Numbers 4 and 5 and Beyond…
The fourth important part of college coaching as I saw it was building community relations. This is not fund raising, but just building your brand in the area. Another one of our ex-Camelback/Mountain Pointe coaches, Rex Morrison, came on board and that was his specialty. I’ve never seen anyone better at community relation building than Rex. He would go anywhere at anytime and shake hands and slap backs with the best of them.
The fifth important part of a college program was the one thing that everyone wants to do the most- coach the sport. We all had an intense desire to go to the next level and run a program. I hadn’t done that since Yavapai College in the 80’s, so it had been awhile. But we had a great staff and had added a young man from Michigan named Josh Kutchinski, who had coached both high school and college back there. The great thing about this staff was, with the exception of Josh, they all knew the basic elements of our system of offense and defense. Nothing is better than having a solid group of coaches watching everything that was going on and able to step in and make corrections. Nothing is worse than having a half dozen coaches and only one guy really coaching. That is exhausting for that one guy and boring for the rest unless they are taking copious notes and really trying to learn. I’ve been involved with both scenarios. That first group was all bought in and ready, so the learning that took place was extensive. The down side to it all was that the junior colleges treat assistant coaches with about the same amount of respect as high schools do when it comes to pay- meaning they don’t. Keeping a staff together is a tough bargain for all the juco guys in the Valley.
So there are the five things necessary for building a solid college program in my opinion. Over my twelve years of coaching at MCC, we have had varying degrees of success with each. I do think that part of my job as a head coach is also to help the assistant coaches grow and move on to head their own programs, if that is their ambition. Mike Grothaus stayed with me for five years and then moved on to be the head coach at Basha High School; Lane Waddell moved on to become the head coach at Tempe Prep; Josh Kutchinski is now the head coach at Jackson College in Michigan, and is assisted by my son Jordan, who was also on our staff; Cory Hoff, who followed Mike on our staff, is now the head coach at Graceland University in Iowa; and, Ernest Shand, who followed Cory is now an assistant coach at Graceland. Ernest will most certainly be a head coach somewhere soon. So, we’ve done OK on that account, as well.
When we first started, Mike and I wanted to resurrect the old Mesa Rotary Shootout, which Tom Bennett had turned into the finest junior college holiday tournament in the nation during his tenure. We went to the Mesa Rotarians to pitch the idea, but they were not very receptive. There had been kind of an awkward ending to the tournament’s run after Coach Bennett departed. To run a tournament of that magnitude was going to be quite expensive, and MCC doesn’t really care if we run one or not- thus there is no budget for it. Like out of state travel, we were going to have to raise every penny of the cost. To do that, we would need at least one or two major sponsors. When I was at Camelback High School, I had approached the Fiesta Bowl with the idea of having a tournament along the lines of the old Tempe Compadre Classic. That was a great high school holiday tournament from the past, which was very similar to Marc Beasley’s current VisitMesa.com classic. Several of the members of the Fiesta Bowl’s board of governors were also members of the Tempe Compadres, including their President, John Junker. My assistant coach at Camelback, Ed Garcia, had come up with a pretty slick presentation for the board and it looked like a go. But it was also the same year that I ended up accepting the position at Mountain Pointe. It tuned out that Harold Slemmer at MP had a working relationship already with the Fiesta Bowl to use his facilities for one of the bowl teams to practice, which meant that they used all the locker rooms during the holiday break. Thus, the school would be unable to handle a large high school basketball tournament.
