When coaches move on

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The recent departures of Howard Payne’s Chris Kielsmeier and Bowdoin’s Stefanie Pemper should remind us all that coaching in Division III can be fairly transient.

Many great coaches have given their life’s work to Division III. Others have started in Division III and moved on. For the most part, this is the nature of the business. I was talking about this at the Final Four with our colleague, Chris Pesotski, and while I don’t think he agreed fully with my theory, here it is anyway.

Among the top coaches in Division III, we really have two basic groups. I know this may be a little oversimplified, but here goes anyway. There are coaches who are lifers, often working at their alma mater, who love the Division III experience and would never have it any other way. And there are coaches who look to pursue jobs at the scholarship level.

We had three lifers at the men’s Final Four: Not only have Mark Edwards, Dave Hixon and Glenn VanWieren been coaching at their respective schools for decades, they are all coaching at alma mater. I think it was fairly clear Kielsmeier was not a lifer. He had built a great program at Howard Payne, but he had a Division I background and no particular ties to West Texas. And Pemper was beginning to show signs of liferism, but got a good opportunity and is running with it.

It’s hard to tell who’s a lifer and who isn’t for coaches in their 30s and 40s. I would be willing to bet the coaches themselves don’t necessarily know either. But the coaches who have taken Division I head coaching jobs, such as Pemper, Hardin-Simmons/Oklahoma State/Charleston Southern’s Julie Goodenough, or even UW-Platteville/UW-Milwaukee/UW-Madison’s Bo Ryan … and then those who got D-I head coaching jobs after brief assistant coaching stints, such as Catholic/Maryland/Vermont’s Mike Lonergan and King’s/Virginia Commonwealth/Mount St. Mary’s Bryan Whitten, were all relatively young when they left Division III.

OK, not Bo Ryan, but Ryan is the exception to almost every so-called rule.

The point is, we should be glad for our coaches when they move on and up. Ryan talks about his Platteville experiences all the time. They help shine the spotlight on Division III, just a little.

And just a little is good. Really.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad coaches in Division III, and in some instances there isn’t a lot of pressure to get better. That’s good for the institution of pure amateur basketball — no scholarships, no particular emphasis on winning — but bad for the kids who could use more help to reach their full potential. Sometimes ADs don’t have the intestinal fortitude to fire someone, and the win-loss record should never, ever be the only measuring stick. But if the program isn’t improving, and the players aren’t getting as much out of it as they should, isn’t that a reason to change?

We have coaches trying to get back into Division III this summer — recognizable coaches who would make an immediate impact on their school after doing something else or coaching elsewhere for a while. I hope they find what they’re looking for.

20 million strong

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Our counter reached 20 million this afternoon, a sort of culmination to a season where our traffic got a bit of a bounce, for once.

No matter what we do, traffic doesn’t seem to move upward for the season until mid-January. When conference play heats up, so does the site. It’s hard to avoid concluding that D3football.com has taken over as the flagship site in our little network here, and not only that, it’s been that way for three or four years.

But 2007-08 went pretty well. It’s hard to judge raw numbers from year to year because the structure of the site keeps changing — some pages got moved offsite last year, others a couple years earlier, etc. And when looking at the milestones, not every day is created equal. It takes about 10 days of May to equal one day in mid-February. So while it took fewer days to go from 16 to 17 million than it did to go from 19 to 20 million, I’ll trade in the 10 days of February 2007 for the five days of April and May.

Thanks to all who read, as always! Spread the word.

Dates for all of the million milestones. We’ve taken them off the front — too many to list. Our front page is very cluttered as it is.

