Basketball has been a part of my identity for as long as I can remember. In fact, it’s how I first learned how to do math because my dad was tired of telling me the score after every basket was made.
My love for basketball has never wavered, despite my personal life winding down numerous paths.
In high school, I was a point guard for our basketball team, and was the captain my senior year at Southport High School, a large high school in the Indianapolis area (the absolute BEST area for high school hoops, no doubt).
The list of big-time players I played against in the Indy area is long, and I’m proud to say that I competed (some times were better than others lol) with some of the best of the best in the game.
After high school, I went to Indiana University and studied Sports Broadcasting, mainly because of my love for basketball. I was able to cover the Indiana University Basketball and it kept me around the game that I loved so much.
Fortunately for me, during my junior and senior years of college, Indiana Basketball was fun again. My junior year was the famous WatShot against Kentucky (yes, I rushed the floor), and my senior year, they were the #1 team in the country for much of the season.
I graduated college in May of 2013, and by June of 2013, I was coaching basketball at my old middle school, Southport Middle. It was a great way for me to get my feet wet in coaching and learn how it all worked. My first season I ever coached, I think we only won three games, but it afforded me a lot of great experiences to learn and grow from.
By my third year of coaching middle school basketball, my team broke the school record for wins and I felt like I was getting a handle on the whole coaching thing.
That’s also when I was brought up to coach at the high school level, which was a larger responsibility and a bigger time commitment. I helped run practices, did opponent scouting reports, facilitated offseason workouts, and even started a youth basketball league for our elementary school players.
I maintained my assistant coaching duties until the end of the 2019 season, which is when my personal life also took some changes. My wife found out that she was pregnant with our first child, and I changed jobs to my current role, which was a larger time commitment.
Since ‘retiring’ from the coaching game, I’ve been running IU Film Room, where I break down film of IU games, players, and recruits. The site has built a solid following and has been a fun passion project to scratch my ‘coaching itch.’
I still go to coaching clinics, watch coaching videos, and study the game, even though I haven’t coached it now for a couple of years. I know that I want to get back into it at some point, but the time and situation have to be just right. 🙂