I am getting to the age when my mentors are all departing and the mentoring torch has been placed in my own hands. I have had the pleasure of sitting under the teaching of John Wooden, Jim Valvano, Al McGuire and Don Meyer.
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I am getting to the age when my mentors are all departing and the mentoring torch has been placed in my own hands. I have had the pleasure of sitting under the teaching of John Wooden, Jim Valvano, Al McGuire and Don Meyer.
Meyer was perhaps the one who most influenced my life as a coach. One time I can remember that he sat me down when I was ready to end my coaching career too soon. I was feuding with an athletic director and I was losing the battle.
Meyer who was then coaching at Lipscomb University in Nashville told me, “Wrestling with an athletic director can sometimes be like wrestling with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” He also told me that if I was willing to quit over something like that, it wouldn’t be fair to my kids to keep coaching because you have to live what you coach.
This man was an ESPY award winner for perseverance and gives a tribute on the back cover of my book “A Warrior’s Heart.” He won 923 collegiate basketball games. On a very cold week in Michigan, just before my Varsity season began, he called and told me that he was going to be doing a coaching clinic at Saginaw Valley University.
I knew he was, and I knew that he was very sick, but I was preparing a new team for the start of a grueling year and I didn’t know if I could find the time. Something in his weakened voice made me change my mind and I told him I’d be there. It was the last public coaching clinic that he would ever speak at.
I entered SVU and watched some new drills by the Varsity coaches there and was asked to evaluate them. Most of them knew I was a 5-Star veteran coach and a hall of fame coach in Michigan. They also knew that I was a student of the Don Meyer teaching on life.
When I entered the room and saw him, I was shocked at how thin he’d become. I talked with him after he addressed the men’s Varsity players in a private session. He told me he wasn’t doing well and asked if I’d have my church say a prayer for him.