This is the time of year when everyone gets involved and the amount of good basketball on television every night is overwhelming. It's also the time of year full of stress and uncertainty for those in the profession.
This will be my 4th season since I got out of the sport that I had previously spent my whole life consumed by, held my entire self-worth in, and was the majority of my identity. Every March I get flooded with questions about if I miss coaching and working in basketball while watching the tournament. The answer is no, I don't miss it during the tournament. I enjoy the hell out of it during the tournament.
I miss it when I turn on ESPN+ to watch one of my best friends in a road league game on Tuesday night in January knowing the amount of shit he had to go through to get his entire program to that gym just to be able to play the game. I miss it in October when I'm not feeling sick and running to get a medicine ball from Starbucks to soothe my sore throat while it's raining and we are just 26 days into practice.
I don't miss it this time of year because I am enjoying it stress-free. I don't miss it this time of year because I know where I am going to be living in 3 months, which isn't the case for hundreds of staffers. I don't miss it this time of year because everyone around you expects you to have a break coming as soon as your team loses and you'll finally have some time to spend with your friends and family you moved away from but in reality, you have camps on the horizon, you have all kinds of meetings, and then you have to start building your roster to prepare for the summer.
I spent my time after playing college basketball in a tough transition period of coaching some of my best friends, dealing with that dynamic all while still trying to be their friend. It was weird and it was hard. I was lucky enough to have a college coach who legitimately cared about me and allowed me to earn my Master's Degree and coach on his staff. He gave me significantly more responsibility than he ever needed to and I am forever in debt to him for allowing me to get my start in college coaching.
After finishing up my Master's coaching at my alma mater I had the opportunity of a lifetime come up where I had a connection with a coach who just got a head job at the Division 1 level. My dad was my high school coach and I grew up in an area of Indiana that has elite NAIA programs littered throughout. So I was not the one to be a Division 1 or nothing type. I was also 5'8 and not athletic, so I was pretty realistic with myself playing-wise. However, my dream for as long as I could remember was to be able to be around the game of basketball on the coaching side as a full-time job. My life revolved around the game of basketball for as long as I'd been able to walk so if I could parlay that into my professional life as an adult, well, I couldn't think of anything more perfect.
A lot of kids dreamed about playing professional basketball or being an astronaut or whatever other cliche kid thing you want to include here. I dreamed of playing high school basketball for my dad with my best friends and then I dreamed of sitting in the coach's office eating Burger King for lunch on Christmas break preparing a practice plan or watching film just like I watched my dad do growing up. There wasn't another dream.
As I mentioned I had a connection to a head coach who got a job the same spring that I graduated with my degree. It just felt like the perfect timing. I applied, contacted, and did everything I could to try and get my name at the top of the list. I was an assistant at the NAIA level and I wanted to be a Division 1 Director of Basketball Operations. There was some momentum early on and I thought I was in a good spot. Most reading this truly have no idea how much actually goes into being a head coach at the Division 1 level. As someone trying to take over a program, hire staff, retain and recruit new players to have a roster, meet with university admin and boosters, doing media, all while moving your family across the country isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world. So my process took a little longer.
I think it ended up being roughly 5 weeks since the last I had heard anything. In the back of my mind, I always had hope because it just felt like my time. No matter how bleak things look and feel for me, I do feel like I have a strong sense of hope behind my uncanny way of always feeling uncertain. I felt like this was a break that was going to go my way and I wholeheartedly believed it. But at the same time, I am still on a current staff and we are in the middle of spring workouts, open gyms, and recruiting. I also applied/interviewed for a few head high school jobs locally. So my day-to-day was all based around the fact that I was not going to get this dream job.
Around 11 pm one weeknight, I was laying in bed with 6 am workouts the next morning. I had about a 25-minute drive to school, so I was prepared to get up early. I got a phone call and was told I got the Division 1 job. I had a longer walk-in closet in my bedroom of the house I was renting at the time I was pacing back and forth in while I was listening to life-changing news. I was told I should be out there in 10 days to get started. It was 9.5 hours away from my home and anything I had ever known. I jumped up and down and smacked every hat I had hanging in the closet to the floor like I was giving high-fives to real human beings. I drove to 6 am workouts the next morning and let my current boss know it was something I felt like I just had to jump at. I was terrified to have the conversation because, at that point, I felt like I owed him so much more than I had given back.
