KEVIN SNYDER – CHERRY CREEK (CO) HIGH SCHOOL BOY’S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 1155

Website – https://cherrycreekboysbasketball.org/

Email – ksnyder2408@gmail.com

Twitter/X – @ksnyder2408

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Kevin Snyder is currently an assistant boys’ basketball coach at Cherry Creek High School in Greenwood Village, Colorado.  He spent the previous three seasons as the 9^th grade boys’ head coach at Bentonville West High School in Arkansas. 

Prior to his time at the high school level, Snyder coached collegiately in various roles at Bucknell, Brown, Williams College, and The College of William and Mary.

As a player Snyder was a 1,000 point scorer at Williams College where he served as a team captain and was the team’s MVP during his senior season in 2008-09.

On this episode Mike & Kevin discuss the contrasting experiences between coaching at the high school and collegiate levels. Snyder shares how the high school environment often emphasizes enjoyment and teamwork, while the collegiate realm is inherently more business-like, with athletes on scholarships shaping a different dynamic. He reflects on the malleability of high school athletes, which allows for significant development in their skills and understanding of the game. Throughout the conversation, Snyder shares his personal journey and the profound impact of coaching on both his life and the lives of his players, reinforcing the idea that coaching is ultimately about guiding young individuals through their formative experiences. Ultimately, the episode serves as a testament to the challenges and rewards of coaching at the high school level, highlighting the importance of mentorship and personal growth in the realm of athletics.

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Grab pen and paper before you listen to this episode with Kevin Snyder, assistant boys’ basketball coach at Cherry Creek High School in Greenwood Village, Colorado.

What We Discuss with Kevin Snyder

• The transition from high school to college basketball involves a significant shift in expectations and professionalism, as athletes at the collegiate level are often on scholarships, creating a more business-like environment
• Coaching high school basketball allows for greater influence on player development, as young athletes are more malleable and receptive to fundamental changes compared to their college counterparts who arrive with established habits
• The importance of structure for less talented players…the less skill a player possesses, the more structured guidance they require in order to succeed
• The ability to impact young people’s lives, guiding them through their journeys and fostering their development both on and off the court
• Continuous learning and self-awareness are crucial for coaches
• Figuring out which information or strategies will be effective in their specific contexts
• Recognizing your own strengths and weaknesses
• The greater malleability of high school players in regards to teaching fundamental skills
• Building a strong network is essential for career advancement
• Personal connections often dictate job opportunities in the competitive landscape of basketball coaching
• A successful coaching philosophy must include a balance of structure and freedom, allowing players to learn foundational skills while also encouraging creativity and individual expression on the court
• The transition from coaching at the high school level to the college level involves a significant shift in the dynamics of player engagement and motivation
• Focusing on fundamentals and work ethic to foster player development
• The work life balance difference between high school and college coaching
  

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THANKS, KEVIN SNYDER

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TRANSCRIPT FOR KEVIN SNYDER – CHERRY CREEK (CO) HIGH SCHOOL BOY’S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 1155

[00:00:00] Narrator: The Hoop Heads Podcast is brought to you by Head Start basketball.

[00:00:21] Kevin Snyder: It’s definitely different, obviously the high school level compared to the college level. The college level kids are on scholarship and so it’s much more business-like at the high school level. It feels less like a job and more like kids are having fun. They’re coming to you at college, pretty fully formed with their basketball habits.

You can obviously work with them and make changes, but they’re more malleable. They’re more plastic at the high school level. Coaching’s coaching and teaching is teaching, but it’s definitely different.

[00:00:55] Mike Klinzing: Kevin Snyder is currently an assistant boys basketball coach at Cherry Creek High School in Greenwood Village, Colorado.

He spent the previous three seasons as the ninth grade boys head coach at Bentonville West High School in Arkansas. Prior to his time at the high school level, Snyder coached collegiately in various roles at Bucknell Brown Williams College and the College of William and Mary as a player. Snyder was a 1000 point score at Williams College where he served as a team captain and was the team’s MVP during his senior season in 2008 2009.

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[00:02:13] Matt Lewis: Hi, this is Matt Lewis head men’s basketball coach at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and you’re listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast.

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Grab pen and paper before you listen to this episode with Kevin Snyder, assistant Boys basketball coach at Cherry Creek High School in Greenwood Village, Colorado. Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason sunk tonight. But I am pleased to welcome Kevin Snyder, boys basketball assistant coach at Cherry Creek High School in Greenwood Village, Colorado.

Kevin, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:03:27] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, thanks for having me.

[00:03:28] Mike Klinzing: Excited to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all of the exciting things that you’ve been able to do in your career at a lot of different levels, and that includes both some high school and college experience. All right. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid.

Tell me a little bit about your first experiences with the game of basketball.

[00:03:48] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, so I was born into kind of a sports obsessed family. I’m very fortunate in that my father is one of the best basketball coaches I’ve ever met. And I know I might be biased when I’m saying that, but he had an incredible run as a high school coach here in Colorado as the head coach at Arapahoe High School.

Had a great run there. Made a state championship game, numerous final fours. So there is some, some evidence to back that statement up. But I was very fortunate. I know we don’t get to choose our parents, but being born to him and my mom very, very lucky. So I was introduced to the game at a very, very young age.

Still have lots of memories of getting in the, on the driveway shooting on shooting hoops with my dad, teaching me how to dribble with my left hand, shoot, a left hand layup, proper shooting form, good footwork. I mean, he really built my basketball foundation and so I was very, very lucky. And now that I’m a high school coach, I appreciate him even more because I see.

A lot of kids coming into the high school level. And I, and I feel fortunate that I was able to have that structure and that foundation as as a young kid. I think a lot of my success as a player and coach can be traced directly back to my dad Dan Snyder. And so yeah, he was the one who kind of introduced me to the game as well as many other sports.

Played all kinds of sports growing up, but I’m biased. I think basketball is the best game on planet earth and just fell in love with it. I quit every other sport in middle school and decided basketball was my thing and then pursued it from there. When was the last sport you gave up? Oh, man.

Let’s see here. So I think I dropped football, soccer right around the same time, like sixth or seventh grade. But yeah, I played a year of hockey, played goalie for a year. Tried, tried just about everything, but to me, basketball is the perfect blend of skill athleticism. Endurance. It’s also a game where you do not need a whole lot of equipment to play.

And I also just love that you, I love the fact that you could play basketball, get better by yourself. It’s one of those rare sports where you don’t need someone else to improve. And that was really appealing to me. I also know shade to individual sports, but I love team sports and basketball to me is the ultimate team sport.

So yeah, just fell in love with it at a young age and enjoyed playing it as long as I could until the game was through with me. And then obviously pursued coaching from there.

[00:06:04] Mike Klinzing: When you think about the influence of your dad, both on you as a player and then now as a coach, let’s take each one of those sort of as a separate entity.

What’s one piece of advice or something that you took with you from him as a player throughout your career? And then once you answer that. Sort of the same question. When you think about his influence as a coach, what’s something that’s has stuck with you throughout your career as a coach? So first, something that influenced you as a player and then something that influenced you as a coach.

[00:06:37] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, as a player, I would just say fundamentals and work ethic.  developing proper fundamentals. And then once you have that, just working your butt off and getting in the gym. And  one of his favorite quotes, one of my favorite quotes, is The only time you find success before work is in the dictionary.

And I think that’s a Vince Lombardi quote, but it’s a great one. And that’s something, as a player I really carried with me. I mean, long, long hours in the gym just getting better. I was kind of known as a shooter. I played two guard most of my career. And yeah, just loved working on my game by myself.

And I think that comes directly from him, just this idea that. If you work hard, you will improve. And I found that to be exceptionally true in my, in my playing career. And then as far as the coaching piece goes, I would just say constantly looking to improve and looking to get better. And one thing that I really was impressed by him throughout his career is that he really evolved a lot as a coach and learned a lot even later in his career.

And so I’ve always tried to take that to heart and just tried to get better a little bit and draw from different influences here and there and just try to continue building and understand that  you never, you’re never old until you stop learning. And so trying to take that to heart and continually improve as a coach.

