The Journey: Lessons from the Hardwood

By Mike Winters

From one of the most passionate and energetic high school coaches in the state of Illinois, Mike Winters provides a basketball coaches' guide to building and sustaining a championship program.  Drawing from 25 years of experience, Coach Winters provides glimpses into what it takes to build a cham

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coach Mike Winters
• Release date: Aug 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9780578933931

Book preview

Introduction

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As I sit here in an empty classroom in November 2020, the pandemic year, I decided to start reflecting on my 24 years in coaching. We ended up playing an abbreviated 5-week season in 2021 which was my 25th overall and 18th as a Head Coach. Here in Illinois our season was on hold for all of November, December and most of January. With the prospect of not having a season, it made me realize that I’ve been blessed beyond all measure. And I thought it was time I start to share some of my thoughts, my ideas, my experiences and my stories with anybody out there who might be willing to listen and who is also ready to try to improve as a coach.

If you ask me what I know for certain after 25 years in coaching, the only thing I can tell you without a doubt is that kids are unpredictable. Great practice players are not always great in games. Players who do not practice well are not always bad in games. Having more talent does not guarantee anything in high school hoops. Why? Because kids are unpredictable. The old adage of you play like you practice is not always true. Over the long haul I think it is true more than it isn’t true. But I’ve had lots of bad practices the day before the game and our players went out and killed it on game day. The opposite has also been true many times. Sometimes as a coach you just have to be willing to try and change something and see what happens. Don’t be afraid to make that in game adjustment based on a hunch. If not, you may never catch lightning in a bottle and you may never know what you missed out on or if a team had more in them than what you got out of them. But you have to be the first believer no matter what it is you decide. You have to show extreme confidence in your decision making even if you are not totally confident. One criticism I often hear of high school coaches is that they don’t ever adjust. Granted, the people making these criticisms are often irrelevant, but there are times I agree. I also think you can learn a lot about your team and how to coach them when you make adjustments and see how they respond. I love coaching for many of these reasons. There is a psychology to it that I really enjoy. The X’s and O’s are so much fun, but rather insignificant in the big picture. What I mean is, if your players don’t think you care about them or believe in them, they probably will not trust or believe in you. That takes time and effort. But once it happens, now you can start really pushing them and challenging them and that’s where things really tend to take flight. I am far from being a keep-it simple coach. I like complexity because I believe players can handle it. Players want to meet expectations when the person holding those high expectations cares about them as people. I like complexity because it makes the game tougher for our opponents. I like complexity because I know I can teach it in a way that makes sense to our players and get so much more out of them as a result. But it takes time and being a student of the game to get to that point. It won’t happen overnight. As a coach, you have to put the work in to get yourself ready to build successful teams. All of this as it relates to building strong teams and organizations translates to the business world as well. Building a successful business is very similar to building a successful team in any sport. I think that’s why coaches study the business world and the business world studies coaches.

My competitive nature comes from my mom; she has always been a perfectionist. She may not even realize that I think this about her because to her it was just the right way to do things. She keeps the cleanest house I’ve ever been in. My sisters and I would laugh growing up when she would tell us we couldn’t have people over because the house was a mess. We would always respond with, Do you know what our friend’s houses look like? My ability to teach and coach comes from my dad, the baseball coach, the best coach I’ve ever played for. He always thought the game one step ahead of everybody else. On top of that, they were just flat out the best role models you could possibly ask for. They have bent over backwards for me and my sisters in our life and it has continued in my coaching career. They don’t miss a game, they sit there and listen to the criticisms, and they are more supportive than I could ever describe. There is a special place in heaven not only for coach’s wives, but also for the parents and children of coaches who all make tremendous sacrifices so that we can do what we love.

My wife Nicole is just about as amazing of a coach’s wife as you can possibly imagine. First of all, she gets it. She knows how much it means to me and she grew up in a coach’s family. Her dad, Don Martinetti, who actually was a former teacher of mine at Jefferson High School, coached basketball for many years and also was a golf coach for 30 years. Her brother, Dean Martinetti, was a mentor of mine and the Head Coach at Rockford Jefferson in five of the seven years I spent there as an assistant coach both during and right after graduating college. Now don’t get me wrong, there have been times where Nicole has told me that I need to back away from coaching a little bit and that she wasn’t happy about the amount of time I spent at it, but a big part of that was back in the old days when we used to go out and scout all the time. In this day and age, we get most of our scouts through film exchange which has helped save time. Nicole has been so incredibly helpful throughout my coaching career. She has done everything from running fundraisers to being our team's art director which, as an art teacher and artist herself, comes in very, very handy for us. She has been 100% selfless in this entire venture. I don’t tell her enough how much I love her and how significant her contributions have been to my success as a head coach. I truly could not do this without her. And when you reflect back on all of the things that your wife or your parents or other family members have to sit and listen to in the stands from all of the so-called experts, it really makes you shake your head and realize how incredible the sacrifices that they have made are and how vital they are to your success.

