You Better
I have been a basketball coach for 34 years at the high school level, and I get fired up for every game. IF I ever get to the point where I don't, it is time to quit coaching. I have coached hard every minute of every game. Once lost a game 124 to 30 (DeShawn Stevenson was on that team) but my kids played hard every minute, and I coached hard every minute. A newspaper guy asked me after the game how I could keep my intensity down by 94. I told him I wanted us to get better, and be better after the game was over. Why waste an opportunity to become a better team, player and coach just because you are behind and there is no way to catch up. If you aren't going to keep playing and coaching hard no matter what the score, you are a fool.
I love to get in other coaches heads. I have tons of stories about things I have done. Once, I challenged the type of ball that we were going to play with. We were the visiting team. Other coach spent the entire pregame looking up the league rules about the type of ball used. (Wasn't in there and I knew it.) Finally with about 15 seconds of warmup time left, I told the ref, never mind, let him use whatever ball he wants to. The guy was livid, cussed me, screamed at me, and we beat him by 10 points, and he had a far, far better team, but I distracted him enough to throw him off, and his team was so mad that they couldn't play. I used the type of ball trick to throw him off, and he fell for it. All part of the game, grin.
Doug Hendricks.
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