D3 World

The Road to Coaching Part II


Tony B. was the coach who drafted me 1st overall when I went from minors to majors in little league (LL). His son was on the team, but he wasn't one of those coaches who had to have his son play shortstop. If I were pitching, Tommy played short, and if not, then I was playing short, with Tommy at third. We had a good team and had a lot of fun that summer playing baseball, having pool parties and just hanging out. Tony instilled a lot of confidence in me that summer. We had a great season and came within 4 outs of beating the undefeated Fiore team one Friday night. I had 14 strikeouts while pitching that night and it was the highlight of my LL career. Tony knew how to get most out of everyone and really knew how to make a team gel so much that I was friends with some of the guys on that team all the way into college.

Armand B. was our basketball coach in grammar school. He had been coaching so long at our school, that my brothers had played for him in the late 60s! Here I was playing for him in 1982. Armand was old school; yelling at you for messing up a play, or throwing a chair when he didn't like the call. He was the original Bobby Knight. Armand would make us do hundreds of lay-ups, free throws and sprints. We went over our plays so many times, we could do them blind folded. He wasn't the nicest coach, but definitely one of the best at teaching fundamentals.

Al Morro was my high school football coach and the toughest SOB and at the same time the smartest coach I've ever had. He did more with less than any other coach out there. My high school was a public school, one of four city schools. Unlike a lot of public high schools, we had to take an admission test to get in because it was a college prep school. I think our starting freshman class had 450 kids, and we graduated 220. Coach Morro didn't have a lot to work with, as he had a bunch of 'smart' kids who weren't that athletic. We were small and quick. That's what Al told us everyday - 'we are smart, we are quick, and we love to hit'. That was our mantra, every practice, every game, every season. Al had our defense disguised long before Bill Belichick's schemes and he called us 'organized chaos'. We always started in a 4-4. That's 4 guys on the line, and 4 guys right behind them. It worked well, since our offense stunk, as I remember losing a bunch of games 8-6, 14-0, 14-6 and so on. My junior year was Coach Al's last one as a head coach. We wanted to win one for him. Coach played in the 1940 Sugar Bowl with Boston College. In the 1950s he led our high school to state football championship like 8 out of 10 years. Our last game of the season was for all the marbles. If we won, we'd be playing in the Super Bowl. Coach Morro was different that week - our practices were short, we didn't go over the plays time and again. I am not sure if Coach didn't want to set himself up for a big disappointment or if he didn't want the attention of being in the big game again. In the end, Coach Morro didn't want to win - he had seen first hand how winning had ruined some teams. He thought losing built character and thought winning created big egos and showboating. During the game, we hung in there with the best team in our division and with the exception of three plays we matched our opposition head to head. Our opponent returned a punt for a touchdown, ran an interception back for a touchdown and had a 80 yard run from the line the line of scrimmage for a touchdown. It was a heart breaking loss. The most important think Coach Morro taught me was that to succeed in life you need the 5 D's of life: Drive, Desire, Dedication, Determination, and Discipline. To some of you reading this, that may sound familiar. When I moved to Colorado in 1995 I created a page to represent the things the motivated me on my refrigerator. I had a picture of the mountains, an American flag, and D4. The mountains represented strength to me. The flag represented making team USA in short course triathlon, and the D4 were the Ds that Coach Morro taught. I had decided that Drive and Desire were one in the same. While I was thinking of a name for my coaching business, I thought about that picture on my fridge, and figured D4 would be a good fit. After thinking about it some, I decided triathlon being three sports, I should name my company D3 and that's how the name for D3 Multisport originated. Thanks Coach Morro!