1 million: Jan. 20, 2000
2 million: Dec. 19, 2000
3 million: May 3, 2001
4 million: Feb. 7, 2002
5 million: Nov. 19, 2002
6 million: Feb. 19, 2003
7 million: Oct. 25, 2003
8 million: Feb. 11, 2004
9 million: June 18, 2004
10 million: Jan. 14, 2005
11 million: March 5, 2005
12 million: Nov. 16, 2005
13 million: Feb. 6, 2006
14 million: March 22, 2006
15 million: Dec. 2, 2006
16 million: Feb. 15, 2007
17 million: May 4, 2007
18 million: Dec. 10, 2007
19 million: Feb. 25, 2008
20 million: April 29, 2008

The dark side of going co-ed

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It’s often difficult when a school goes co-ed, and many Division III women’s schools have begun to admit men in recent years. Immaculata, Regis, Lesley, Chestnut Hill (since moved to D-II), Hood and Wheelock are among them. The Atlantic Woman’s Collegiate Conference was a casualty.

Wells College is adding men’s basketball soon as well.

Randolph-Macon Woman’s College became Randolph College after admitting men, and the transition wasn’t easy — not for the teams and certainly not for the campus.

“We applied to a women’s college, and we’re not graduating from one,” said Hillary Peabody, the student government president. “(Men) are the reality of what we don’t want to happen at our school.”

Read the full story, from the jealousy over full stands at a men’s soccer game to a group of hooded figures stalking freshmen in the school’s first co-ed class to a wake-up call in a Roanoke Times feature story by Erinn Hutkin.

Division III fans, the next generation

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I’m sitting here watching Davidson/Kansas (Davidson 51-47 with 7:35 left, for those scoring at home) and my 10-year-old Elizabeth looks up at the television.

Remember, Elizabeth came with me to the regionals at Gettysburg earlier this month and got a real up-close look at what Division III is like as well as what I do on the site.

Elizabeth: “What’s that? It’s basketball, but what division?”
Me: “It’s Division I”
Elizabeth: “Oh. That explains why it’s on TV.”
(Smart girl! And she just closed my parentheses for me. After a pause …)
Elizabeth: “So what’s Division II?”
Me: “Good question”

Then I explained to her that Division II has some scholarships, etc., etc., and she said, “Oh. So it’s second-best.”

I didn’t ask her which was best. Hopefully she knows. 🙂

Insider: Really Sweet

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Well — we did it! What a roller-coaster season for our program, our team and myself. The 2008 NCAA Division III men’s basketball national champions are the Washington University in St. Louis Bears — now that’s got a nice ring to it.

The weekend in Salem was a very memorable one. It was a little different the second time around (after having been there a year ago) because we were a little more immune to the media, the large arena and the atmosphere. Last year we may have been a little in awe of the entire situation before having even played our games. This year it seemed as if the team had a much more businesslike attitude and was able to turn on the focus when we needed to turn it on.

Sean Wallis and teammates celebrate with the trophyThe people of Salem, the NCAA, and the ODAC really run a great show out there. After arriving Wednesday, each team does some community service on Thursday before practices. We visited a V.A. hospital, which was very neat. Immediately following that we went to a luncheon to honor Troy Ruths for his Jostens Award acceptance. It was SO special for our entire team to be at the presentation. Following that we had a few hours of downtime at the hotel before heading back to the Civic Center for practice. We practiced, and then stayed at the Civic Center for the annual banquet that night with all the teams.

The banquet is an opening ceremonies-esque dinner and reception for all the student-athletes. It features a coach and player speaking representing each team in addition to a pretty neat highlight video about each team’s road to the final four — which definitely gets the players ready to compete. The ODAC commissioner, Brad Bankston, gave my blog a nice mention during his speech — so thanks Brad, and thanks for helping put together such a great experience in Salem.

Friday features a little more relaxation and prep for Friday night’s games. After a morning shoot-around, most of us relaxed around the hotel while watching the Division I games. In the hotel they have a “Student-Athlete Lounge” featuring a couple of big screen TVs, unlimited water, Gatorades and snacks, and PS3’s for all the athletes to use during the day. It’s a very nice touch that all the players greatly appreciate.