[00:07:53] Mike Klinzing: Alright, going back in time to you as a player, and you talked about long hours in the gym and spending time and working on your game and trying to improve and get better, what did that process look like for you? As a high school player. So, not to dive into it super specifically, but just how much time were you spending by yourself working on your game, finding pickup games?

How organized were you in terms of putting together a workout? Were you intentional of, hey, I’m coming in with the idea, I’m going to do these six things today, or I’m going to work on this specific skill, or did you go in and kind of just improvise as you were in the gym? What was your process like for improving as a player during your high school years?

[00:08:37] Kevin Snyder: Well, definitely it was more structured. Again, I’ll bring it back to my dad. He used to print off little sheets of paper for me every week during the off season. And it had like 250 made jumpers, 500 made jumpers, 50 made free throws, a hundred made free throws. Ball handling conditioning, pickup, basketball plyometrics.

And I used to just check those things off as I did them. And then he’s, he’s one of the most organized human beings you’ll ever meet. He might still have those somewhere in his files. But yeah, I had it was a plan and  for, for him, he was known as a shooter in his playing days as well.

And so he kind of came at the game like, if you can shoot, you’ll, you’ll be able to play you’ll find a place on the court. So I think that was always like the biggest thing. Like if you can catch and shoot from three, and especially the way the game is played now today there’s a spot for you on the court.

And so for me it was always developing that. And then my game kind of evolved from there. But yeah, just working on like very simple, straightforward skills and like footwork, like one bounce, dribble, right? Pull up one bounce, dribble left, pull up. And then obviously as I got older into college, I added little things to my game, like stepback jumpers and whatnot.

But yeah, just starting from that very, very base fundamental and then building from there. I was also very lucky in that I had two of my best friends that I played with in high school. Who were really good players. They were first team, Allstate, Colorado. Both went on to have great college careers.

I was the third best player on my high school team. We won a state championship my senior year. We were ranked, I think 42nd by like Alon Sports, that old magazine. Now my dad like to say, my dad likes to say there’s, there were, there’s 50 teams in Texas and California that was better than us cause he was our, he was our assistant coach.

But we were, we had a really good team. We had a really good team. And I, those two guys we were in the gym all the time. So a lot of rebound rebounding for each other, getting shots up, and then playing a lot of pickup at the local YMCA here in Colorado, in Littleton, Colorado, which is where I grew up.

So I was very fortunate to have both, both my dad, but then also two of my best friends in the whole world who were also my age, who were also very serious about basketball. And so the three of us were always calling each other like, Hey, let’s meet at this time. Let’s get shots up here.

And so it was it was helpful. It gave me, I think, motivation, structure that allowed me to get better as a player.

[00:11:02] Mike Klinzing: When did college basketball get on your radar? Was that something that you grew up dreaming about, thinking about all the time, or was it something that as you got closer to high school graduation and you started looking around and, and thinking about playing college, playing at the college level I don’t know which one of those two paths better describes sort of your experience.

[00:11:21] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, I, I’ve thought about it growing up, but I never really got serious about cons. Like, I watched a ton of college basketball in high school, like, and my dad always had sports on the tv. Like Sunday was, was NFL and then we were always watching college hoops. My dad got to know coach K at Duke fairly well through something called the Michael Jordan Senior Flight School.

That’s a whole different story that I can talk about. Nice. But we used to watch a lot of Duke basketball on television, coach K’s teams. So yeah, I always thought about it. But once I started getting, I would say to like sophomore, junior year of high school, that’s when my dad came to me and said like, do you want to play college basketball?

Because he was really good about he never really like forced, like, he wasn’t like a Marv Marinovich type dad, where he was like,  forcing me to do these things. He was always really good about finding that balance between like, Hey, if this is something you love, that’s great, but here’s how you have to get better and here’s what you have to do.

And so he came to me and said are you interested in, in playing college basketball? And that’s when I said, yes, I would like to play college basketball. And then he is like, okay, well let’s start  let’s start exploring that. And so that’s when we started doing a lot of research as to schools.

I tried to figure out figure where I would wind up as far as level goes. There was also a big academic piece involved in that because I wanted to go to the best academic school possible as well as good good basketball. And so it’s kind of an interesting process. But yeah, I would say it was kind of probably around junior, junior year, sophomore, junior year of high school.

[00:12:57] Mike Klinzing: Were you thinking about coaching as a profession as a high school kid or was that something that wasn’t on your radar at that point?

[00:13:05] Kevin Snyder: Not on my radar. I was my dad, he actually, he was a very successful businessman for the first part of his life. He liked speed, ran two careers. He did business to business world.

Then he got into high school coaching when I was around eighth, ninth grade and had a great career there. So he, he kind of did too before he retired, but. No, did not think about coaching at all. I was thinking more of like business, the business world, because that’s what my dad had done. And it just kind of made sense to me as far as like my background and things that I was interested in.

So yeah, going to, going into like the later years of high school and even the early part of college did not really think, or if I did think about it was in passing. Right. I never really considered it seriously.

[00:13:55] Mike Klinzing: Tell me about how you end up at Williams and what that looked like in terms of the decision making process and why Williams ended up being the right spot for you.

[00:14:05] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, so once we, once I decided I wanted to play in college, then it was kind of trying to figure out, okay, what’s, what’s the right fit? I didn’t know Williams College existed, growing up in, in Littleton, Colorado. I had no clue. But once we started doing research and started looking into, okay.

What level am I going to be able to play at? What’s a good fit academically? Obviously the Ivy Leagues all came up, so I visited all eight of those schools, dropped my tape off. That was back with VHS, that was when DVDs were just starting to become a thing. So drop my, drop my tape off there. But then I was also told by, it was either like a friend of the family or somebody said, you need to look at these NESCAC schools and these other high academic division three schools.

And so once we, me and my family started researching some of these places  Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan, I visited all those schools, dropped my tape off. They became really intriguing to me because of the combination of. Really good academics combined with excellent basketball, like the NESCAC are great Basketball league.

Williams had just won a national championship in 2003. I graduated in 2005. So yeah, that really came on my radar. And then my, going into my senior year, Princeton and Dartmouth Joe Scott and Terry Dunn were both lightly recruiting me, but neither of them were super high on me. And they were both telling me wait wait, wait, wait to commit.

We want to see you your senior year. But the d the division three schools were very interested in me. Like Tufts was super interested. Williams was super interested, and I just loved my, my visit. I took a visit to Williams, loved it felt like a great fit for me both a academically and athletically.

And so yeah, I wound up committing to go to Williams going in the fall of my senior year. And yeah, it was it was a good, good fit.

[00:15:54] Mike Klinzing: What was the adjustment like for you, kind of on all fronts, athletically, academically, socially, coming across the country? What was that like for you?

[00:16:03] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, it was it was awesome.

I mean, I loved it. I told my parents I love my parents, but I was ready to get away from them, get, get as far away as, as from them as I could and kind of be out on my own. So I loved, I loved going to college. Obviously Williams is a little different, right? It’s only 2,100 kids, whereas my high school was 1800, so Williams was slightly bigger than my high school.

Which was kind of an interesting, interesting dynamic. The purple bubble is what they call it. It’s very isolated. You’re out there in Western Massachusetts. But it was fun. I had a great time.  the the athletics programs are strong there. The athletics teams kind of sort of act like fraternities from a social perspective.

The school band fraternities back in like the 1970s, I believe. And so the sports teams kind of function socially like fracs and sororities. And so and it’s cool.  you, you, there’s not a whole lot to do around Williams, so a lot of the social life revolves on, on campus. But I enjoyed it.

And one thing I was very nervous about going to Williams was would the academics be too much for me? I mean, I was, I was a great student in high school, but, but Williams is it’s renowned for its academics. And I was actually pleasantly surprised and a little relieved that, that, the academics were, it was right in my wheelhouse.

