Chasing Perfect

by Bob Hurley

  I’ll also say this: the folks at St. Anthony, they have it down by now. The cooperation at school, from the administration and our board of trustees, has just been tremendous. They support what we’re doing with the basketball program because they’ve realized after all these years how much what we do on the court supports what they’re doing in the classroom. It all ties in.

  The school itself is in good shape. I’d like to say we’re in tremendous shape, but it’s only tremendous by comparison to how it’s been in recent years. Everything is relative. We’re still desperate for money. We’re still forced to stretch, to make a little look like a lot. We still sweat the holes in our budget. But we’re still here, and that’s the main thing. St. Al’s, St. Michael’s, St. Mary’s, St. Anthony … if you had lined up all the Catholic schools in our area a decade ago and tried to predict which would be the first to have to shut its doors because of declining enrollments or funds, a lot of people would have pointed at us. But the other three have all closed in recent years, and that’s been a trend throughout the region. In Philadelphia, in New York City, Catholic schools are closing like crazy, but we’re hanging in, hanging on. As I write this, we’re in the black for the year, after the kind of impressive early-summer push that almost always follows a successful season for the Friars, and we’re in the silent phase of a capital campaign that we all hope will give us some sustainability, some cost certainty in the years ahead. Traditionally, we carry about a $1.2 million shortfall in our budget each year, but the idea is to get our endowment up so we can maybe bring that annual deficit down to $700,000 or so, which is a much more manageable number.

  The immediate future for St. Anthony High School looks okay. Wouldn’t say it’s bright, but we’re okay. Academically, we’re doing great. I’ve actually got a couple of my players being recruited by the Ivies, which I take as a measure of our success in the classroom. It’s a credit to these particular kids, absolutely, but it’s a reflection of the environment where they’ve managed to thrive. Our principal, Charlie Tortorella, has done a phenomenal job with our curriculum, putting programs in place that help ensure our really bright kids are being pushed and challenged and that our kids who struggle aren’t being left behind. And our teachers, in turn, have done a phenomenal job of carrying out Charlie’s vision.

  I’ve got more resources to work with than ever before. Used to be I had to buy basketballs and reversible practice jerseys out of my own pocket, but now there’s a budget for that kind of thing—thanks, at first, to Sister Alan—and for the past twenty years or so we’ve been sponsored by Reebok, so they’ve been good about outfitting our kids and making sure they take the floor looking like a real team.

  A lot has changed since I started coaching—not just in my own life or in the halls of our school. For one thing, the game itself has changed. Probably the biggest difference has been in the way kids now specialize in just one sport from a very early age, the way basketball has become more of a year-round game. Back when I was a kid, we played everything, and even up until the time I started coaching I had a lot of guys on my team who also played for our baseball team. In the last ten years, however, I’ve only had a handful of kids who played baseball. There’s just no time for them to develop at any kind of high level—not if they want to keep pace in either sport. The upside to this is that kids are facing better and better competition, at a younger and younger age. When I was growing up, we rarely got a chance to play against the best ballplayers in the city. We just played the other kids in the neighborhood, but now kids can test themselves right away. Now there are all these camps and tournaments and clinics. Now kids coming into high school have been exposed to more coaching, more input from adults who’ve been around the game.

  The downside, though, is that young players don’t always take the time to work on their individual games. Basketball skills are developed by repetition—the day-in, day-out stuff we used to do without even thinking about it. Like the way I developed my left hand as a kid. Like the way Terry Dehere, who didn’t even start a game for St. Anthony as a junior, went out and worked so hard all spring and summer before his senior year and turned himself into an entirely different basketball player—one who’d eventually take his game all the way to the NBA, all on the back of hard work.

