March 24, 2025
Rewind Episode: State Champion Coach Jacob Gruse - From Hoops to Heart
In this exciting episode, we're revisiting my engaging conversation with state champion Head Coach Jacob Gruse. Recorded during the onset of March Madness a couple years ago, this episode quickly became one of our most downloaded episodes! Join us as Coach Gruse shares his journey, insights on leadership, and powerful stories that have impacted his life and career.
Key Highlights:
- Leadership Impact: Jacob shares an inspiring story about how his parents influenced his leadership style and his upbringing in West Virginia. He delves into the values of hard work and sacrifice that his mom and dad instilled in him.
- Coaching Journey: Gruse reflects on his experiences from high school through various coaching roles, including a challenging period at West Virginia Tech, and the many hats he wore that shaped his appreciation for his assistant coaches.
- Family Sacrifices: The episode discusses the sacrifices made by his wife, Kristen, during their time apart when he pursued his dream of college coaching. Her unwavering support played a huge role in his journey.
- Humility and Growth: Coach Gruse talks about his continuous growth as a coach, thanks in part to the feedback from his character coach, Pastor John Sharp, and the importance of building strong relationships with his players.
- Legacy and Success: For Coach Gruse, success isn't just about winning games, but about the lasting relationships he forms with his players. He cherishes when former players return to visit and share life updates.
- Mantra of Being a Good Person: Gruse emphasizes the importance of simply being a good person, looking for opportunities to help others, and how this mindset can create positive change in the world.
Resources Mentioned:
- Book: There’s No Place Like Home by Eddie Lloyd - A riveting read about Gruse's state championship journey with Cave Spring High School.
- Connect with Jacob Gruse on Instagram to stay updated on his coaching journey.
Join us as we listen to the wisdom of Coach Gruse and take away valuable lessons on leadership, sacrifice, and personal growth.
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00:01 - Introduction to Uncommon Leadership
02:37 - Coach Gruss's Family Influences
08:18 - Old School Coaching & Family Legacy
13:02 - Evolution as a Coach and Leader
17:18 - Family Sacrifice for Coaching Dreams
22:25 - Character Coach & Finding Purpose
26:34 - True Success Beyond Championships
WEBVTT
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Buckle up for the Uncommon Leader Podcast Just friends hanging out and breaking down leadership challenges and unwrapping techniques that can be applied to make a difference.
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A fun look at what is possible if we lead in an uncommon way.
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An invitation to be the champion we were created to be, not your typical leadership podcast.
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Welcome back Uncommon Leader podcast listeners.
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My guest today is Jacob Gruss, the high school basketball coach at K Spring High School in Roanoke, virginia.
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The Knights were able to win the state championship just two years ago and it was documented in a book recently by Eddie Lloyd called there's no Place Like Home.
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I'll put a link to it in the show notes.
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I was able to consume it in about two nights.
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It's a fun story about how the team went through a season and the challenges they faced.
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Coach Gruss and I talk about the book and other stories about people who have influenced his life and who he is and wants to be as an uncommon leader.
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This was a lot of fun.
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If you're sticking around to the end, learn how you can win a copy of the book.
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Here we go.
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All right, coach Gruss.
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State championship.
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Coach Cave Spring High School.
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It's great to have you on the Uncommon Leader podcast.
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How are you doing today?
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Man, I'm doing fantastic, Just really appreciate being able to reconnect with you and be on here.
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Man, it's a real honor and privilege to be on here with you.
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I know we had a chance a few minutes before we started here to talk about that connecting and how we lived in the same town, but one of these days we'll get you down to Myrtle Beach and a place for you to stay there as well as you come down, so I'm looking forward to that also.
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Well, let me jump right in.
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I know I asked the same question of all of my guests on the show for my listeners, tell me a little bit, being this a leadership podcast, tell me a little bit about a story of your youth or even early in your coaching career that's impacted you such that still impacts you today, and who you are.
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When I immediately think about that, I think about my mom and dad.