I did great. I was like on the honor roll and that sort of thing. And was I did, my academics were strong there and was able to double major in, in art and psychology and had a terrific experience with my professors and yeah, I loved it. I actually thought I took to a pretty well, the only thing was the weather.

The weather is no joke in the northeast and in Colorado, the snow It melts and it’s powdery, whereas in Western Mass, oh boy, it’s it’s a different deal. However, I will say two of my good friends were from San Diego and so I can’t even imagine that adjustment coming from San Diego that’s adjust California.

That’s

[00:17:57] Mike Klinzing: an adjustment right there. Yeah, for sure. Exactly.

[00:17:59] Kevin Snyder: Yeah. So I had it easy compared to those guys.

[00:18:03] Mike Klinzing: Alright, so you talked about earlier, maybe business now, your art and psychology. Are you thinking at all through your college career? Does, does coaching start to become something that you’re thinking about and as you’re playing, do you find yourself thinking the game as a coach in addition to as a player?

Or are you still focused on trying to be the best player that you can be and kind of focusing on the things that players focus on, which is, I have to do my best, I have to know what I’m supposed to do, I have to help our team win. Whereas coaches tend to think about that bigger picture piece of it. And so I think there’s guys that, as you go through your career, some guys say, Hey, I knew I wanted to coach.

So I started thinking about, well, why are we doing this? Or Hey, what’s the strategy behind this? Where I think about myself as a player? Like I never crossed my mind once while I was playing college basketball that, hey, worrying about this scheme or this, that it was just, how do I fit into this? What do I have to do in order to do my job to help our team win?

So what was your thought process as you’re, as you’re going through your playing career.

[00:19:13] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, it sounds like you and me were similar. My thought was entirely on becoming the best possible player I could be improving, trying to help the team, trying to achieve our, our team goals. Trying to do what my coach is, is asking me to do to the best of my ability.

And so I never really thought the coaching piece, it was just entirely focused on how do I maximize my playing career and how do I become the best version of myself as a player. It wasn’t really until my senior year, so my senior year is when we had a brand new coach, a guy by the name of Mike, Mike Maker became the head coach my senior year.

And he, he really completely changed the way. I thought about the game. I like to say my dad built my basketball foundation and Mike Maker built the house. And so he completely opened, like, it was like a completely different way of, of thinking about the game and approaching the game. And my senior year of college was probably the most enjoyable year I had as a player besides that senior year of high school when we won the state title.

And o and we went, our only loss was to a team in Texas. And so obviously that was a great, great season. But besides that, I just had such an enjoyable year. Coach Maker made a huge impact on me both as a person and as a player. That’s really the first time I entertained the idea of coaching was like my senior year.

I thought I had a great playing career. I thought for a hot minute maybe I would go play overseas and make no money, but get to see the world a little bit. As a D three guy. But it wasn’t until my senior year that coaching even crossed my mind.

[00:20:56] Mike Klinzing: What was it about Coach Maker? Was there some specific aspect of maybe how he approached things differently than what you had been around before that sort of captured your attention and thought, oh, maybe, maybe I could see myself coaching.

Was there one specific thing or something about his demeanor? Just what, what about it attracted you to the idea that, hey, maybe coaching is something that I could, I could consider?

[00:21:20] Kevin Snyder: Yeah. Well, first of all, he’s a, he’s a brilliant offensive mind. I like to say what Tony Bennett is to half court man-to-man defense.

Mike Maker is the half court man to man offense. Actually told, I told Tony Bennett that, that exact quote and so he really opened my eyes to how the game could be approached and thought of. I love games. I love games, I love board games. I love  basketball to me is the ultimate game.

And so I love strategy and thinking about that sort of thing. And just the way his he is kind of like, if you’ve seen the movie A Beautiful Mind he’s kind of like John Nash, I believe is the guy’s name. That’s kind of how he approaches the game. And so it felt like  thinking about checkers and then thinking about chess and that was just really cool for me to see that as a player and then see that as a coach and just think like, wow, like there’s so much depth to the game specifically on the offensive end and just being able to play for him.

It was like, it was eyeopening. It was like that movie Limitless with Bradley Cooper when he takes the pill and all of a sudden I don’t know, that’s, that might be dating me, that reference. But yeah, it was just a really cool experience. And then beyond that he’s a great person and he really, I think I loved playing for him and he really impacted me as a player.

And I thought to myself, if I could do that for someone else, man, how cool would that be? Like, how meaningful would that be as far as if you’re going to choose to we have one life, short life, right? If you’re going to spend your life doing something, being able to impact somebody like that would be kind of cool.

[00:23:00] Mike Klinzing: Did you end up having conversations with him at some point during that senior year, either during the season or certainly after the season about coaching and sort of that influence that he had on you?

[00:23:11] Kevin Snyder: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I remember, I have vivid memory of walking into his office and saying like, Hey, coach, like I’m thinking I’m thinking I might want to like coach collegially.

And the first thing he said was, and he’s got a great personality, good sense of humor. He goes, you’re too smart for that. He goes, you don’t, you don’t want do, you don’t want, you don’t want anything to do with this. And I laughed and we we had a great relationship and yeah, we had multiple conversations, especially after the season ended.

We talked multiple times about what that might look like. And yeah, he was great. He was very supportive.  he told me he would do anything to help me get my career going. And he’s a huge part of, of why I was able to experience some success. Early in my, in my career. He got me, he basically got me my first job coming out of college.

Well, he got me the interview, I guess we’ll put it that way. Yeah. But yeah, we had multiple conversations and he was extremely supportive. He thought it would be a good fit for me based on my personality and just how I think about the game and love for the game and that sort of thing.

And so, yeah, he’s, besides my, my mom and dad, he is probably one of the most influential people in my life. We don’t talk as much as we used to, but  he’s still, I consider him like a second dad in some ways.

[00:24:28] Mike Klinzing: So you get an opportunity at William and Mary. And I’m assuming that Coach Maker was the guy that helped to facilitate that through connections and networking, which we all obviously know that that has a huge role in who gets jobs and who gets opportunities.

So just tell me a little bit about you graduate job shirt, job search starts. What does that process look like?

[00:24:54] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, so when I when I told Coach Maker I wanted to coach, he said, okay, co and Coach Maker, I was very, I’ll be straight up with you. I was extremely lucky because Coach Maker was a former assistant at Creighton under Dana Altman.

Former assistant under John Beline at West Virginia, former assistant in the Ivy League. So how many division three seniors have a head coach with division one connections like that like, right. So I was incredibly fortunate and that was by nothing on that. I did, that was just purely dumb luck that I happened to have a head coach that had those connections.

And so at the time, coach Maker was, was running a very innovative offense. And there were a number of guys in college that were interested in it.  this was, this was John Beline at West Virginia with Pits Noggle and Ganzi and those guys. And so he said, let me make some phone calls.

And at William and Mary a guy named Tony Shaver was the head coach and he was extremely interested in what Coach Maker was doing offensively. And so I flew down there, drove down there, and he put me on the whiteboard and I probably spent like two or three hours with him and the assistants just on the whiteboard talking about it.

And got the job, was offered the job after that. And was very lucky that I got to  jump right into D one and got to basically install an offense for a, for a mid-major division one team and a really good league. And yeah, I there’s no chance I get that job without Coach Maker.

And I’m very aware of that and thankful for that.

[00:26:30] Mike Klinzing: Not too often either that you get that opportunity from an xs and o standpoint as somebody coming into the staff, especially as a young guy, to be able to have that much influence and that much ability to, to jump right into that part of it.

Clearly a lot of times you get a job and you’re, you’re kind of in the again, you’re, you’re down the totem pole as far as the X and O stuff. So I’m sure for you to be able to, to think about that and to have those high level conversations early on, I’m sure that that had a big influence on you, not only in that year, but moving forward in your career.

For sure.

[00:27:07] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, I, like I said, I was super fortunate at the start of my career to just have a really great experience and introduction to coaching because you’re a hundred percent right. There’s lots of guys where and you hear stories of guys that are walking dogs and picking up kids from daycare and that sort of thing.

