Before I coached my first basketball team at Lovington Central I was a volunteer assistant coach with the volleyball teams. Basically that meant I chased balls but the experience I received watching the coach and being on the sideline at games turned out to be very valuable. Up until that point my only volleyball experience was as a player coach on a coed park and rec team. The reason it proved valuable is that I found myself hired to coach volleyball the next year at Central and coached it for four years.
Ironically it was that early in my coaching career that I found myself becoming too caught up in never turning down an opportunity to coach. Before I left Central Junior High I was paid to coach junior high volleyball, basketball and track and was volunteering with the high school cross country and track teams. While there were many years in my career where I only coached cross country and track the last four years of my career I was coaching five varsity teams during the school year. I was head coach of boys cross country, girls cross country, girls swimming, boys track and girls track. Looking back I can honestly say that I was spread too thin and it took it's toll on me emotionally more than anything else. If asked today what I would have cut out it would be an easy answer, swimming first and boys track second. Coaching both cross country teams was never an issue because I always coached them both the same, it was basically coaching a coed team.
Anyway, back to Central Junior High and my early coaching experience. I wound up coaching basketball for four years. The first two years I coached 8th grade boys and the last two 8th grade girls. I was never more than a warm body when it came to coaching basketball. I worked hard to learn the basics of the game and I knew the rule book inside out but I was coaching in an area where the winningest high school basketball coach in the country oversaw three of our District opponents and they were in a whole different world. Most of the coaches in those programs had come up through his programs and knew basketball inside out. Even the girls teams in the Hobbs schools were required to run the same type of programs run at Hobbs High School where the legend, Ralph Tasker was head coach of the boys team. His boys team held the national record for most points scored per game among others. It was a tough place to get my feet wet but it was also a good place for me to learn that I didn't want to be a basketball coach any longer than necessary.
My boys teams were 8-8 the first year and 7-8 the second so the 15-16 record was the only losing record I had coaching in Lovington. My girls teams were 9-6 and 6-9 so my overall basketball record at Lovington was 30-31. Not too bad for someone the kids used to love watching during timeouts because my hands were shaking so bad when I was drawing up a play on the chalkboard.
I did learn a lot of valuable things coaching basketball though about teamwork, motivation, dealing with losing, dealing with parents, trying to work with too many kids and keeping them all motivated and somewhat happy. You can see from the pictures that my teams were huge, we weren't allowed to cut and that was fine with me because I never cut an athlete for lack of ability in the 29 years I coached. This proved to be a valuable trait especially when I started coaching track and cross country.
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