot. Then the pandemic hit. The 2020-21 season was cancelled. Jimmy still wanted the job, so I had to sit on it for another year until practice was beginning in the 2021-22 season. I was still drawing a full time salary, so I kind of viewed this as the Universe’s way of paying me back for the money I lost going over to Mountain Pointe on Harold Slemmer’s promise not to leave. Because of Covid, I had not been on the MCC campus much over that last year and had absolutely no investment in the players Jimmy had recruited. I didn’t even know most of their names. So walking away this time was easy. But, it had taken almost six years to actually do it. And Jimmy was hired to replace me, so I figured that if I could help one guy get a chance, it was all worth it. Paying it forward.
Next time: Coaching in juco land...
Whenever we spoke to our players about the next level recruiting process they were in- and there were many- we always said that from our point of view there were three major considerations that they should view in their choices in order of importance: 1. Who you would be playing for (coaches); 2. Who you would be playing with (teammates); 3. The location of the institution. The plain fact was that if number one or two were not right, number three wouldn’t really matter. You could be miserable in Hawai’i walking on a beach, if you didn’t get along with your coaches and/or teammates. Turns out that the same is true for coaching. I grew up in the Valley and, of course, I love it here. It is a great location. I also loved the assistant coaches that I worked with over the years. But, the biggest reason I moved from job to job over the years was not money, because for most of us coaches, the money is never that good. The reason was the leadership at the institution. Hell, I took a $12,000 a year pay cut to move from Camelback High School to Mountain Pointe High School in 1997, because the Pride were led by Harold Slemmer, and people I respected greatly said he was the best guy in the state to work for. At the end of my interview with Harold, he asked me if I had any questions for him. I said I had just one- “will you be here long term?” He said yes- MP was his baby. Two years later he left to become the director of the AIA. Most of the great Mountain Pointe coaches exited soon after, but I stuck around longer even though it was never the same. I did the same at MCC, but not for the same reasons. It was never the same after my suspension. I was doing what I loved, but I didn’t ever love to do it again there. Loyalty is a two way street.
My assistant in 2014-15 was Cory Hoff. I told him that this would be it for me and I did not want to coach at MCC anymore. He said he wanted the job and I told him that the best way he could get it would be if I waited until the following season’s first day of practice and then walked in say “I quit”. They would pretty much have to let Cory take over, probably on an interim basis, where he would have a chance to prove himself. Quitting on the first day of practice is kind of a sour move, but remember I was still smarting from the treatment I had gotten after the marijuana brownie incident.
Things began to develop well in our plan through the spring of 2015, as I let Cory take a big role in our spring PE class, so the shock of a change would be less to the players. In fact, the class was in Cory’s name so he could get paid, so many days I just stayed in the office during class time. I had a large filing cabinet in our office and I began to clean it out of nearly 35 years of papers, pictures, practice schedules, and the like. The athletic secretary took notice and asked me if I was retiring, but I said no, so the cat would stay in the bag. As summer approached, Cory came to me with a bombshell. He had been offered the position of Associate Head Coach at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa, and was going to accept it. So much for our plan.
This began a sequence of events that would go on for the next six years. Each year I would get another assistant coach, and each year they would agree to the same plan that I had devised for Cory, and each year they would get another job before realization of the plan. Ernest Shand took an assistant’s position at an NCAA D2 school, Albany State. Then Josh Kutchinski came back with the idea of taking over, but he left for the head coaching position at Jackson College in his home state of Michigan and took my son Jordan with him. Next up was Jimmy Herrera, a guy from California who had spent twelve years already as a juco assistant.
I had begun to not be involved at all in recruiting- after the brownie suspension, I never went to another high school game on behalf of MCC. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite and try to sell a school that I no longer believed in, or establish relationships with players and families that would be broken. However, each time an assistant left, I still felt a sense of attachment to the players and did not want to just leave them in the hands of whoever the AD wanted to bring in. Our records would indicate my continued lack of involvement in the program and the recruiting over the next five years. The first seven years before being suspended we were 144-66 playing a tough schedule every year and having very little to offer financially, and using primarily great Arizona kids. Particularly satisfying was our 113-43 ACCAC record, knowing that they knew we were D1 in name only. The next five after the suspension we were 79-70. We played our usual tough Division 1 schedules during these years, and kept the Fiesta Bowl going barely, even upsetting two more number 1 ranked teams along the way. But, I was definitely not looking at this as anything more than a job, which is not how coaching should be. I spent very little time in the office, which was right next door to the athletic director, choosing to watch film and do most of the coaching work in a little room next to the team lockers in the gym.
Each of those years, I figured was going to be my last. I was trying to get out, but was also trying to have one triumph over MCC before leaving. In the 2019-20 season, the AD called me into his office to tell me that the new college president had decided to move us out of our locker room and take us completely out of the gym to a new general athletic area where we would share lockers with other teams. It was claimed to be a Title IX issue. In my mind, it was an idiotic idea to have us dress in another building with less privacy, especially since visiting teams would still use a locker room in the gym. Now, I was determined to walk away no matter what, but wanted to make sure that Jimmy would follow the plan. If he couldn’t, then I would have stepped down at the end of 2019-20 season. Jimmy swore up and down that he wanted the job and would not leave early. Because of that commitment, I would again wait until the first day of practice to quit, in order to give him the best chance of getting the job. So, this was it- when practice started in 2020-21, I would quit and they would have to hire Jimmy and he would get his shot. Then the pandemic hit. The 2020-21 season was cancelled. Jimmy still wanted the job, so I had to sit on it for another year until practice was beginning in the 2021-22 season. I was still drawing a full time salary, so I kind of viewed this as the Universe’s way of paying me back for the money I lost going over to Mountain Pointe on Harold Slemmer’s promise not to leave. Because of Covid, I had not been on the MCC campus much over that last year and had absolutely no investment in the players Jimmy had recruited. I didn’t even know most of their names. So walking away this time was easy. But, it had taken almost six years to actually do it. And Jimmy was hired to replace me, so I figured that if I could help one guy get a chance, it was all worth it. Paying it forward.
Next time: Coaching in juco land...