And I was fortunate in that I got to come into a situation and have a huge voice and have a lot of responsibility and get to impact a program in, in ways that, that other guys obviously didn’t have. So, yeah, I feel obviously very, very fortunate in that regard.

[00:27:42] Mike Klinzing: Clearly with your dad’s background as a coach, and then the time that you thought about getting into the profession, coaching was something that you had been around and were aware of.

But until you go and you step into that role. You, you can’t be a hundred percent sure of what it is that you’re getting yourself into. So how quickly into that first experience at William and Mary, were you sure? Like, Hey, I’m in the right, I’m in the right place?

[00:28:11] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, I would say pretty quickly. I loved it.

I loved being around the game. I loved the competition of it. I loved the strategy of it. Like I said, I love I love games. And so it’s yeah, to me, I figured out pretty quickly, like at Williams, at Williams College, there’s a lot of people that come out of Williams with great jobs, making lots of money  iBanking, wall Street, like finance, all that stuff.

There’s like a pipeline of that. And for me, I knew. Pretty early on that money was less important to me. Not to say it’s unimportant, but less important to me. And doing something that impacted other people was very important to me. And so like I said, if you’re going to spend your life, in my opinion doing it coaching and impacting other people is a pretty great way to spend it.

And so I knew pretty quickly within my coaching, started my coaching career. Like, Hey, this is, this is pretty cool.  I get to be around the game. I get to you get that competition that tastes the competition. But more importantly, you get to impact other people and hopefully be an influence on them.

Like people were on me. And I think about the people that made an impact on my life teachers and coaches, and those are some of the, some of the most important people in my life. And so it’s. Thinking. Okay, if I could be that for someone else, that’s pretty cool. That’s pretty special.

[00:29:40] Mike Klinzing: Was that easier or hard to do in that first year as somebody who was very, very close to the age of the players that you were coaching?

Did that make it easier or harder to build those kinds of relationships that you’re talking about?

[00:29:52] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, it was, it was a double-edged sword. On one hand I think  the players really liked that this is somebody that was doing what I was doing seven months ago, right? Right. This is somebody who was living kind of, now obviously those guys are D one on scholarship.

It’s a different, different world. But I think they enjoyed having somebody on staff that could really relate to them. And I I formed great relationships with those guys. And great bonds. On the other hand. It was a little weird, right? Because like our starting point guard was a guy named Sean McCurdy.

Great good friend of mine, but he was like my age cause he had like redshirted at Arkansas. In fact, Sean might have been older than me. But anyways, he had like Redshirted and then transferred. And so it was kind of weird,  doing that. But it was great and the coaching staff was phenomenal.

I was very, very fortunate in that the three assistants on that staff, tremendous coaches. Jamie and Christian is now the head coach at Bryant. Great coach. Jonathan Holmes is the associate head coach at Miami of Ohio. He’s a guy that I think deserves a D one opportunity, head head coaching opportunity.

And then the third assistant, Ben Wilkins, is the head coach at Seton Hill in Pennsylvania, division two school. He is one of the best human beings. You’ll ever meet in coaching. And so those three guys were amazing. They all took me under their wing in different ways. And so I feel like having that kind of environment allowed that transition to be a little bit smoother and a little bit easier.

And those guys were incredibly good to me. I mean, like, just anything you could ask, they were, they were awesome.

[00:31:34] Mike Klinzing: No question. Having great role models that you can work under and work for and work next to earlier in your career. I think that the number of people that we’ve talked to on the pod, Kevin, that have had those kinds of experiences where, hey, I just worked under guys who were tremendous to me, for me, in terms of the learning and the growth that you talked about earlier, right?

To be able to sort of cut your teeth on what college basketball coaching is all about, and to be able to have that opportunity to work under guys who. Give you the chance to do things, to learn things, to be able to be a part of it. And then clearly, obviously, you’re also building your network as you move along, which helps you as you move through your through your career in the profession.

So your next stop is back at your alma mater. How does that opportunity happen? And obviously again, getting a chance to go back and coach at the place where you spent four years as a player makes it even more special. I’m sure. And also, I always think that, I don’t want, weird is probably the wrong word, but to walk back into a place as a coach where you spent so much time as a player, sort of on the other side, on opposite, opposite sides of the curtain, right?

You’re, you’re playing, you’re in the locker room, or you’re a coach, you’re in the coach’s office, and when you’re one, you’re not in the other. And so just talk about the opportunity at Williams and then what that was like to go back to your alma mater for you.

[00:33:01] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, I was lucky in that coach maker  welcomed me back with open arms.

He was like, absolutely I’d love to have you back. And that transition I think was made easier because a lot of the players there I think had respect for me as a player. I mean, these are the guys that voted me captain as a senior. These are guys that spent time with me in the gym.

And I think I had earned their trust and respect. Through my actions as a player which I think made the transition to coach pretty smooth. Now, obviously there was some awkward moment, like you telling the guy, and at Williamstown there’s two bars, so you tell the guys like, Hey man, do not go to this one like you are.

I do not want to see you. At the one’s called the Purple Pub one’s, I can’t remember the name of the other one, but it’s like, I don’t want to see you at the Purple Pub. Like, I do not be there. So you have to obviously,  create those boundaries with the guys. But it was great. I mean, I love working with those guys.

They were  former teammates and like I said, I think that I had earned their respect. So I think it made. Me coach, and also they, they knew like, Hey, Kevin was a good player first, first team all league thousand point score. Like he, he’s somebody who can help me, who can help me reach my goals as a player.

And so I think that it actually ended up being pretty smooth, a pretty smooth transition. And it was fun.  working at your alma mater is a cool, it’s a cool deal. It’s a really cool deal. And getting to coach there for those two years was special. And I’ll always look back on that time fondly.

 living in Williamstown is not the most exciting experience. Going to school there is is not too bad, but as a young single guy, it’s it’s not ideal. But, but obviously that’s a special thing and something that I’ll always cherish just getting to getting to give back a little bit to your, to your college or university is a special deal.

[00:34:53] Mike Klinzing: Difference between being part of a Division one staff and being part of a Division three staff in terms of divisional responsibilities and just the contrast between those two from your first job division, one second job division three. Obviously you played at the Division three level, so you, you knew what was going on and how that dynamic sort of work.

But just talk to me a little bit about the difference between sort of the roles and and how that was divi divvied up on the two staffs.

[00:35:20] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, so in general, division three, you, you’re, you’re wearing more hats. You’re doing a lot more stuff, which makes sense.  you have fewer resources. You just don’t have as many guys.

So you’re kind of, it’s by necessity you’re being asked to do more things from a growth perspective. That’s actually great.  as a young coach, you, you are put, you’re pushed outside of your comfort zone on those D three staffs, and you’re asked to do a lot more on the division one side.

It’s, it’s more specialized,  what I mean? Like you have a guy who’s maybe your recruiting guy. You have your guy who’s maybe your Xs and os guy. You have,  what I’m saying? It’s a little bit more specialized. Where as division three it’s like I said, you’re, you’re more of a Swiss Army knife.

But again, I think that’s great as a coach as, as you’re learning and growing you’re asked to do more with less. You have to get very creative. I actually think in a lot of ways, division three coaches are more innovative because they are kind of forced to be, that’s no shade against D one guys.

Also you’re not getting paid as much and  your, your, your bloopers aren’t showing up on SportsCenter, so you probably are maybe able to take more risks and feel more confident. You’re maybe, you’re, you’re less risk averse, I’ll put it that way. Yes. And I totally get it from a high major standpoint.

Maybe being ultraconservative in your decision making. So yeah, it’s, it’s kind of fun because it’s a little bit like I don’t know, the wild West kind of compared to, to D one and you’re able to, there’s more diversity in style of play. There’s more innovation, there’s more outside the box thinking.

Again, and I’m not. I’m not blaming division one coaches. I think it’s the nature of the beast and kind of the environment that you’re in. It’s more of like a basketball lab which I think is, is really kind of cool.

[00:37:03] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that’s a unique perspective. I think when you to, to phrase it that way, just in terms of, again, you’re, you’re kind of hidden away, right?