  You don’t see that anymore, I’m afraid. And it’s not because kids today aren’t into it the way we were into it. Not at all. Today’s top high school players are dedicated, they work hard, but they don’t have the single-minded laser-focus we used to see, and even when we do see it, they’re kept so busy with their relentless schedule of games and tournaments, there’s no time for them to do anything away from their structured sessions with their teams. They’re always in season, which means they’re being cheated out of that all-important downtime—that loose, lazy, unstructured time when you’re alone with a hoop and a basketball, free to do your own thing.

  I’m afraid we haven’t left any time on the table for today’s young players to come into their own, and this worries me, at least a little bit. On an individual basis, you can almost always make the case that each new layer of structured development—personal trainer, nutritionist, shot doctor—is in this or that kid’s best interest. Yeah, today’s player is bigger, faster, stronger than ever before. The game has become much more physical, and so we surround these kids with all these different specialists, to make sure they can find a way to compete. That’s great. But it’s the bigger picture that has me concerned. It’s the ferrying back and forth, the constant game pressure. There’s no letup. There’s no time for a young phenom to wander off to the playground, just him and a ball, just to work on his left hand.

  It’s our job at St. Anthony to make sure our kids don’t burn out, and happily that job doesn’t just fall to me. We’ve been blessed over the years with any number of caring, knowledgeable assistant coaches who take it upon themselves to guide these young players through some of these difficult paces. If I come across an assistant coach who really cares about the kids but who’s somehow lacking in some technical area, if there’s an aspect of coaching he needs to improve, I’ll coach the coaches, because it’s the caring part you can’t really teach. If it happens the other way around, if a guy knows his Xs and Os but can’t really be bothered with any of this other stuff, then he’s of no use to us. Same way it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community of coaches and educators and role models to raise a champion, and that’s what we’re all about. We’re out to teach these kids to win, on the court and in life.

  Another big thing I’ve noticed the past bunch of years is that high school students seem to know less and less about stuff that seems to matter more and more. This is not a knock on our school or on any specific group of kids from any one part of the country. No, it’s across the board. It’s a generational thing, I think. It’s part of the fallout we’re seeing from our technological age. The flow of information running to and from these kids is just staggering. They’re plugged in 24/7. They’re wired and good to go, but underneath all of that instant messaging and texting and Tweeting there’s not a whole lot being said. The simple art of conversation is somehow being lost—and so, with this in mind, we try to use our road trips to advantage. We get these kids in the car, headed to an away game or a camp or a tournament, it’s an opportunity to get them thinking about something new. Last thing in the world I want is for them to put their headphones on, put their hoods up, and go to sleep.

  We talk about music, politics, business … whatever pops up on the radio. On one trip, I made my guys listen to the oldies station on Sirius, and it turned into a lesson on the British Invasion and what the Beatles meant to doo-wop and Motown and ’50s rock ’n’ roll. These kids had all heard of the Beatles, of course, but they were never really asked to consider their impact on popular music, so we talked about it. Another time we talked about a World War II general I’d just read about. And just this past year, on our annual trip to the Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts
, I made the team watch a documentary on Oscar Robertson, which was all about his high school career at Crispus Attucks, a segregated school in Indianapolis. Most of these kids had heard of Oscar Robertson, but none of them knew his background. None of them had seen footage from his playing days. And none of them knew about the racism he and his teammates faced on their way to winning the first state championship in the country by an all-black high school.

  It was a powerful piece, and some of the kids were really moved by it. Some of them wanted to keep the conversation going, so we talked about Pete Maravich, another player they’d all heard about and never seen play, and the all-white team he played for at Louisiana State University. We talked about Bear Bryant, who was somehow considered a pioneer for integrating the University of Alabama; in reality, after his team got completely destroyed by the University of Southern California’s Sam “Bam” Cunningham, he was just trying to compete.

  Always, you can tell by the questions they ask (and the questions they don’t ask) which kids are into it, which ones have an active mind, which ones are willing to be exposed to new ideas. Usually, there’s some correlation to how they’re doing in school—meaning that the kids who are active and engaged during one of my “lectures” in the car on the way to a tournament are the same kids who are active and engaged in the classroom.