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I've told everybody growing up in the great state of West Virginia and I've got one older brother, a lot of my family's still in West Virginia and I've got one older brother, a lot of my family's still in West Virginia.
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My grandparents, who are deceased now, lived.
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One lived probably four minutes from the other.
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One lived probably about six minutes from me.
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But when I think about leadership and who's impacted me, you know to me, I immediately go to my mom and dad.
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So I'm a servant of leadership.
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My mom was a stay-at-home mother.
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Every person thinks, man, that'd be a great job, and how hard do they actually work.
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My mother's a saint.
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She dealt with my dad, my brother me.
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And so she had three kids is what I tell everybody and she was a stay-at-home mother and did an unbelievable job of running the household, making sure that we were at practices when we were supposed to, making sure our lunches and our breakfast were ready, and just being the total caretaker for the three of us.
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It's just amazing what she did.
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My dad was, you know, just a hardworking man.
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But again, like when I think about my dad, like I think about all the sacrifices he made you know If you've ever seen that Facebook meme about dads I remember my dad wearing a Panama City Beach, a baseball classic t-shirt from like 1993.
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And the man still has it today.
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I've never known my dad to spend a dime on himself.
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He always wanted, we never did without, but we weren't spoiled.
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Growing up, they taught us about hard work and my dad exemplified that every single day of his life and he just wanted to make sure that my mom was taken care of and me and my brother were taken care of.
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So to me, I immediately look at my mom and dad and you know just the role that they've had in my life and still do.
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And you know my dad every year I buy him the gear that we buy our team and he said before he retired he's retired, now that he would he would see people be like Joe, do you coach?
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And he'd be like, no, why, he's like you've got Dan River basketball shirts on.
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Then you had Averitt Westia tech cave spray said you're always in in in basketball gear and polos and stuff that we get him.
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So to me, when I think about that man, I just, I just think about the sacrifice my parents made and still do to this day.
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They're just incredible people.
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They were just down this past weekend I can't thank them enough for everything they've done for me no, I think that's that's cool and I can't imagine some of the gear that he's got, some of the swag that you've given him.
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You've had an opportunity at many schools to do that and he still wears it right over top of his Panama Jack t-shirt, which is probably underneath, just to tuck you in underneath.
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So that's a good story and I mean I think that's powerful when you can really talk about the influence of your parents and what they've had on you and then, ultimately, how they've shaped who you are as a parent, having a young son and a young daughter, as I've met them before and as they come up as well.
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So it's something that's really big.
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Well, hey, thanks for sharing that and again, I'll probably reference and I'm going to put this up even though nobody will be able to see it just an audio.
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But I've read your book no Place Like Home that came out, or Eddie Lloyd wrote it, and quite a story about the state championship season at K-Spring High School that you had recently, and I am curious, I mean, when I think about that book, that for me there was, there were power in both the story of the games that the teams won and the adversity they came through.
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But ultimately for me it was about the front end of who Jacob Gruss is and how he was formed and really at the end about coaching the right way.
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So let's let's start at the beginning of that book and who Jacob was.
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You mentioned West Virginia a couple of times in the book.
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It talks about the, the hollers of West Virginia.
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You've coached at a West Virginia college in terms of an assistant coach and then been in Virginia at a couple couple high school coaching stints.
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As you've gone through, what is the story that you remember of all those teams, or even in one of your high school teams that has impacted you and kind of something that sticks with you, that you were able to tell your teams and keep them going as well.
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You know, to me it's again.
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Everything for me goes back to family.
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I'm just so rude in our family and our family has been such a pivotal part of my life and again, my parents are just unbelievable people.
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Is my high school coach, tex Williams, still talk to this day?
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My dad played for him, my brother played for him and then I played for him.
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So you know he was a tough son of a gun, still is, to this day, hard nose when I say old school, old school to me that's the right way.
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Just just really got after kids.
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Uh, we call it now.