So you can try, Hey, let’s, let’s try this, let’s give this a shot, or let’s, let’s try this unique style of play. And then clearly at the college level, one of the advantages that you have there is you can figure out how you want to play and then you can go out and find players who fit into that, that particular style or that way of, of thinking and scheming.

And so I do think that, as you said, it does provide sort of that laboratory feel of, I can go out and innovate. I can try some things and not do it on a, in front of a national TV audience on Saturday afternoon or in, in the NCAA tournament when everybody’s watching. I can, I can do it. And again, we can.

Go across the board in Division three, the number of different schools that you can associate with a particular style of play or a particular defensive scheme or whatever it might be that, that coaches have brought with them to, to their respective school. So yeah, I think that’s a good a good analogy there with the basketball laboratory After Williams, you’re there for two seasons and then you get an opportunity to move over to the Ivy League at Brown.

And how did that happen and what are the connections that allow you to get to Brown?

[00:38:21] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, so  at Williams we, we were, we were quite good we were really good. Coach Maker had it rolling there. And so there was a lot of interest in him. But also like assistance being able to advance your career because of the success that that coach Maker was having.

And I was a young coach, very eager to advance my career. I mean, if you look at my. Resume. My first six years in coaching, I was four different stops four different states. Lived in six different apartments in six years, so I was, I was hungry to climb the ladder. And the Ivy League was kind of a natural next step from the neca.

Mike Martin was a brand new head coach at Brown. And he had to put together a staff there. He was one of the youngest coaches in division one. And yeah, I interviewed there. I think I did well. Mike, Adam, me to his staff as an assistant. I actually didn’t know Mike. There wasn’t really a connection there, although Coach Maker and him were aware of each other and there was a little bit of relationship there.

But Mike was just looking for young, hungry assistants.  Mike is, mike’s one of the hardest working human beings I’ve ever been around. Player, coach, businessman teacher, administrator, you name it. Mike is a absolute workhorse, and I think he was looking for guys that were young, hungry, hardworking.

It probably helped that I was single and young. But yeah, so he put together a staff of me, TJ Soine was, was kind of our lead assistant. And then a guy named Dwayne Pina, who’s now the head coach, I believe it’s St. George’s in Rhode Island. And yeah, we were all young guys kind of figuring it out.

Mike was the first time head coach. He was one of the youngest head coaches in division one at Brown. The expectations were really low, so the experience there compared to Williams was very different. They had not had a lot of success. You really had to go back to Mike Martin’s playing days when they had some success.

And so yeah, that was fun. It was it was cool being in the Ivy League, the Ivy League, I think is really good basketball, really good coaches. And yeah, we were kind of like this first time staff trying to figure it out and yeah, it was, it was it was a great experience.  like I said, Mike his work ethic is phenomenal and whenever people ask me about Brown, I always say if if Mike Martin doesn’t win an Ivy League championship, it will not be for lack of effort because that guy is putting in the, putting in the hours.

And last year I was heartbroken for them. They almost, almost pulled it off. And I really believe nobody deserves an NCAA birth more than Mike just because of how much how much time and effort, blood, sweat, and tears he puts into it.

[00:40:59] Mike Klinzing: What did you guys talk about in that year that you thought you needed to be able to turn the program around and get it going in the right direction?

Do you remember what those conversations were like in the coach’s office? What were some of the things that you guys felt like you had to do during that year? You were there to really start to get things going in the right direction as a first year staff.

[00:41:17] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Mike was huge on recruiting.

He said, we’ve have to improve our talent level. That was like the first thing, like, we have got to improve our talent level to compete. I mean, this was a time when Harvard was getting like top a hundred ESPN guys. Those teams were loaded.  Princeton was outstanding at this time. Penn was very talented.

And so Mike was very adamant. Yale was phenomenal. Mike was very adamant. We have got to improve our, our recruiting. And so we, man, we, the recruit recruiting meetings were intense that year. And then Mike also wanted to develop an identity.  Mike’s a very, like I said, he is a hard worker.

He’s, he’s one of the toughest people you’ll ever meet. And so he wanted to establish kind of a tough, hard-nosed defense first kind of mentality. And so it was interesting for me coming from  coach maker who was very much like offensive that kind of mindset. And then going to Mike who wanted to, his brand was toughness work and kind of that defensive identity.

And so we talked a lot about that. We had a decent year we went, I think we were like 500, but people acted like we hung the moon just because the program hadn’t had a lot of success. And yeah, it was great. It was a great year. Loved my time there and made some great connections.

As I mentioned,

[00:42:33] Mike Klinzing: stop Bucknell, and you go there as the ops guy. Explain to people who maybe are coaching at the high school level. What was your role as an ops guy there at Bucknell?

[00:42:45] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, so that was back when ops guys the rules were  you can only have X guys on the court. And so different programs would get creative in kind of how they dealt with that.

At Bucknell, we, we. We followed the rules, right? So I wasn’t allowed to work with the guys on the court. But my, I had my hand in a lot of oth a lot of stuff.  we experimented a little bit with some of the offensive stuff that, that I’ve kind of made my, my bread and butter, so to speak.

But I did a whole lot of stuff I mean, when you’re an ops guy, you, you literally make, make the program run in a lot of ways. So man, I did every, everything you can imagine besides, I guess like working in the cafeteria or something. But yeah, it was great. Bucknell is a really at that time they, they were, they were really good.

They had Mike Masala played in the NBA had it really rolling in the Patriot League. And so I viewed that as like a a good way to advance my career, go to a place that’s kind of known for being a really, really good low to mid major program. But yeah, as an ops guy, you do like a little bit of everything.

I mean, recruiting, I did a lot of ANA analytics is kind of like another one of my things I guess you could say. So I did a lot of analytics, a lot of analysis of the program, but I mean, you’re doing like film exchange, academic advising with the kids, summer camps, recruiting, maintaining the recruiting database, scheduling, video exchange, like all that sort of stuff.

It’s. You’re doing a lot of the grunt work to make sure that the program functions smoothly.

[00:44:19] Mike Klinzing: What’s your mindset at this point overall for your career? As you said early on here, you’ve been at four different places over the span of the first six years of your career. Where are you at in terms of thinking about where you want to go with your career during your time?

What are you thinking about?

[00:44:43] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, well my goal has always been to be a head coach to run my own program. And so that was always kind of like the big picture dream, right? The big picture goal. But obviously trying to keep my horizon short, I was just thinking what are the logical next steps?

How do I build my resume? How do I keep kind of advancing to the next step? And you never know like which way your career’s going to go. And so like if you had told me I would’ve wound up at Bucknell three years prior, I would’ve been like, you’re crazy. So you never know which way your, your career’s going to going to turn.

But I just tried to keep thinking like, okay, how do I build my resume? I started to kind of build like, okay, you’re working at these academic institutions. Like, that kind of became a little bit of my background. And so yeah, I just tried to kind of think, okay, keep adding to your resume. Keep building that resume, keep building your network, and then just take it a step at a time with.

The idea that eventually I would like to be a head coach. Now, would that be at the division three level? Division two level?  D one, like, who knows? Right? You never know which way your career is going to turn, and obviously a lot of it is just pure dumb luck. And timing. But yeah, that was just kind of like my general thought process was, okay, keep going.

And again, I’m young, single, I’m hungry. I’m thinking climb the ladder. I was also very impatient. Like I look back on it now and think like, man, I was like super impatient and like was really just focused on like, okay what’s, what’s the next move for me? What’s the next step? And I look back now with age comes wisdom and I think back like, yeah, there I probably could have, could have been a little bit more patient, but  that’s, that’s youth for you, right?

[00:46:26] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. I mean, I think when you start looking at it, and you, especially when you get an opportunity out of the gate, you got people in your corner, you, you’ve had some success, you’ve been able to go to some, some really great schools and to be able to have success at those varying places. And I think everybody, right in the back of their mind, if you get into coaching at some point, especially early on in your career, maybe you reach a point if you’ve been an assistant for a long time, that you look around and you say,  what?

