Coaching Start - 1970's

I'm often asked how I became a coach and while there are several things that led to me becoming a coach I would say that luck and good fortune had as much to do with it as anything. Prior to coaching anything I took a 'Fundamentals of Track and Field' class at Mt. San Antonio Junior College that was taught by my track coach. I was a student of the sport in that I loved keeping up with current meets as well as the history of both track and cross country. Although there weren't nearly the books and magazines that then that there are today, I read everything that I could get my hands on. That was fine as far as knowing who was who in the track and field world but it didn't do anything as far as preparing me for either the art or the science of coaching. Because you see, coaching is both an art and a science and to be successful you have to treat it as such.

I first got involved in coaching as a part time employee of Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation. I coached and officiated multiple sports as part of my job. Next I got involved in coaching the recreation league teams that my sons Jeff and Jason played on as well as acting as a player coach on softball and volleyball teams through the park. Here are a few pictures from my first team.

My sons front middle. Jason was the bat boy!

Quite the crew. The team won the championship!

After graduating from California State University at Fullerton in the summer of 1975 we moved to Ruidoso, New Mexico. When I decided that I was going to go back to school to become a teacher I had to fight to be allowed to student teach in Ruidoso because it was about 90 miles from the school I was attending. I would go to school during the week and drive home on Fridays to see my family and work on the weekends. When the assistant girl's basketball coach heard that I would be student teaching there he asked me if I wanted to coach because he no longer wanted the job. It paid $300 and I felt the experience might be beneficial down the line so I took the job. I was head junior varsity coach and assistant varsity coach.

Did I mention that I knew absolutely nothing about basketball?

When I finished my student teaching there were no jobs to be had in Ruidoso so I took a job in Hobbs, New Mexico as a District Executive for the Boy Scouts of America. That's for a story another time. While I was working for the scouts I was also applying all over eastern New Mexico and west Texas for teaching jobs. One morning I got a call for an interview in Lovington, New Mexico, 18 miles north of Hobbs, asking if I was still interested in a teaching position. I told them I could be there for an interview as quickly as they wanted me and I was.

The job was for an 8th grade social studies teacher but they also wanted me to coach and the teaching job was pretty much conditional on me being willing to coach. I told them I would love to coach track and they said that they would see about that as a possibility in the future but they needed an 8th grade boy's basketball coach. (Remember what I said about the experience paying off)? I told them I would do it and was hired on the spot pending School Board approval. So once again I was a basketball coach and I still didn't know anything about basketball.

I bought books and paid close attention to the 9th grade coaches practices and got through two seasons of boy's basketball and then two seasons of girl's basketball at Central Junior High School. I was a wreck, the kids used to laugh at me during timeouts because my hands would shake so bad when I was trying to diagram a play. It was an interesting experience. I also coached volleyball, first as a volunteer and then as a paid coach and track, all at Central. Additionally while at Central I volunteered with the high school cross country teams. More about all of that in future posts possibly.

Here are my first two basketball teams at Central. Remember that you only play five in basketball and most teams usually keep a maximum of 12. Look at the size of these teams and we didn't cut, a practice I continued through my entire 29 year career as a paid coach.

Here are pictures of some of my other Central teams.

I'm sure as I continue to look through boxes, bins and trunks I'll find some more pictures from Central that I may want to share in a future post but if not there is a quick overview of how I became a coach. There will be many more posts in the future sharing experiences from the many years that I spent coaching.