After all the hoopla, it was finally time to play some basketball. Hope was a very talented team and we knew that coming into the game. Having played them last year, we had a good feel for their style and it definitely benefited us. The first half was pretty back and forth, but in the second half our team put on one of the better shows I’ve ever seen. Scoring 57 points in a half against a very good defensive team was borderline ridiculous. It was the start to our nearly flawless three halves of basketball. Aaron Thompson took over for a big stretch and following his jabs, Troy had three-point play after three-point play to deliver the knockout punch.

Now had I been playing in the semifinal, bed time would’ve been in the immediate future following the game, however, I was a coach, and lucky for me — I was assigned Amherst on the Monday of the prior week as my team to scout going into the weekend, while one of our other assistant coaches took Ursinus. I had watched three of Amherst’s games on DVD in addition to their semifinal game picking up on their sets and play-calls, offensive and defensive tendencies, all in addition to some individual personnel scouting. So instead of going to sleep, I was up until after 2 a.m. in Coach Whittle’s room with my “scouting cap” on.

It was pretty neat that Amherst was the first scouting report I’ve been the one to actually hand-write the plays. It meant a lot the coaches trusted me to carry that load for the national championship game. I now know how truly frustrating it is for a coach to be calling out a play from the bench during a game while yelling and yelling to a player on the floor that a back-door is coming, but he still gets burned for a layup.

Sean Wallis gets a piece of the netAnyway, Saturday night we played by far our best game of the season. We frustrated them with our defense and we hit shot after shot on offense. People can say maybe we got lucky shooting so well in the National Championship game — but the bottom line is we were taking GREAT shots, and that’s all you can ask for. As the final buzzer went off it was complete chaos and as I ran out to center court to celebrate and jump with my teammates my leg definitely did not feel hurt!

I can’t count how many friends, player’s parents, professors, etc., have come up to me and expressed congratulations but carried on to say how “bittersweet” it had to have been for me watching from the bench as opposed to being on the court.

The championship wasn’t bittersweet. It was really sweet.

This championship was the first for the program here and wasn’t won just by the six guys that played more than 10 minutes in Saturday night’s 22-point win. It was won by each one of the players that have been here during Coach Edwards’ 27 years. It was won by every fan that has ever come out to support the program. It was won by all the coaches that have ever put time in to making the program better. It was won by each player’s parents that have trusted to send their kid to the University. It was won by every sports information director we’ve ever had here, from people like Mike Wolf, the school’s first, that left his job at Northwestern for the weekend to come to Salem, to our current SID Chris Mitchell. It was won by people like Justin Carroll, the Dean of Students, Mark Wrighton, the chancellor here at Washington University, and our athletic director John Schael, for all the support they’ve given the program over the years. It was won by the three fan buses of students that traveled 24 hours on the weekend to get to Salem to get to the games.

Maybe I didn’t play minutes in the final game, but I still won that championship — and celebrating that wasn’t bittersweet, it was really sweet.

The after-party was fantastic at the hotel. I enjoyed talking with D3hoops.com posters Walzy31 and Marty Peretz about future business plans. I had a blast talking smack about the green-weenies to Titan Q and talking with Pat Coleman and D-Mac. We got to mingle with a few Ursinus parents and Amherst players and coaches, which added to the experience. But most of all it was just great to sit back with the coaches, my teammates and their families and enjoy what had just happened.

The entire experience was a ton of motivation for next year — to get back there and do it again. My first day freshman year at Wash U we had convocation, a welcoming with everyone in the class of 2009 and their families, in our Fieldhouse. Looking up at the four women’s basketball and eight women’s volleyball national championships, Tyler Nading, who I had known for less than 24 hours, and I made a pact that we’d hang our program’s first banner before we graduated. Well Tyler, we did it… Now let’s make it the first of many.

Take care,
Sean

P.S. Thank you to Pat for giving me the opportunity to blog this season. It has been both therapeutic and enjoyable. As for doing it again next season — a contract extension is still in the works and I’m not allowed to talk about it without my agent’s permission.