  Probably the best lesson we have to teach these kids is self-discipline. Without it, they’re nowhere. They’ve got to learn to grind through a thing if it’s not going well. Whatever it is, they’ve got to slog through it. You know, I love it that these kids move on to some big-time college programs after finishing their St. Anthony careers. I love it that some of them make it all the way to the NBA. But I don’t care if they don’t play another minute of organized basketball after they graduate, as long as they take away the work ethic we’ve tried to instill in them. As long as they’re organized, diligent, focused. As long as they can recognize an area where they’re weak and try to turn it into a strength. That’s what I’ve seen as my main job these past forty years—preparing these kids to set and meet their goals.

  But there’s one thing I can’t teach them. Never even bothered to try. And that’s an enthusiasm for the game. They’ve got to love it, and that love for the game has got to come from within. You can go through the motions on a basketball court, same as you can go through the motions in anything else, but you’ve got to love, love, love the game. You’ve got to eat, drink, and sleep the game. If you just like it okay, if you can take it or leave it … well, then you’re not going to be successful. It asks too much of you, takes too much out of you. And what the game itself doesn’t take, I’ll be there with my hand out, taking a little bit more besides. My assistant coaches, they’ll be there with their hands out too. We’re pretty demanding of our players, and over the years the kids who’ve managed to dig deep and give their all have been the ones who are passionate about the game.

  They’re here because they want to be here, because they can’t imagine themselves anyplace else.

  It’s just like any worthwhile pursuit. You want to be a doctor, you’ve got to love it, because if you don’t love it, if you’re not good in science, if you can’t find your way around a lab, you better be prepared to put in twice as much work as the guy sitting next to you in class.

  The only way to be successful is to outwork the other guy.

  Truth is, the seven undefeated teams profiled in these pages have lifted our entire program and helped to stamp my time at St. Anthony. But it’s one thing for this group to have given every other group a boost, a leg up. It still falls to all of my other players, all of my other teams, to climb the rest of the way. Consistently, and over time, they have done just that. Our school record books are filled with a bunch of long winning streaks that maybe didn’t stretch across a full season, and even with a few losing streaks I’d sooner forget. We’ve won a bunch of state championships—twenty-five, and counting. And perhaps most important, we’ve sent nearly two hundred players to continue their basketball careers at collegiate programs across the country—most of them on full scholarships, most of them carrying the hopes and dreams of their families, often as the first in their household to graduate high school and attend college.

  And so, while it may seem that this book is a celebration of these seven undefeated teams, my hope is that it comes to stand for something more than that. Something bigger. Something else. My hope is that by revisiting these unblemished, undefeated seasons, we can celebrate the entire St. Anthony community and the hundreds of young men who’ve run the floor for the Friars with purpose and preparation.

  They are champions all—and they inspire me every time I step into the gym.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wouldn’t be in a position to write this book without the talents and extra efforts of all the players I’ve coached over the years—even the ones who might have cost me a few gray hairs and a couple of sleepless nights. I’m also indebted to all of the coaches and assistant coaches who’ve made my job easier, especially Ben Gamble, and to the faculty and board of trustees of St. Anthony High School, who have helped provide a winning environment for our basketball program—basically, for giving me something to write about in the first place. At home, I’m grateful to my family, most especially to my wife, Chris, for supporting me in every endeavor, including the writing of this book. The book wouldn’t have happened at all without a push from Mel Berger of William Morris Endeavor, and his colleague Jim Ornstein, who put it in my head that this was a project worth pursuing. They also put me in touch with my co-writer, Daniel Paisner, who helped me to gather my thoughts and present them on paper in a page-turning way. I thank them all. Finally, I must thank Sean Desmond and his talented team of associates at the Crown Publishing Group, particularly his assistant editor, Stephanie Knapp, for believing in my story and working so tirelessly and creatively to bring it to wide attention.