Just brainstorming one day in the office, I recounted to Mike how close we had come to creating a Fiesta Bowl high school tournament and wondered if John Junker might consider sponsoring a junior college tournament instead. I called John and he remembered our presentation and told us to come over to the Fiesta Bowl offices, which in those days were right by Tempe Beach park, and talk it over. To make a long story short, we struck gold with the Fiesta Bowl, and have been able to create and run the best junior college holiday tournament in the nation for the last eleven years. The Fiesta Bowl committee wanted a showcase tournament for Division1 teams, and that’s what it became. We have been able to attract some of the very best teams in the country annually, but it is not cheap to do that. They all expect some sort of guarantee, so we have to raise approximately $25,000 on top of everything else we are fighting for each year. For the first few years, getting money from John Junker and the Fiesta Bowl committee was not a problem, but John got into a bit of trouble, if you remember, and now we deal with what is called Fiesta Bowl Charities. VisitMesa.com also became a partner, but they generate a lot of their income through tourism, which took a major hit with the pandemic. The Fiesta Bowl Junior College Shootout’s future is cloudy, at best, but it has had a great run. We actually won it twice- in 2011 we beat Three Rivers Community College from Missouri in the championship game. They had the winningest coach in junior college history, Gene Bess, who just recently retired with over 1,200 wins. They were 0-1 against us. In 2013, we beat Monroe College from New York, who was 15-0 and ranked number 1 in the nation in the championship game.
The recruiting environment has shifted significantly since we arrived twelve years ago. Arizona State wasn’t a heavy recruiter locally then, and Grand Canyon was a D2. There was no Ottawa, Park, or Benedictine to compete with and Arizona Christian was just a small bible college where the participants basically went there to go into the ministry. There weren’t any prep schools with post grad programs of any note. We had a good shot at many good players who felt like they were good enough to go NCAA D1, but had just been overlooked. They had kind of a chip on their shoulder about it and wanted to rise to the challenge. All of those things have come into play now, yet our district has not made any move to upgrade what we can offer to meet the competition. I don’t think it something that they have even considered. It has made MCC a much tougher job. I wish all of the other Maricopa juco’s would opt to play in D1 for two reasons- first, to get the attention of the district as to whether sports is an important function; and second, to insure that our ACCAC winner would represent us at THE national tournament for junior colleges in Hutchinson, Kansas every year. That would also get the district’s attention. In all that we have seen happening across this nation recently, the calling was for equity- treat people equally. If I walked up to you and called you a second class citizen, you would rightly be offended. But if the district says you should play in Division 2, that’s equity? You’re good with that?
Next…different chapters
The fourth important part of college coaching as I saw it was building community relations. This is not fund raising, but just building your brand in the area. Another one of our ex-Camelback/Mountain Pointe coaches, Rex Morrison, came on board and that was his specialty. I’ve never seen anyone better at community relation building than Rex. He would go anywhere at anytime and shake hands and slap backs with the best of them.
The fifth important part of a college program was the one thing that everyone wants to do the most- coach the sport. We all had an intense desire to go to the next level and run a program. I hadn’t done that since Yavapai College in the 80’s, so it had been awhile. But we had a great staff and had added a young man from Michigan named Josh Kutchinski, who had coached both high school and college back there. The great thing about this staff was, with the exception of Josh, they all knew the basic elements of our system of offense and defense. Nothing is better than having a solid group of coaches watching everything that was going on and able to step in and make corrections. Nothing is worse than having a half dozen coaches and only one guy really coaching. That is exhausting for that one guy and boring for the rest unless they are taking copious notes and really trying to learn. I’ve been involved with both scenarios. That first group was all bought in and ready, so the learning that took place was extensive. The down side to it all was that the junior colleges treat assistant coaches with about the same amount of respect as high schools do when it comes to pay- meaning they don’t. Keeping a staff together is a tough bargain for all the juco guys in the Valley.
So there are the five things necessary for building a solid college program in my opinion. Over my twelve years of coaching at MCC, we have had varying degrees of success with each. I do think that part of my job as a head coach is also to help the assistant coaches grow and move on to head their own programs, if that is their ambition. Mike Grothaus stayed with me for five years and then moved on to be the head coach at Basha High School; Lane Waddell moved on to become the head coach at Tempe Prep; Josh Kutchinski is now the head coach at Jackson College in Michigan, and is assisted by my son Jordan, who was also on our staff; Cory Hoff, who followed Mike on our staff, is now the head coach at Graceland University in Iowa; and, Ernest Shand, who followed Cory is now an assistant coach at Graceland. Ernest will most certainly be a head coach somewhere soon. So, we’ve done OK on that account, as well.