Just in case you were wondering, my wife can chew out an official with the best of them. My players at Rock Falls first met my wife when we played in a summer tournament in Rockton, Illinois in the Summer of 2005. She was 8 1/2 months pregnant with my son Brandon, it was unbelievably hot playing in the bubble/field house at Hononegah High School and my players still to this day remind me of how much she was screaming at the referees in a meaningless summer game. Prior to that, we were at the State Farm Classic in Bloomington with my Rockford Jefferson team right after Christmas in 2004. We played a late game against Normal Community High School and we were the overall number one seed, but we got upset in that semifinal game. I remember it being a really late starting game. By the time we got back to the hotel and fed our players and got them into their rooms for the night and started watching the film, it was at least 2 AM. My assistant, Gordy Kasper, at one point shut the film off because he could hear my wife screaming so loud. It was one of those typical quiet gyms at a Christmas tournament late at night. Gordy started to talk about how concerned he was because she was pregnant and how that couldn’t be healthy for the baby. But just like I’ll go to bat for our players when I think they’re not getting a fair shake, my wife will take that to a different level to have our players back and to have my back which I absolutely love. We joke with her about it, but it means a lot to me, my coaches, and our players. Again, you may question a lot of things about our coaching and so on, but you can never question my or my family’s passion for these kids in our programs over the years. The passion is something players will always come back and tell me that they loved about their time playing for me. They didn’t always like how hard we pushed them or some of the very blunt criticisms we would throw at them from time to time, but they know when your heart is in it for the right reasons! Don’t ever hide that passion or apologize for it, but realize that if your players don’t believe you care about them, they will take it the wrong way at times.

I have a son, Brandon, that now attends and plays for Machesney Park Harlem where I teach and coach. He faces a very difficult task ahead as the coaches’ kid. No matter what he does, people will always question why he gets to play and so on. I wonder if that will even carry over to baseball for him. My advice for him has always been to leave no doubt and know you are deserving. My daughter McKenna also loves her basketball and softball and she has an incredible singing voice. At age 12, she started her own YouTube Channel and her musician page on Facebook was close to 1,000 followers already. I’m just so proud of the way they’ve handled everything involved in our coaching journey. Brandon was in his car seat in the bleachers at games within six months of being born. He's just been immersed in this environment as has McKenna since a very young age. One of the things I love the most is that our players have always been tremendous role models for our kids. My daughter absolutely loves and looks up to our players. She will come down and give me a hug during pregame warm-ups before every single game. Sometimes she will sit on the bench with me during pregame and listen to me tell her about the other team and our scouting report on them. My favorite picture of McKenna and I together was during pregame before a sectional game in 2019. It’s just her and I sitting on the bench together and I’m pointing out some of the other team’s best players to her and telling her what they do well. Anyone that knows me, knows that the 15 to 20-minute pregame warm-up seems like an eternity because I’m always so anxious to just get to it after a long couple of days of preparation. I don’t know if McKenna realizes how important those few minutes are to me to make that time pass. It’s funny how little things like that become so important to you as you get older.

McKenna and I before a sectional game in 2019

In the 2019-2020 season, I got to watch my son Brandon help lead his team to a 26 and 3 record. As freshmen, they won our conference championship and end-of- season conference tournament. I couldn’t have been more proud of the way he did so much of the dirty work for that team, taking charges, sacrificing his body diving on the floor after loose balls and defending the other team's biggest player despite giving up a couple of inches every single time on the floor. Shortly after that, he lost his entire baseball season due to COVID. He had made the JV team as a freshman and I was really looking forward to watching him play in a Harlem uniform. He continues to embrace the importance of the weight room and work his tail off. After watching him work through all of the restrictions and cancellations surrounding COVID, again I’m amazed at how resilient he is.

My family after Brandon’s freshman team wrapped up the NIC-10 title

As you continue to read, my goal is to provide you with a little taste of everything you will experience in coaching. If your goal is to become a great coach, you will have to always be in a growth state of mind. My hope is to provide you with some great stories over the years. As you enter your coaching journey you will undoubtedly have visions of winning state championships and leaving your mark. But to get there, you also have to realize there will be years where you fall short. But the memories and relationships will be something you will grow to appreciate more and more through the years. I also want to share a lot of my coaching philosophy developed over 25 seasons in the game. The reason why I wanted to write a book that was a hybrid of X’s and O’s and just overall experiences is to help coaches appreciate everything along the way. If I could go back and do it all over from the beginning, I would value the relationships far more. I would tell those kids on my early teams that I loved them more often. A handful of those kids are no longer with us and it’s something I can’t go back and fix. But I was consumed with winning early on. I did love every kid that played for me from my very first day coaching, but I haven’t always been great at expressing it to them. So my goal here is to help share experiences that can help you be a well-rounded coach that can lead, inspire, build a culture of greatness within your program and also build relationships that are based on mutual respect, appreciation and love amongst your staff and players. My goal with every book I read and every clinic I attend is to walk away with at least one thing of value. I hope when you are finished here that you will find at least one thing. Enjoy and thank you! Do not hesitate to reach out if you have questions.