I think I’m, I think I’m happy being an assistant. When you look at some of the responsibilities that you’ve seen, multiple head coaches get that, maybe you come to that realization. But certainly early on in your career, as you said, most people who start out as a college basketball coach have in the back of their mind that at some point after they gain the experience or whatever, that they want to eventually get the opportunity to be a head coach.

So at what point do. You look around, is there some event moment light bulb going off where you start to look at it and say, man, the career path that I’m on is one that if I continue to go on it may not allow me to do the things that that I want to do. And again, not necessarily just in basketball, but in in life, in in general.

And so was there a one moment, or was it kind of a slow burn that got you to the point where you thought, hey, maybe there’s another path that I can go through and do all the things that you talked about, right. To be able to use the game to have an impact on people and that kind of stuff. Just how did you get to that point?

[00:48:03] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, more of a slow burn, I would say. Over the years I was thinking, I was kind of evaluating my life and  I wanted, I knew from a very young age I wanted to be a husband, a father, and that sort of thing. And obviously when I was working as a young guy in college, I mean, I had not much of a social life.

My life was, was my job a lot of the time. And there was definitely like moments where I was thinking like, oh boy, is this sustainable for me to do other things? And I knew a number of guys in coaching that were older and still single and weren’t able to maybe build a family. And that made me a little nervous like thinking like, okay, is that me?

Is that kind of my future? And when I was coaching at Bucknell my second year, I met my now wife and that was a huge kind of. Turning point because she was someone that I viewed as like, okay, I can build a life together with this person and a family with this person. And it kind of happened partially by choice, but partially not.

 I was out of a job after my second year at Bucknell and I was interviewing at a bunch of places all over the country kind of interviewing, but I was also in the back of my head thinking like, wait a minute. Like, is this where I maybe explore something else? And it just so happened my wife was going to law school and I was having a lot of conversations with my parents and then other people that were very close to me in coaching.

And I kind of said,  what? Like, lemme try something different. And so I got out of coaching. I just left coaching got a teaching job in Arkansas, followed my wife to Arkansas. She went to U of a law school. Got a job teaching high school. I love teaching. My mom was a teacher. I think teaching is very similar.

I mean, coaching is teaching. I mean, it really is. And so I love teaching social studies is, is my jam. I’ve taught like every high school social studies class you can imagine over the last 10 years. And it felt like a really good option to continue to fulfill that. Want and need of impacting others.

But just doing it in a different way. And then my dad, who was a long time high school coach, he said, Hey, if you ever get the itch again, like high school’s, a way better like work-life balance not to say, I mean you can do it at the college level, don’t get me wrong, but it requires a very understanding spouse.

It requires like you just have to be, you have to be a great communicator, right? With your family. And I, and I hats, I will say hats off to the guys in college that are like grinding and able to maintain like a really healthy relationship. I think that’s super impressive and that’s something I always struggled with finding that work-life balance when I was at the college level.

So I was told by multiple people, like, if you ever get the itch again, like high school’s, probably a good fit.

[00:50:52] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It’s interesting. I think that it’s one of the things that most coaches experience and I’ve had those conversations with a lot of people. When you think about early on in your career, right, when it’s just you and you’re only responsible for yourself, and especially having grown up loving the game of basketball, you’re perfectly fine and content right to be in the office or in the gym or whatever.

I always tell people that when I first got my teaching job and I was 25 years old when I got my first job, and I was an assistant varsity high school coach, and our JV coach was 22 and had just gotten his first job. And our head varsity coach had been at the school for a couple years, but he was maybe 32.

And we were all young and we all loved basketball. And I look at the time that we spent. In the gym together, school would end and we’d have these like three and a half hour practices. And  part of me looks back and like after what could we possibly have been getting done after like the first two hours?

Like, what was that? What did that last hour and a half like, I wish I could go back and watch film of what that last hour and a half of practice look like. But whatever we did it then, not only that, you’d have the three hour and a half hour practice and then to practice it in and what would we do?

Nobody would go home. We’d go and sit in the coach’s office and talk for another two hours and it didn’t matter. cause I was either going home to nobody or going home maybe to my dog eventually. And it’s just a completely different way of life. And when you’re 22 or you’re 25 and you’re single and you’ve got all that time in the world and you love basketball and there’s nothing that you’d rather be doing than sitting in the coach’s office or being at practice, whatever it might be.

And then slowly, as you said, you come to the realization that. Man there, there’s, there’s other things. And if you meet someone and you got you, you want to have a family. And I think people start to look at, and you try to evaluate. And then I’ve always said to people around here that if I was an athletic director and I was trying to hire a high school coach, I’d only hire guys who are 55 or 60 and retired, or guys who are 25 and single and have no families.

Because if I hire somebody who’s 40 and they have kids who are three, five, and seven, I’m going to do one of two things. Either that person’s not going to be able to do all the things that are required to do the job, or they’re going to get divorced. And I don’t really want that for either. I don’t really want either one of those scenarios to be the case.

And obviously I’m saying that a little bit in jest, but there is something to be said for trying to figure out. What that looks like. And it sounds like for you, you started to try to evaluate, well, what, how do I prioritize coaching? How do I prioritize basketball? How do I prioritize my wife, my family?

What does that, what does that look like? And so to be able to go back and be in teaching and then have, well, maybe at some point I get into high school coaching. How much did you miss the game while you weren’t coaching, while you were just teaching? And then what did you kind of do to, to fill that basketball Jones when you weren’t when you weren’t actually coaching a team?

[00:54:14] Kevin Snyder: Yeah. It’s funny you ask that because I definitely missed it. I still watched a lot of basketball. But what’s funny is, is I found myself watching basketball more as a fan and like kind of turning the coach part of my brain off. Yeah. And watching it more as a fan and in a way that was kind of fun like just being able to, to consume it as just a fan.

But yeah, I missed the game. I ran a little basketball club at my little charter school that I was teaching at and that was kind of fun. There were, these were kids that had literally, like some of them never played basketball before in their life and I really enjoyed that. It was really cool. They were there completely by choice cause they love basketball.

And I ran a little club, it was like once a week after school at this little tiny charter school. And that was really fun and a cool experience. But yeah just watching the game, talking to my, my family about basketball a lot. But it was, in some ways it was a nice way to kind of reset from a life standpoint and kind of reevaluate what was super important to me and what I wanted out of life.

But sure enough sure enough, after some years went by, I did the, it, I did get the itch and said I miss it. And so that’s when I, when I  decided to, to get back in that’s when I was living in Arkansas. So I started reaching out to basically any high school coach and athletic director in northwest Arkansas.

That whole region just sent my, like, just no. And I had zero connections, so it was all just like kind of cold calls and kind of putting my name out there. But yeah, sure enough, it did, but it’s like the, what is it, the Godfather, when you try to get out, they pull you back in or whatever.

Yeah. So it was definitely that type of situation.

[00:55:56] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. So when you get back into it. And you get that opportunity to coach at the high school level, which you hadn’t done before. Obviously your dad had experience with it, and you, you, you’re coaching at that, you’re, you’re teaching at that level, so you’re around the kids, so you have an idea of what to expect there.

And as you said, you’re still working and doing some stuff within the game, but what’s it like to come back to high school basketball and just the environment and what did you like about it? Again, not necessarily compare and contrast with college basketball, but just what did you like about that first experience getting back into the game and being able to coach at the high school level?

[00:56:36] Kevin Snyder: Yeah. Well, first of all, I was, it was it was actually harder for me to, to get back in than I thought it would be. I it took me a little bit longer and it was difficult, I think largely cause I had no network, right? I had zero network and nobody knew me. I was very, very fortunate that Greg White, the head coach at Bentonville West who is, is.

He thinks outside the box, he kind of is. He’s not afraid of going against the grain. So he had zero issue hiring me, somebody he didn’t know. Compared there were a lot of guys who didn’t call me back, didn’t text me back simply because they didn’t know me. Whereas Greg was, I remember in my interview, he said, I don’t care if I don’t know you, I just want somebody that’ll help my program get better.