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We call it intense fellowship in our, in our program when coaches have to get after each other, because it's probably not politically correct to say we're screaming and yelling at people.
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So we call it intense fellowship time.
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Like to me it was.
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It's one of those things that like growing up and playing basketball for coach williams was, you couldn't come home at the dinner table and be like man.
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Coach was too hard on me or coach was unfair on me unfair to me because my dad played for him in the 70s, my brother played for him in the early 90s and I graduated in high school in 1997.
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I was out of school.
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It wasn't like, hey, oh, you're right, coach is being too tough.
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I was like man shut up.
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We had it a whole lot harder than you did.
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So don't come home and whine and complain about, oh, he's running you too much or you're doing this Like we promise.
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Our stories are way harder than what you have.
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So we've had tons of laughs about things like that.
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You know my, the cheerleader at St Al's High School cheering for my dad.
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So it's all ingrained, man.
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They still live in our hometown.
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It's all ingrained and you know, I think that's cool to be able to.
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I don't know how many people can actually say that they played for their coach, that their dad played for.
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Yeah, that's not.
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There aren't many that are able to do that and I find that kind of fun.
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Again, even, as you say, those coaches that I had growing up and I even had a little bit of a chance to coach basketball in the rec league as I went through and got a chance to coach my son, and that's challenging, man.
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It's not easy to either again be coached by your dad or be coached by your dad's coach.
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I guess that could be even more challenging and some of the things that come along with that.
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So I bet those are really challenging.
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And you mentioned coach Williams being a tough coach.
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I like that.
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You weren't going to get any sympathy when he came home to the kitchen table about him being too tough.
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And again, that probably formed a little bit about who you are today as well.
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And in the spirit of listening to the listeners of this podcast talking about continuous leadership development, I know you're a pretty tough coach too, no doubt about it.
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I've had a chance to watch you from the stands and some of the coaching that you have, and I know that you are a tough coach In today's world.
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How have you had to adjust?
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How have you had to grow as a leader and as a coach, to coach in that space and still be tough as well.
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Yeah, I tell people all the time I'm not the easiest guy to play for and I'm okay with that.
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Everybody say that the kids have changed these days.
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I totally disagree with that.
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I think parents have changed.
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I think that parents allow kids to transfer too much.
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I think kids are allowed to be able to escape hard situations and adversity and I think parents just don't allow them to experience those tough things.
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So I have a hard time.
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I heard Jason G, who used to be the head coach at Longwood University and was the head coach at the University of Charleston for a long time in West Virginia, and I heard him talk about that.
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It really resonated with me Like we got to quit blaming kids.
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Like kids haven't changed.
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It's the parents that have changed.
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I don't know if we're becoming a softer generation or what, what that is, but like coaching has changed dramatically.
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I'm probably not the same coach that I was when I was a damn river.
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Some of those kids have come and seen me coach and they're like coach, you got soft in your own.
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It's like man, there's no way you'd let me get away with that.
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And the kids here are like man, like coaches, really really, really hard on me.
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But I think with that too has come age and maturity.
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Like I was probably way too hard on my kids at Dan river I think I'll be the first to admit that and you know, when I left there and got to be at West Virginia Tech with Bob Williams, who's now the PG coach at Fort Union Military Academy, like he opened up my eyes to a lot of things and he was he still is a tough son of a gun as well and just really got after kids.
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But I got to see it through an assistor role a little bit better.
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When you're sitting, you know what is that?
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16 inches over in one seat it's a lot easier to see a game and you've never missed a call or made a bad play call from there.
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It just gives you a different perspective.
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I've always not to toot my own horn, but I really feel like my rapport with kids has always been one of my strong suits I probably have in coaching.
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I'm probably not the best exes in those guys, but really forming those relationships has been really, really important.
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I got to see how Coach formed those relationships and how he did things.
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I really got to be able to take a step back and watch that and I think that has really evolved me into a coach.
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Not many coaches go from being a head coach and running their own program to step back and be an assistant.