I would have never moved 9.5 hours away from home if it wasn't for this opportunity and the lack of thinking it required. 2 days later my dad, brother, and I hopped on I-70 West and drove to find myself the first apartment complex that had a 1 bedroom open and would let me move in that weekend. 24 hours later, we were driving back home with the lease signed to that apartment (my favorite apartment I've ever lived in). I packed up my things and moved out there 7 days after the phone call to spend the weekend unpacking and ignoring the fact that I was moving that far away from home or anyone I knew.
My mom and dad got up early that Sunday morning after helping me move in, I started at my dream job that Monday, and they took back off towards my comfort zone. I wasn't sad but I was scared.
I remember getting back up to my apartment that morning and I put a K-cup in the Keurig. While I sat on the couch listening to nothing but my coffee pour from the machine, I genuinely didn't know what to do. I had nothing to do and nobody to do anything with.
I spent the next 14 months scared. I woke up scared. I went to bed scared. I did my job scared.
I interacted with people scared. I lived my life scared.
I got to work and hit the ground running, never coming up for air. I tell everyone it was like playing the best tennis player in the world and just closing your eyes, praying to God you get a racket on the serve coming at you and it lands on the other side of the net, only for them to smash it at you again. It was the hardest and most overwhelming thing I had done. It was also my absolute dream.
I spent the first 2 months with a pounding headache that felt debilitating because of how much I was trying to absorb and do. I didn't sleep more than an hour or 2 a night. I was too scared to fall asleep because that meant the next day would come faster but I was also too scared to stay asleep because I felt like I needed to be in the office. I was given an opportunity that I truly felt I was qualified for. I was also given an opportunity that my boss simply did not need to give me because hundreds of other people were qualified just the same. I felt and still feel forever in debt to him for giving me that opportunity. It was the single greatest opportunity of my life to this date and I'm not sure it'll ever be topped. That's hard to wrestle with while you are in the middle of struggling with every aspect of the job, feel like your personal life is exactly none, and are totally overwhelmed and insecure because you feel like and know you suck.
I went to work one morning over the semester break and I got to the door of the gym to go into my office. I was frozen. I couldn't get myself to open the door. I didn't know what to do and started to feel panicked so I did what anyone would do. I called my mom. I told her what was happening and that I didn't know what to do. She told me I could go pack my things and come home. She told me she would leave work now and make the 9.5-hour drive out to see me. Anything I needed, but she reassured me I didn't have to go in there. That moment was the first time I felt like I could decide to get out of basketball. It was also the first time I took a second to think about my life without basketball. I'm not sure which scared me more.
I knew quitting in the middle of the season wasn't an option and I wouldn't even consider it. I just needed to step into the office and go to work. I lived my entire life around the game being prideful of my mental toughness, but for whatever reason this felt different. I knew if I had my mom come out to see me then, I would have felt like a failure. I already felt like a failure every day I walked into that job but I never fully gave in to that thought. No matter how many times I thought I needed to or should. No matter how many times I was on the flight to an away game and I wasn't sitting there wanting the plane to go down, I just wished it would stay in the air forever. Being in the air was like escaping reality. I did next what I'm most proud of. I called a therapist and told them I needed to come in as soon as possible. I went into the therapist the very next morning and told him exactly how I felt sitting in his office which had a window like it was strategically placed for me. I was looking directly past him and through his high-rise window at my favorite side of the downtown city I was working in. I told him I felt like a total hack, a failure, a loser, and a moron. He talked with me for a while and then gave me some homework to take with me. Like everything else I did when I had that job, I didn't look or think about it again. I just kept returning serve the best I could.
I got out of coaching basketball for a multitude of reasons, I think. The biggest surface-level one was that I didn't want to spend so much time working and missing out on things. The biggest real reason was I didn't know who I was without basketball and in the time I spent living out on my own scared for a year, I was able to meet a friend on staff who will be my friend until the day I die. And I also met someone who showed me infinitely more to life than I ever imagined for myself. We traveled more than I ever traveled before. We did more unique things than I ever did unique things before. Her personality and the way she lived forced me out of my comfort zone in ways that I could never have gotten out of alone. She introduced me to an incredible amount of new people at a time of my life I would have never had the courage to meet new people and truthfully, I wanted to spend more time living life and experiencing things rather than continue to show up 2 hours late to a Jonas Brothers concert because I was still in the office at 9:45 on a Friday night. (Yes I know, the Jonas Brothers.)