Right. And so coming into that staff was great. It’s definitely different, obviously the high school level compared to the college level. At the college level, kids are on scholarship and so it’s much more business like at the high school level, it’s more, it’s less, it feels less like a job and more like kids are having fun.

There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of kids on your roster at the high school level that I say don’t love basketball. They maybe love being on the team and being with their buddies. They aren’t hoopers, they aren’t junkies. They don’t love the game. Whereas in college, that’s more common. Not to say there are guys in college that don’t love basketball.

I’m not trying to say everybody at that level loves it. But it’s just, you’re going to have less of that in college, less of those type of kids. So it’s definitely a different dynamic. One nice thing is the kids are more malleable. They come to you you can make significant changes to their fundamentals the way they think the game.

And so I feel like as a teacher you can maybe impact them a little bit more, whereas they’re coming to you college pretty fully formed with their basketball habits. You can obviously work with them and make changes, but they’re more malleable, they’re more plastic at the high school level, which is kind of cool from a coaching perspective.

But yeah, it’s, it’s quite. There’s a lot of difference. Obviously coaching’s coaching and teaching is teaching, but it’s, it’s definitely different. And a lot of the kids you’re coaching in high school are not going to play college basketball, right? You look at the percentages. I mean, they’re done after their senior year.

And so that’s a interesting little element to think about when you’re coaching high school. But I enjoyed it. I thought it was really fun. The kids are like I said, they’re, they’re excited to be in the gym for the most part. It’s a little bit more, like I said, it’s a little less like a job.

There’s a little bit less pressure, which makes sense.  when you’re making all this money it’s, and your job’s based on the performance of 18 to 22 year olds, that’s a whole different dynamic. But yeah, I’ve enjoyed it. Like I said, it’s it’s a good fit for me and my family and I do think it’s provided a little bit better work life balance for me.

So yeah, I’m enjoying the high school level. It’s been fun.

[00:59:30] Mike Klinzing: When you think about, again, as I’m listening to you talk and thinking about each one of your stops along the way in your career and and what, and what you’ve done and how you’ve done it at those different places. And thinking back to that very first experience at William and Mary and the level of Xs and Os and being able to understand the offense and put those things in and do that at the college level, and then you come down and you’re working at the high school level, well, obviously that level of sophistication from an xs and o standpoint probably isn’t necessary.

And probably if you try to go through that, be difficult to be able to install it at the same, at the same level. So how do you adjust your mindset as a coach in terms of the level of player. That you’re working with to sort of meet the team or meet the kids where they are at the high school level, if that question makes any sense.

[01:00:33] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, no, that makes sense. Well, obviously the kids at the college level are, are more talented. They’re able to do more things. I personally am a believer that the less in general, the less talent you have, the more structure you need, right? The more talent you have, the more freedom you can provide.

And if you get all the way up to the NBA, I mean, a lot of that stuff is just get get Kevin Durant in a position to where he can get, get him to one of his spots and if, and that’s all you need to do. cause he is one of the, part of the 0.0001% of players who have ever stepped foot on this planet.

The lower down you go, in my opinion, you need more structure. And that’s not to say you, you want to give players freedom within that structure. But In my opinion, as you go down in level, you cannot give kids  all these options, all these choices that might, that the kids that will excel are going to be your elite guys.

The guys that are division one players that are going on to to play division one college. The kids that are not of that talent level are, are going to struggle. To use an analogy in my, I teach 10th grade world history, if I give a project to 30 kids and I say, you can do whatever you want, just produce something about the silk roads, the top three kids are going to do great.

They’re going to smash it, they’re going to create something incredible. The other 27 are going to be completely lost, and it’s going to be not a quality product. And so, in my opinion, the less talent you have in general, in general the more structure you need to provide. And so I think at the high school level you have to provide kids with structure.

One of my favorite quotes and this is an an art major, so I’m going to sneak an art quote in for you. This is Pablo Picasso. It’s learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist. And so for kids, especially high school kids, they need structure. They need structure in their lives. They need structure in the classroom.

They need structure on the basketball court. And then obviously as they master the game, you allow them to start painting outside the lines. You allow them to start kind of breaking the rules, so to speak like an artist. And so I’ve found with the high school kids. If you can simplify the game and try to provide them with proper structure, most of them will thrive in that scenario.

Whereas as you go higher up you don’t need as much structure because those people are so incredibly talented.

[01:03:04] Mike Klinzing: What does that look like in a practice setting for you at the high school level when you think about designing a quality high school practice? What does that look like?

[01:03:15] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, well, I’m a big believer in like whole part hole.

So you show kids kind of the hole then you break it down the part and then you bring back to the hole. So from a half court offense perspective, again, that’s kind of my, my thing, my hook so to speak is half court man offense.  you show them, Hey, here’s the five on oh skeleton, we’re going to break down this particular action and what it flows into.

We’re going to show you that you’re going to learn a little bit. Alright, now let’s break it down. Let’s go three on, oh, then three on three within this specific action. Teach you your reads, teach you your progressions teach you counters. And then after you’ve mastered that, let’s go bring it back to the hole.

And now let’s go five on five and see how you can use those actions flowing in and out of each other using reads and whatnot to, to learn the offensive system. And so I think that’s a really effective teaching method is that whole part, whole. But yeah, you’ve have to be like anything, like I said, coaching is teaching.

You have to be a really good teacher. The best coaches I’ve ever played for were phenomenal teachers. They were detail oriented. They knew how to teach the game. Their, their their particular area of expertise. They knew how to teach the game extremely well. And they’re able to communicate that to players.

It’s about getting what  in your head. The players’ heads and the best coaches are able to do that very efficiently and very effectively.

[01:04:40] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that’s a really good point. It goes back to that John Wooden, right. You, you haven’t, you haven’t taught until they’ve learned. And it’s, it’s, again, you might have a ton of knowledge as a coach, and I’m sure that you’ve seen, whether it’s in your coaching career or maybe it’s just in, in dealing with people in, in your teaching career where there’s somebody who has a great deal of knowledge on a particular topic or subject or somebody who knows things that you, you watch them coach a team and they just, they can’t get kids into a line.

They can’t get this particular thing organized, and they might have a tremendous amount of technical knowledge, but they just can’t figure out how to convey that to, to get it through to, to a group of kids. And I do think that when you talk about coaching or teaching, right, there’s. There’s just and again, I think some of it is innate, right?

Just having an ability to understand and know and to be able to work and deal with kids. And then there’s the part that I always say coaching is, it’s an art and a science right there. There’s, there’s technical aspects to it. There’s things that you have to understand. There’s X’s and O’s, there’s organization, all that stuff.

But then there’s also just the art of knowing when and how to use different things and knowing when and how to organize a group and knowing when and how to put different kids together and all the things that go into, all the things that go into coaching. And the very best coaches are good at both of those aspects, right?

They, they have the knowledge, they continue to grow as a coach. X’s and o’s leadership, culture, all the things that go into having a successful program or things that they’re constantly working on and studying. And yet at the same time, they also have the art of knowing. When to apply those. Not only do they have all the tools in the toolbox, but they know when to utilize those tools.

And I think no matter whether you’re at the high school level or you’re at the college level, the ability to be able to have the tools and to be able to know when to apply those tools to me is always, is always the key. So when you think about the totality of your career, both at the college level and now at the high school level, where do you like to go to learn?

Who do you learn from? Where do you learn? Are you a. YouTube clip guy. Are you a leadership book guy? Are you a reaching out and calling coaching colleagues? Are you all that, just what’s your process for learning and growing as a coach?

[01:07:14] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, I’d say a little bit of everything. One thing that’s amazing, the world we live in today is obviously there’s so much information out there.

It’s no longer about getting the information. It’s now more about what you do with it. And so you go back to when you and I were playing film exchange was like, I mean, paramount to your program’s success is can you get a VHS of the team you’re playing in two weeks or not? And if you can’t, you’re screwed.