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They usually go from head job to head job to head job.
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And honestly, it was the best thing that I ever did.
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There's so much to what you just said.
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I mean in that you know just over a couple minutes in terms of going through it.
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I mean the fact that I do believe I agree with you as well that kids can be coached tough.
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Today, you build a relationship with them, you set expectations and hold them to a high-level expectation that that toughness is not something that needs to be an aggressive toughness, but it is when you set the rules in place and you follow the rules or there are going to be changes.
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So I appreciate that, to hear that relationship building is so important to you, with your players as well, and how that goes so far.
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It allows you the opportunity to then lead.
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And I think that last point and maybe not as much even about the kids, but just about leadership in general is the opportunity to go from a head coach to step back not necessarily take a step back, but to step back and then be an assistant.
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You mentioned sit 16 inches beside somebody and watch them do it, and how you can grow as well.
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Having a mentor there, having a teacher there that you can learn from even more and then come back in and be that much better as you come back into the head coach's chair, is powerful as well.
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So I think those are great stories and great things for us to learn from as well.
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And you think about some of the things you learn.
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I got to believe you learned at West Virginia Tech, but the part of the story is that there was also a sacrifice you had to make as well, so you were not just the assistant coach, but you wore a lot of hats.
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And then, secondly, one of the bigger sacrifices and again, sacrifices that leaders have to make today, whether it's in coaching or in business or in life is that you also had to leave family behind, if you will, for a little while in that story, and how you had a long distance relationship with family, two small children.
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So tell me a little bit about that and how and how that was and what that, what that meant to you from your growth and your, your relationship with your wife as well, and kids.
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Yeah, man, we'll talk about from the coaching standpoint.
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First, which was awesome to be able to go to Western Tech.
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I've never recruited a kid, I've never given a kid an offer for a scholarship.
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I jumped right into a college job and I was.
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It was just me and coach Williams.
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There was no other assistants.
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We didn't have any GAs, we didn't have anybody.
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So I mean I was checking grades, I was doing laundry, I was the strength coach, I was individual workouts.
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You know I had to do it all, which in some points we all kind of feel bad for ourselves when we're tired and we're doing all these, all these things.
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But like it was the greatest thing to be able to just be thrown into it.
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And I'm not saying that coach Williams didn't do any of that.
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I mean obviously he helped to do things.
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But the training films, making sure the gym was set up, it just gave me that full program perspective and I think it made me appreciate I always did.
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I've always had tremendous assistance but maybe made me appreciate I always did I've always had tremendous assistance but maybe made me appreciate my assistant coaches even more so for the amount of work that they had to do.
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So it was cool to be able to wear all those hats.
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You know, 99.9% of the time it was, but that was great.
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And then I always say that there's a special place in heaven for coaches' wives.
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Harry Daniel, the guy that gave me my first basketball job ever the southwestern randolph high school, as a jv coach, I graduated college in december, had a job starting january 1 there and he walked by and he was he's a retired coach guard and he's he was about 100 years old.
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That's what I tell everybody.
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At the time he hired me, walked by and he didn't know my name so he just called me gus, which he still calls me that to this day.
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That's probably the best thing he's ever called me.
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So, Gus, I heard you wanted to coach.
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I said yes, sir.
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He said I tell you what we start practice today I'm gonna work your tail off and I'm not gonna pay you to die.
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And I'm like man.
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This sounds great, you know.
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So he gave me the advice that whenever you get married, you better marry a coach's wife and like at 23 years old or however old I was, and I'm like man, what's this old guy talking about?
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And like now I'm like man, like that was extremely brilliant.
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I still talk to him this day.
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And so when I left I mean when I went up to westview tech to interview, and I called my wife on the way home and I'm like all right, like you know, everybody thinks college coaches make a ton of money I took a twenty thousand dollar pay cut to be an assistant coach at the college level because I've always wanted to coach in college.
