Guest TigerBlog: It's Humbling To Be A Junior College Coach

TigerBlog has a standing offer to anyone who would like to write a guest entry, and he's always happy when someone takes him up and writes a meaningful, thoughtful piece on something that is of importance.

Today the floor belongs to former Princeton men's basketball great Howard Levy, a 1985 graduate who was an All-Ivy center and who is still the program's career record holder for field goal percentage. Howard is now the head coach of at Mercer County College, as well as one of the most loyal and well-liked Princetonians you will ever meet.

It’s humbling to be a junior college coach.  

The best laid plans and coaching strategies mostly don’t work and then it’s all about adjustments. This season, I thought I had it figured out with some great ideas on what to do and more importantly, how to teach it quickly.   

Well, a few months into the season, I realized that the ideas were more suited to last year’s team, a mostly mature, veteran, very good team that moved the ball as well as any team I have ever coached, rivaling the 1998 Princeton team in that regard. So it’s time to adjust, and my coaching upbringing has been to blame myself, that there is no problem that better coaching can’t solve.  

I had been feeling sorry for myself as my Mercer Vikings team headed into the holiday break with a 4-8 record, with one game to go against Frederick (MD) Community College on our annual trip to the Washington, DC, area.

We have visited Washington every year that I have been the head coach at Mercer, so this is our 12^th trip.  I had the idea to give our team an annual cultural experience to go along with a game, and John Simone, our long serving Athletic Director, agreed. I spent seven years in DC from 1987-1994, three as a law student/assistant coach at George Washington University, and the remainder working as a lawyer, so I have a lot of good friends and contacts there, both in and out of basketball.

In my first year, then-Georgetown head coach John Thompson III allowed us to practice at McDonough Arena, and the trip has taken shape from there. After that first practice, John spoke to my team, and after a few minutes, he grew very comfortable and started talking as if he was speaking to his own team.  

 

From there, we’ve either played a game at the Verizon Center (or whatever it is called these days)—usually at 8 or 9am before a Georgetown game—or we have held a practice at the Wizards’ practice facility. Our guys have gotten to see and meet Georgetown and NBA players and coaches, and I’ve gotten to deepen my friendships with Wizards execs, including current GM Tommy Sheppard and former President and GM Ernie Grunfeld.   

I have always followed Ernie - one of the few Jewish NBA players of my generation, and his career closely, and our paths have crossed several times over the years, the first time being at Brendan Byrne Arena in 1985 during my all-too-brief tenure with the New Jersey Nets. I lasted through the exhibition season, and my first game was against the Knicks (it was Patrick Ewing’s first game too).   

Before the game, players from both teams were shooting around and talking. I felt a little awkward as I had no one to talk to; Ernie saw this, came down and introduced himself. We shot around a bit and started a relationship that has continued over the years.

Of course it has been great to see John and his dad. John would normally speak to our team after our game and his words and manner served to reinforce the fact that our Mercer teams are part of a bigger basketball family.  I know the players were surprised and happy to realize that prominent people in our sport follow them.

John’s dad is one of my all-time favorites, and I treasure the time we have spent together talking about life and basketball. Besides his wealth of knowledge and experience, his personality and way of carrying himself remind me so much of my (also 6’10”) father, Syd, who passed away too young a dozen years ago. My last encounter with Coach Thompson was two or three years ago during John’s last season at Georgetown, when he saw me leading my team out of the locker room, and bellowed, “Hey MF-er, they haven’t fired your ass yet?”

Our results on this trip have been mixed—we’ve lost more than we have won but have won our share.  Our usual opponent—Frederick—is a perennially good team, and we have played some really exciting hard-fought games. I’ll get to this year’s game in a little bit.

In addition to the basketball, we do some sightseeing in DC. We’ve visited monuments, usually the Lincoln and Martin Luther King Memorials. We have visited the Holocaust Museum; that visit was preceded by a session at the Mercer County Holocaust/Genocide Resource Center.   

We’ve been to the Washington Nationals Baseball Academy, which provides baseball and academic instruction to underprivileged youths in DC. Two years ago, we visited the Supreme Court and every other year we try to visit the U.S. Capitol.   

Our former Congressman Rush Holt has hosted us, as has Congresswoman Terry Sewell (Princeton 1986) of Alabama. Terry took us onto the floor of the House of Representatives, where I ran into retiring Senator Tom Harkin, and he was happy to hear that I coached his son-in-law Steve Goodrich (Princeton 1998).