The 2 years I spent after moving 9.5 hours away from home, 1 working in basketball and 1 not, were the best 2 years of my 29 so far in life. They were also the single 2 hardest years of my life. I am not here to sit and preach about hard equalling good or rewarding or any of that motivational stuff. That is not my place or my stance a lot of the time. But it is the truth when I look back at it. Those 2 years I spent so deeply scared, sad, overwhelmed, and uncomfortable, were also the 2 years I spent so deeply full of joy, happiness, transformed, and I felt like I was living a life I didn't know existed.
When I was making the decision to get out of basketball, I was told to talk to others who had done the same to see what their thoughts on it were. I think everybody has significantly different thoughts for many different reasons that are personal to them. However, I do think that no matter what, we all miss it for the attachment we feel towards it. It's ingrained in me. Not the actual game, that's beside the point. What is ingrained in me is my feelings associated with times of year, sounds, stories, the players and staffs I did it with, and so many other little things.
A large part of why so many people still do it is because there is a part of them addicted to the shit of it. I associate fall with a sore throat, being overly tired, and thinking the team I'm coaching isn't any good because we have spent 30 days practicing against just each other. I feel that void every fall even though I haven't been in that environment in years. I associate the brutal cold in the winter with having to get off the bus from 2 straight road trips, 4 flights, and knowing you have about 8 hours to recover until you are back in the office the next morning working for the next road trip. I associate airports with being anxious and lost and feeling alone. But then after Houston won a thriller in Overtime against Texas A&M to earn a trip to the Sweet 16, there was a camera that caught Coach Sampson fist-pumping in front of their crowd. There were 2 support staffers behind the bench, 1 male, and 1 female, jumping up and down like little kids. I don't personally know why they specifically were doing it in that exact moment, but I'd like to believe a huge part of why they were is because they know how much work they put in as a collective group who just reached one of their common goals and they haven't seen Coach Sampson let loose like that in months so all the shit that you're addicted to is all magically worth it to get that moment right there. I haven't stopped to rewind anything basketball related during this tournament but I laid in my bed and when I saw that video, I rewatched those 2 staffers jumping up and down celebrating their head coach's joy no less than 15 times. All the shit is built up for that moment and 4 years later, it still gave me goosebumps.
March is magical and it is undoubtedly the best time of the year for college basketball. But it is also the most nerve-wracking, stress-induced, uncertain 4-5 weeks for those in the profession. I don't miss that. But I do.
I'm enjoying my regular life watching the tournament games without the serious consequences attached to them. I watched a few of my friends lose in brutal ways after having great seasons while I was in a stance in my apartment alone talking like I was on defense trying to will them to a stop in their tournament game. I'm getting off work while it's light out and I take a walk or run by the lake every evening. I'm not anxious about an upcoming road trip and I'm significantly healthier than I've ever been. It's Sunday, I'm not even going to sit and let the worry of the upcoming work week steal my Sunday night. I've learned I have hobbies and interests outside of basketball and I've also learned that I have some self-worth outside of it too.
Basketball was a vehicle that I thought I would drive for the rest of my life. For whatever reason, it turned out that it just didn't work out for me like that. There are certainly a few situations where I'd quit my normal life in a heartbeat to get back into it, shit and all. Or maybe basketball will find a way back to me just in a different form.
Because of basketball, I'm 29 living my life mostly alone. But also because of basketball, I'm more confident and well equipped for the job I currently show up for Monday-Friday. I'm more confident now living 7.5 hours away from home in a new city. I sometimes miss somebody yelling in my day to day normal job. I definitely miss getting MF'd and then laughing about it a day later. I sometimes miss getting home at 1 am after being on the road recruiting. I sometimes miss sitting on the airplane, overlooking a city, and thinking about how my problems on this flight seem so large but no one I'm looking down on even knows I exist. I even sometimes miss feeling miserable after a bad loss.
There are going to be hundreds of college basketball staffers at all levels in the upcoming weeks left wondering what comes next and trying to determine whether or not they want to continue doing it. I'm not here to give one ounce of advice to anyone because I don't have any. But if you want my honest opinion on if I miss it, this is the best I got:
I don't miss basketball until I miss it but I only miss basketball when I miss it.
Comments