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And, again, teachers don't make a lot of money, so it's not like I was making a killing and taking a twenty thousand dollar pay cut.
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I said I'm gonna take a twenty thousand dollar pay cut.
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We have a three-month-old little girl and a two-year-old little boy and you don't have a job and you're going to be five hours away and I'm going to live in my brother's spare room with him, his wife and their three kids.
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And her response to me was you're an idiot if you don't take it.
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This has always been your dream to coach in college.
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You don't do it now, you may not ever have the opportunity again.
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I'm like man, like I think about all the time, like going back.
00:15:25.567 --> 00:15:31.321
It's like because she drove every single week and she loaded those two kids up, drove five hours up to see me.
00:15:31.321 --> 00:15:49.221
I'm thinking I don't know if roles were reversed, but I've been able to look at my wife and say follow your dream, I've got a three month old and a two year old and a full time job and I've got to juggle this like she did, like I don't know many women that could do what my wife did.
00:15:49.309 --> 00:16:00.155
And I'm not trying to get brownie points for my wife, I'm just being honest and I don't know many men who would make that sacrifice for their wives, and for her to tell me to do that that day was incredible.
00:16:00.155 --> 00:16:01.376
It was a tough nine months.
00:16:01.376 --> 00:16:04.961
I mean, let's not kid ourselves, it was really, really hard on her.
00:16:04.961 --> 00:16:12.527
I mean, it was me for missing kids, but she had to juggle everything and so she made some unbelievable sacrifices.
00:16:29.712 --> 00:16:35.119
And for her to be able to put myself and my dream and my coaching dreams before her and our family is something that.
00:16:35.119 --> 00:16:51.301
But to learn in the way you did, I think, no doubt, jacob, both you and I have married up with regards to having wives that will continuously be servants to us, and that's a pretty powerful story in and of itself, and I do hope that Kristen listens and understands that recognition.
00:16:51.301 --> 00:16:53.778
So and I think other people listen that we know.
00:16:53.778 --> 00:16:56.278
So let me, let me shift gears here just a little bit.
00:17:03.029 --> 00:17:05.721
So one of the things that some of our listeners may recall, pastor John Sharp was one of the guests on the show back on episode six.
00:17:05.721 --> 00:17:08.030
You can go back and listen to that one, but he talked about a story of a coach that he helped out.
00:17:08.030 --> 00:17:19.747
He used to throw his jackets and maybe say a few things that he wasn't supposed to and things like that, and I was wondering if coach Bruce would get a chance to listen to that and hear that story, if he knew who that might be about, cause he never said a name.
00:17:19.747 --> 00:17:21.351
So let me just turn it over to you.
00:17:21.351 --> 00:17:24.138
You got anything you want to say about that episode and your buddy.
00:17:24.159 --> 00:17:26.538
John, that bullseye straight on my chest.
00:17:26.538 --> 00:17:28.244
I tell everybody I said here's.
00:17:28.244 --> 00:17:38.472
A humbling experience for you is when your pastor that you've known for about two weeks comes up to you and say, hey, man, I got a great idea.
00:17:38.472 --> 00:17:39.075
God's really speaking into me.
00:17:39.075 --> 00:17:39.837
I want to be your character coach.
00:17:39.837 --> 00:17:44.413
And I'm like, amen, yes, because you can't tell your pastor no one anything, regardless of what they ask you to do.
00:17:44.413 --> 00:17:46.500
I'm like, yeah, tell me what it's about.
00:17:46.500 --> 00:17:53.998
He's like, hey, I just want to come alongside, I want to be there to support, I want to make sure that we're, you know, doing everything the right way and I'm just there to support.
00:17:53.998 --> 00:18:00.818
And then in younger days I have been known to break clipboards or misplace a jacket on the bench.
00:18:00.818 --> 00:18:04.034
Those grease boards, those dry erase boards, they're not made the way they used to be.
00:18:04.055 --> 00:18:05.258
Yeah, they're pretty slick.