This year we were fortunate enough to visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture.  Prior to leaving, my good friend and former Princeton football coach Steve DiGregorio (“Digger”)—currently a history teacher in his hometown of Nutley, NJ—spoke to the team about what to expect at the museum. Steve and his son Derek accompanied us on the trip. The museum is incredible, but I was most impressed with the engagement and seriousness of our players, most of whom are African-American from low income backgrounds, with what I perceive as little knowledge of their history.  I was happy and grateful to see them taking their time and asking questions during our 2+ hours there.

Then it was off to practice at the Wizards new facility in SE Washington. I will just say that the practice bore little resemblance to the players’ Instagram posts of them “working” at an NBA facility.   

My general feeling about this team is that we have enough talent to be successful but only with a consistent level of work, attention to detail and mature behavior that has not been present thus far.  Unfortunately lack of effort and talking and bickering have been the hallmarks of this team, and solving these human problems has been our central challenge as coaches.  We have found this to be more difficult than teaching offense, defense or any basketball skill.

After a difficult practice, we headed to our final, and to me, the most important event of the day—DINNER—not because of the food but because of the company. This annual dinner is organized by me and two close friends: Rich Dipippo, a DC insurance agent who was the academic advisor and mentor to many GW student athletes during my time there; and Jimmy Lynn (“The Judge”), who I met as a Princeton freshman in 1981 when he visited his best friend and Princeton football legend Kevin Guthrie.   

The Judge is “Mr. DC” and has built a tremendous career in sports marketing and diversity, first at AOL, and currently as a founder of Kiswe—the world’s most advanced cloud-based interactive mobile video streaming platform and as a professor of Sports Marketing at Georgetown.  He has used his success to mentor scores of kids and young adults in the DC area, from Georgetown student athletes (usually those from disadvantaged backgrounds and those from outside the U.S.) to youngsters at the Nationals Baseball Academy where he serves as a board member.

 

The food is generally a sidelight to the evening, but this year it is worth mentioning. The Judge was able to set up the dinner at Momofuko, one of DC’s top restaurants owned by famed restaurateur David Chang.  Even here, I was happy to see our guys embracing the atmosphere and eagerly trying new and different types of foods.  One of the guys said it was the first time he had eaten salad.

In addition to Rich and The Judge, I try to invite friends and former players to share their life experiences that I hope will be relevant to our players. In a nice coincidence current Princeton Women’s DOBO Helen Tau has joined us in the past when she had a similar role at Georgetown.  Over the years we have heard from former Princeton star and babysitter extraordinaire, current American University assistant coach Scott Greenman, some of my former GW players, and a former Mercer player who now has an MBA and is working in real estate, Paco Boussougou.   

Paco’s words were particularly impactful as he played on my first two teams, and we constantly butted heads.  I even temporarily threw him off the team at one point. In Paco’s second year, we went into the holiday break with a 2-9 record only to rattle off 11 straight wins in January and February to win our Region championship and earned a berth in the NJCAA Tournament.  

This year Digger invited and introduced Billy Jordan, a great running back and Princeton and now a successful real estate executive. Billy had to wait his turn to play at Princeton as he backed up Keith Elias for two years. He shared how the lessons he learned about being a good teammate and continuing to work while not playing have helped him in life. These are difficult lessons to teach in today’s instant gratification world.

The Judge wrapped up the evening tying together the life lessons, particularly how simply showing up for work every single day is the foundation for success. All the speakers offered to be in contact with the guys to help them as they progress through college and life. I know that at least one of the guys has already followed up, which is encouraging to me.

I am grateful to my friends for the interest that they have taken in my guys, and I know that the  things they have heard will impact them, though I am not sure they will have the desired effect by TOMORROW in time to improve our team enough to win.

I am also grateful for this entire experience as coaching is an often frustrating job, and when done in obscurity at a place like Mercer, it’s easy to forget what is really important—the development of these guys. Hearing my friends and seeing the engagement of the guys is a needed reminder why I do this.

Oh yeah—the game.  Well, we had our moments, overcoming a bad start to take a lead while playing some beautiful basketball against a more talented opponent and then issues that have plagued us—bickering, lack of hustle—showed up and we lost by 15.  

I was particularly distressed to see one of our guys who didn’t play as much as HE expected sulking and not rooting on his teammates. Of all the things that were discussed at the dinner, that is the one that can be changed immediately—just fake it!

In any event, my assistant coach (and former Mercer player) Stan Tuchez and I spoke to them about the need to self-evaluate, absorb the lessons that they have learned and come back in January ready to get better.  At the very least, we gave them some things to think about, and I hope they will now see their coach a little differently—possibly as a human being that cares about them.