Robservations: Search for coaches nears end
No, that long line you saw last night stretching down several county streets wasn’t made up of fans clamoring for the latest “Harry Potter” adventure.
It seems that sometime late this week, word leaked from the Southern Standard offices that your friendly neighborhood sports editor would be penning a Sunday column, in addition to his normal Friday fare. By the time Saturday’s press run had begun, eager readers had already begun lining up at sales racks all over the community.
If you were at all inconvenienced by the throngs of “Robservations” fans, I sincerely apologize.
(OK, so maybe that’s not entirely true. So maybe writing a column simply slipped our normal “armchair quarterback’s” mind, and I picked up his slack. But I can dream, can’t I?)
• Three down, one to go.
That’s the state of affairs, in a nutshell, of the Warren County High School athletic department after this week’s hiring of Chris Turner to fill the vacancy at the helm of the Pioneer basketball team.
It’s hard to believe, but in my relatively short tenure here at the Standard (It’ll be three years in November; don’t forget to mark your calendars), I’ve seen an almost entirely new coaching staff take over.
Boys basketball, girls basketball, girls and (soon-to-be) boys soccer, softball, baseball and football have all gone through the process of hiring new coaches, which has put a great deal of added stress on school administrators, players and even the fans.
But hopefully, things will be settled down for a while. As fun as it is to sit at this desk and wait for r?sum?s to come in when a coaching spot is vacant, it’s nice to know that WCHS has a roster of coaches that it is satisfied with.
And hopefully, when that final piece of the puzzle is found and the Pioneer soccer coaching slot is filled, we can all take a break from these interviewing and hiring processes, and Pioneer and Lady Pioneer fans will have a roster of coaches that will bring them successful programs for years to come.
• Speaking of new coaches, the first thing that hits you when you meet the Pioneers’ new hoops coach, or at least the first thing that hit me, was his youth.
And he even looks younger than he really is.
Back in the late ’90s, while Turner was running up and down the hardwood at Tennessee Tech, I covered MTSU and probably made a few trips to watch both the new Pioneer coach and his lovely fianc? while they played for the Golden Eagles and Eaglettes, respectively.
So yes, he’s young. Yes, I’ll feel like I’m 100 years old when I interview him this fall and winter. But so what? Every old veteran coach was, at some point, a fresh-faced young coach. And that youth will hopefully serve as an asset, rather than a hindrance.
Put yourself in the shoes of the average 16- or 17-year-old basketball player. Who would you rather listen to? Some old fogey, who remembers when Kareem was still Lou and goes on and on about “how we used to do it,” or a guy who’s relatively close to your age, and still remembers what it was like to be in your situation?
These days, coaching isn’t about ruling the players. It’s about relating to them. And coaches who can relate to their team on its own level are the coaches who are finding the most success.