00:18:05.479 --> 00:18:06.000
And they're slick.
00:18:06.000 --> 00:18:08.258
My sport coat sometimes flies off.
00:18:08.258 --> 00:18:12.701
Even though I haven't taken my sport coat off in two years, nobody remembers that, they just remember when I throw it.
00:18:12.701 --> 00:18:20.114
And so here's the experience is after the.
00:18:20.114 --> 00:18:23.766
After the first couple games, I started to get a text after the game from from pastor john.
00:18:23.786 --> 00:18:29.801
It was a letter grade and I'm like he gives me the first letter grade like c minus and I'm like man, I thought we played pretty good tonight.
00:18:29.821 --> 00:18:30.551
It's my response.
00:18:30.551 --> 00:18:32.761
Like you know, I thought we did some good things.
00:18:32.761 --> 00:18:43.300
Like I'm not talking about your team, I'm talking about you and how you behaved on the sidelines and were you a good example, a godly example, for your team on the sidelines.
00:18:43.300 --> 00:18:58.325
Like you talk about a humbling experience and refocusing your lenses real quick on, you know who you are and who you're supposed to be, because when your pastor sends you a grade man, that's tough Cause you can't really argue with.
00:18:58.325 --> 00:18:59.448
I mean, let's be honest.
00:18:59.448 --> 00:19:06.320
So yeah, that was me, yeah, I broke a clipboard, but the best story I got about John Sharp is from this past year.
00:19:06.320 --> 00:19:08.836
We were playing central with stock in the state semifinal.
00:19:08.836 --> 00:19:17.762
Or two years ago state semifinal game, parker Hoffman gets a breakaway, twohanded dunk and a big momentum change.
00:19:17.762 --> 00:19:22.902
The best part of that is seeing John Sharp jump on the sideline off of our bench.
00:19:22.902 --> 00:19:28.248
And many of your listeners don't know where Vinton is, but Vinton's not a big town right outside of Roanoke.
00:19:29.010 --> 00:19:31.759
I say, man, there's no way you can get a Vinton phone book underneath his feet.
00:19:31.759 --> 00:19:34.477
He has zero hops.
00:19:34.477 --> 00:19:36.161
I mean zero hops.
00:19:36.161 --> 00:19:38.858
White man cannot jump, and that's John.
00:19:39.912 --> 00:19:44.380
I would have loved to have seen that and I'll make sure pastor John gets a copy of this when it comes out as well.
00:19:44.380 --> 00:19:52.250
So I do appreciate you sharing that, as well as the humility that takes, you know, on the leadership side, to grow to personally.
00:19:52.250 --> 00:19:57.031
You got a long ways to go on the coaching sideline and not and I'll mean that from where you are.
00:19:57.031 --> 00:20:16.752
I just mean just mean you're a young guy and you got a lot of influence left to have with different individuals, with different people who, when I talk about the greatest story ever told, I talk about it being the individuals who write your name on their list when they're asked, hey, who's made a positive impact on your life?
00:20:16.752 --> 00:20:18.338
And I know that your name is going to be there.
00:20:18.789 --> 00:20:21.980
I want to finish with one more question that kind of goes along with that.
00:20:21.980 --> 00:20:34.038
In your book no Place Like Home, you talked about your definition of success and it said for me at least in basketball, it's how many guys come back to visit us and see the program and how they're doing.
00:20:34.038 --> 00:20:41.030
So tell me a little bit about that and success and what that means to you from the relationship with them and what that means to you from a legacy standpoint as well.
00:20:41.772 --> 00:20:47.292
Yeah, I think coaches go through so many stages of their career Like well, anybody does.
00:20:47.292 --> 00:20:49.880
I think early on it's like how many games can I win as a coach?
00:20:49.880 --> 00:20:51.050
I've got to be able to prove myself.
00:20:51.050 --> 00:20:53.233
How many coach of the year awards can I get?
00:20:53.233 --> 00:20:53.775
How many, you know?
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