Why We Coach

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Coaching is a Lonely Profession

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Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth.

-James MacGregor Burns

Everything that occurs within an organization reflects back upon its leader.

-Bobby Bowden

So you want to be a coach? If you are anything like me, you will put the weight of the community and their aspirations on your shoulders. There are times when that responsibility feels like the most awesome thing in the world. The night against the conference rival or in the state playoffs that go your way and end in celebration can be magical and inspiring. But for every one of those nights, there is that night where you will anguish and lose sleep over a tough loss, seeing and feeling the disappointment of the community and especially the heartbreak of your players. Rarely do I accept any type of praise on those good nights. There are two reasons for this. First of all, I can do this for 50 years if I choose. My players only get one, very short high school career. They deserve the spotlight. Secondly, accepting praise has always been kind of difficult and awkward for me. It isn’t why I do this. There is a high in it for me but it isn’t in the praise. It’s that look in our kids’ eyes when they have that sense of accomplishment that fuels me. It’s that moment in the game when the crowd erupted but you didn’t really have time to enjoy it until later on watching the film. It’s that moment when you glance up a row or two in a timeout huddle and see that young boy or girl hanging on everything happening during that timeout. It’s late at night after a game and you put the game film on and get to rewind a big play 10 times in a row and watch the reactions of different fans in the stands. All of it is priceless. I know so many of those people in the stands on game night have difficulties in their lives. What an awesome thing for myself and a bunch of high school kids to be able to provide them with an escape from whatever ails them even if it is just for 90 minutes. I take that very seriously and our players know it. In a sense, we have an opportunity to help people forget about all of the things that were bothering them that day or that week and leave the gym with a smile on their faces. These kids remind people what it once was like to dream and lay it all on the line to fight for those dreams. We tend to forget that as adults all too easily. I am forever grateful I get to work with teenagers who remind me that we can still dream no matter how old we get.

In 2005, my Rockford Jefferson team had just knocked off traditional state power Rockford Boylan Catholic (the same school where I would take over in 2011) in a Sectional Championship and now stood just one win away from a trip to the Elite 8-the prestigious AA state tournament in Illinois. We were at practice on Monday after school and in just 24 hours we would travel two hours to play in the iWireless Center, a 12,000 seat arena in Moline, IL. Our guys were really on edge and irritable. Josh Pickens was our shooting guard and a captain. I pulled him aside about half way through practice and asked him why everyone was so on edge. I will never forget what he said to me in a very nervous tone. We’re just so close we don’t wanna screw it up, he said. I was 30 years old and in my 4th season as a Head Coach. I felt exactly what he was feeling. But I assumed our 16, 17 and 18 year olds just lived life without fear. I remember we got to Moline the next day and went into a Subway to feed the kids before arriving at the arena. I had not eaten since my conversation with Josh. I definitely couldn’t eat two and a half hours before tip-off either. His words still echoed in my mind. We were really close and no one wanted to screw that up. It was stressful. But it is also one of the greatest privileges I have ever had or can even imagine. I am honored and very lucky to do what I do. I accept the stress that comes with it. The stress of a Super-Sectional game is good stress. It could be a lot worse. I’ve been blessed to play in 4 such games with the stress of a trip to state on the line in a state where it is incredibly difficult to get to state let alone win a state championship. But it is a lonely feeling. You never want to let anybody down and neither do your players.

I left Rockford Jefferson following that season. My wife was driving about 40 minutes from where we lived to a teaching job in Dixon, IL. I was pink-slipped in the Rockford School District for the second straight year meaning I had a teaching job but didn’t know where. We were expecting our first child. An intriguing job opened up not too far from where my wife was teaching. Rock Falls had been a Class A powerhouse for many years and found out they would have to make the jump to AA (any school 735 and up enrollment wise) due to a change in the enrollment cutoff. They were now going to be the smallest big school in Illinois and their coach decided to move on and take a position in Southern Illinois closer to where he was from. I saw some game film on them and thought they could play with anyone regardless of the school’s enrollment. But I would be taking over a group that included 9 seniors who believed they were destined to win a Class A championship and were now on their final chance to get to state. Rock Falls would have to face teams two, three and even four times their enrollment. Again, I felt the weight of the world trying to get these kids to their version of the promised land. We also had the most amazing fan base that lived vicariously through our players. Rock Falls was an awesome place to coach!

There really has never been a time when I didn’t feel how important of an escape high school basketball is for fans. When I took over my current position at Harlem, they had not won a regional since 2002 and then 1977 before that. The day of the Regional Championship game in 2019, the Rockford Register Star ran an article previewing not only our opportunity, but highlighting our rather futile basketball history at Harlem. I also made a comment about how people thought I was crazy for taking the Harlem job and that we could never win there. I basically said I was going to prove everyone wrong. Then came the longest school day ever followed by an hour-long bus ride. We were the favorite and the higher seed but of course our opponent was the host of the regional and we would have to win the regional in THEIR GYM! This was something we were just going to have to get done to secure the type of culture we were hoping to build at Harlem. This was a must win game!

These were just a few of the game days where I