Can There Be 4 Worse Words to Say as a Coach Than "Well, When I Played..."?

(Back row Buddy Coats, Erik Furnish, Charles Bottorff, David Moore, Darrell Bischoff, Head Coach Terry Rademacher
Front row Bryan Coomer, Doug Boggs, Matt Rice, and Perry Hunter)

Well, when I played....many people thought I was a smart player.  Some thought I was skilled, some thought I was quick, some thought...whatever, but many people thought I was smart.  When I think back about when I played high school basketball, I wasn't very smart, I just did what my coach told me to do which I guess in hindsight is pretty smart.  But I have watched game tapes of when I played and I can remember playing in those games, but I don't remember knowing why I did what I did.  But I look back and see that not only me, but many of my teammates did some really smart things and it had to go back to coaching because none of us were that smart.

My senior year, picture above, we were not that good.  We were not athletic, but the team GPA was relatively high, we played hard, and we were coachable.  The scoring was done by 3 guys. Charles Bottorff, me, and Matt Rice would take most of the shots and score most of the points.  We had many good role players after that.  Some of the guys would focus on rebounding and some on defense, and some on handling the ball.

We played many good teams that year and finished 11-9 in the regular season.  We got a break and drew Borden in the bye game of the sectional which is the first round of our state tournament.  This was the one class era, so two small schools playing for a chance to get to the championship was a big deal for both of us.  We had beaten them twice that season in close games, I hit two FT's with seconds left to beat them at home and Matt Rice hit FT's at Borden to win in the last seconds.  We felt like we were better than them and they were confident they could beat us.  We came out and got a big lead immediately up over 30 points at halftime.

That got us to the championship game vs. the host school Floyd Central.  Floyd Central was a junior dominated team led by Pat Graham.  The next season FC would go to the State Final Four, Graham would be named Mr. Basketball and would sign with Indiana University.  But on this night, this group at FC hadn't won anything yet.  We were down 10-0 and called a timeout.  By halftime the game was virtually over but in the 4th quarter down by 20, we made a run and cut the lead to 12, I believe, and had the ball.  FC stopped the run and defeated us easily to win the sectional and for us to finish 12-10.

I can remember fouling out of that game with a few minutes left and I can remember the absolute emotional drain that I had.  You see, all I had wanted to do when I was a kid was play for Henryville.  I was born in October of 1969 and my mom started taking me to games in November.  But as I walked off the floor to the bench, then from the bench to the locker room and finally in the locker room I could not believe that I would never get to put on a uniform again.  That everything I had ever wanted as a kid was over.

You can probably understand why many of us coach.  We want to be able to never grow up in some ways.  By coaching we get to still be a part of our childhood, by being part of others' childhoods.  The difference now is that when a player's career is over and they are extremely emotional, my career can go on as long as I want to coach or do not get removed from the job.

(The 10-11 team at Purdue the summer before the season)