When we first started, Mike and I wanted to resurrect the old Mesa Rotary Shootout, which Tom Bennett had turned into the finest junior college holiday tournament in the nation during his tenure. We went to the Mesa Rotarians to pitch the idea, but they were not very receptive. There had been kind of an awkward ending to the tournament’s run after Coach Bennett departed. To run a tournament of that magnitude was going to be quite expensive, and MCC doesn’t really care if we run one or not- thus there is no budget for it. Like out of state travel, we were going to have to raise every penny of the cost. To do that, we would need at least one or two major sponsors. When I was at Camelback High School, I had approached the Fiesta Bowl with the idea of having a tournament along the lines of the old Tempe Compadre Classic. That was a great high school holiday tournament from the past, which was very similar to Marc Beasley’s current VisitMesa.com classic. Several of the members of the Fiesta Bowl’s board of governors were also members of the Tempe Compadres, including their President, John Junker. My assistant coach at Camelback, Ed Garcia, had come up with a pretty slick presentation for the board and it looked like a go. But it was also the same year that I ended up accepting the position at Mountain Pointe. It tuned out that Harold Slemmer at MP had a working relationship already with the Fiesta Bowl to use his facilities for one of the bowl teams to practice, which meant that they used all the locker rooms during the holiday break. Thus, the school would be unable to handle a large high school basketball tournament.
Just brainstorming one day in the office, I recounted to Mike how close we had come to creating a Fiesta Bowl high school tournament and wondered if John Junker might consider sponsoring a junior college tournament instead. I called John and he remembered our presentation and told us to come over to the Fiesta Bowl offices, which in those days were right by Tempe Beach park, and talk it over. To make a long story short, we struck gold with the Fiesta Bowl, and have been able to create and run the best junior college holiday tournament in the nation for the last eleven years. The Fiesta Bowl committee wanted a showcase tournament for Division1 teams, and that’s what it became. We have been able to attract some of the very best teams in the country annually, but it is not cheap to do that. They all expect some sort of guarantee, so we have to raise approximately $25,000 on top of everything else we are fighting for each year. For the first few years, getting money from John Junker and the Fiesta Bowl committee was not a problem, but John got into a bit of trouble, if you remember, and now we deal with what is called Fiesta Bowl Charities. VisitMesa.com also became a partner, but they generate a lot of their income through tourism, which took a major hit with the pandemic. The Fiesta Bowl Junior College Shootout’s future is cloudy, at best, but it has had a great run. We actually won it twice- in 2011 we beat Three Rivers Community College from Missouri in the championship game. They had the winningest coach in junior college history, Gene Bess, who just recently retired with over 1,200 wins. They were 0-1 against us. In 2013, we beat Monroe College from New York, who was 15-0 and ranked number 1 in the nation in the championship game.
The recruiting environment has shifted significantly since we arrived twelve years ago. Arizona State wasn’t a heavy recruiter locally then, and Grand Canyon was a D2. There was no Ottawa, Park, or Benedictine to compete with and Arizona Christian was just a small bible college where the participants basically went there to go into the ministry. There weren’t any prep schools with post grad programs of any note. We had a good shot at many good players who felt like they were good enough to go NCAA D1, but had just been overlooked. They had kind of a chip on their shoulder about it and wanted to rise to the challenge. All of those things have come into play now, yet our district has not made any move to upgrade what we can offer to meet the competition. I don’t think it something that they have even considered. It has made MCC a much tougher job. I wish all of the other Maricopa juco’s would opt to play in D1 for two reasons- first, to get the attention of the district as to whether sports is an important function; and second, to insure that our ACCAC winner would represent us at THE national tournament for junior colleges in Hutchinson, Kansas every year. That would also get the district’s attention. In all that we have seen happening across this nation recently, the calling was for equity- treat people equally. If I walked up to you and called you a second class citizen, you would rightly be offended. But if the district says you should play in Division 2, that’s equity? You’re good with that?
Next…different chapters