And so just getting the information used to be a key part. A program nowadays, everything is out there. You can, you and I could log on Synergy right now, Mike, and we could watch the top five half court offenses in division one, two, or three, and we could break it down. We could dive into their analytics and see, okay, how good are they at coming off a ball screen and hitting the rollman?

How many points per possession do they score on that action? I mean, that is all out there. It’s open to everyone. And so literally the information that is available to every coach today is essentially infinite. So now it’s much more about what do you do with it? And so I’m, I’m mean, I’m on everything. I I follow a bunch of trainers and coaches on social media.

I watch I love watching film, watching tape, reading books. Some of the best books I’ve ever read are, are I read a soccer book called Net Gains, about analytics, about Soccer. Phenomenal. I learned more from that book about basketball than a lot of basketball books. So, I mean, you just have to be willing to go out there and find it.

But then you also have to be very, very intentional about what you are doing with that information, because I think there’s plenty of coaches out there that consume quite a bit of content, but then are unable to translate that content into anything meaningful within their program. And I’ll be honest with you, Mike, there are some guys that I listen to or clinics I go to where I’m like, yeah, I didn’t get anything out of that.

And that’s fine. Like I’m sure there are guys that are going to listen to this podcast and say, yeah, Kevin, I got nothing out of Kevin Snyder.  whatever. Cool. And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just a matter of finding the sources of information and then being able to translate that information into something that’s meaningful to you as a person and to your program because who you are matters where you’re at matters a lot.

. There are so many questions that I feel like a lot of coaches don’t ask themselves about the, about themselves as a person, but also their program where they’re at and what’s around them. And I think  you have to be willing to learn like obviously you have to be willing to go get that information, but getting it is no longer a problem.

Figuring out what to do with it is now the big separator between good coaches and mediocre coaches.

[01:10:03] Mike Klinzing: Now, I think there’s two points there. One is it’s easy to get overwhelmed by everything that’s out there. And it’s also easy to look, watch, read, see something, and then be like, oh yeah, let’s do that. Or, oh yeah, let me take that, or, oh, let’s do this.

And you can do that endlessly. As you said. And so you have to be able to be discerning and you have to be able to pick and choose, and you have to be able to understand what can, will, should work for you. And then the second piece of that is self-awareness, right? I think the very best coaches, the very best people in any profession, I think are very self-aware and very introspective in analyzing their own performance and what they do well and what they don’t do well.

And those of us who can be honest with ourselves and understand what our strengths and weaknesses are, probably even more so, our, our understanding what our weaknesses are and where we need to fill in those gaps, whether that’s through our own going out and getting more knowledge or whether that’s if you’re part of a staff, right?

If I know I’m weak in an area and I can hire Kevin and Kevin can do something that I’m weak at now I’ve made our program in totality better. But in order for me to do that, I have to be able to recognize. That weakness in myself. And I always think that self-awareness is one of the key traits for successful people in any walk of life.

Because if you’re self-aware,  kind of where those pitfalls are. And you can either, Avoid them or B, try to figure out a way to fill them in so that they’re not something that hurts your overall performance. Again, whether you’re talking about coaching a team or teaching in a classroom or running a business, whatever it might be.

So I really think those are two really good points when it comes to learning, is you have to be able to pick and choose and be discerning. And two, you have to be self-aware enough to know what it is that you’re trying to accomplish. And so I think those are, those points are really well said, Kevin.

[01:12:02] Kevin Snyder: Yeah, and I think something that goes hand in hand with that self-awareness that you’re talking about is, being comfortable in your own skin. I’ve found that the very best teachers, like being a teacher for the last 10 years, the very best teachers and the very best coaches are very, very comfortable with who they are as a person.

Like I’ve been around, I’ve played for multiple guys. I’ve coached for multiple different guys, all with very different personalities, very different backgrounds. The best coaches are very comfortable with who they are and very confident in who they are, and they’re not bothered by the things that they might not be great at.

Like I’ve worked with guys that were straight nerds,  what I mean? Like straight just data nerds and the best coaches. Cool with that. They’re like, that’s who I am. And like, you can be a great coach. You don’t have to be good at everything. In fact, if you try to be good at everything, you’re going to end up mediocre at all of that, right?

You can do anything you want, but not everything you want. There’s a Mike Maker quote for you. But yeah, I feel like something that goes hand in hand with that self-awareness is just that confidence and comfortableness with who you are as a person,

[01:13:09] Mike Klinzing: and that allows you to be yourself with your players.

And I, I know this to be a fact, but I can tell you that hundreds of guys that we’ve talked to on the podcast always say, if you’re not being yourself players, sniff that out immediately. And you can’t be a hard nosed disciplinarian if. You’re not a hard nosed disciplinarian. You can’t be a player’s coach and jovial and joking around and get the best out of your team if that’s not really who you are.

And so it’s important to coach to your personality. And again, it goes to what we just said, being able to be self-aware and understanding who you are and what you are. And I think, look, that goes to your own journey, right? As somebody who starts out in the college world, you’re going through, you’ve been to a bunch of places, you have an understanding of, Hey, this is what I think I want.

And as it go, time goes on, you start to reevaluate that. You become self-aware of, Hey, maybe this path I’m going down was the right path for me up until this point, and now maybe it’s time for me to shift. So now you’ve kind of come full circle, right? You’re back in Colorado. After leaving Arkansas, your wife kind of led you to, led you to Arkansas, where I’m assuming you didn’t have any, as you said, you didn’t have any contacts, you didn’t have anything, you just kind of boom there, there you are following your wife.

Now you go back to Colorado. So tell me a little bit about that move, what drove it and then just the opportunity that you have at Cherry Creek.

[01:14:39] Kevin Snyder: Yeah. So in Arkansas, like I said, I had kind of a rough go of it career wise.  I thought college player, college division. One assistant at one point would generate a lot of interest.

But Coach Maker, one of the first things he told me when I got into coaching, he said, Kevin, it’s not what  it’s who . And he also said it’s it’s not a, he said, coaching is not a merit-based profession. It’s not a merit-based. And that’s true of any business, any, any profession, right.

It’s not what  it’s who . But in coaching, I feel like it’s especially pronounced. So going to Arkansas with zero context was, was challenging. It was a really challenging, had a hard go of it. Just trying to get my career going. Like I said, I was fortunate that Coach White was very.

Kind of an outside the box thinker and open to bringing on somebody he didn’t know from Adam. But yeah, so basically we spent 10 years in Arkansas. Just just celebrated our daughter’s one year birthday. Congratulations. And when my Thank you. Yeah. Appreciate that. When my wife got pregnant with our daughter we started to have some serious conversations about what the future might look like.

And if I had stayed in Arkansas, I told my wife, I said, I’m probably just as a heads up, I’m probably going to have to take a job out in the boonies and I’m going to be commuting for like an hour, working I’ll be out four nights a week. It’s, that’s, that’s kind of where I saw my career headed.

I, like I said, I had a, you’d be surprised, Mike, how many ADSD coaches like, wouldn’t even return my calls in our society. I believe it.

[01:16:04] Mike Klinzing: Trust me, I be, I totally, I totally believe it. Like here I live, I live in my hometown where I grew up. I’ve applied for the basketball job two different times, and one time I think I got close to close to getting a job, but  again, like I went to school here, I live here, all my kids have gone here.

I played division one basketball and it’s kind of a it’s kind of amazing. And again, part of me is glad that in, in a couple circumstances probably would’ve been for all the reasons we were talking about tonight of work life balance and what it would take to be success. Probably good.

I didn’t get the jobs, the times that I applied for it, but nonetheless, you’re a hundred percent right. I, I sometimes look around at the hiring practices of school administrations and I look at people who get jobs and I look at their resume and then I look at the resumes of people who don’t get jobs.

And you just realize you’re like, this, the job, the hire obviously had nothing to do with who is qualified from a basketball standpoint, and so you just. You just learned, I, as I’m sure you did, you just learned to kind of shake your head and move on to the next thing because you can’t really make sense of it in any way, shape, or form.

[01:17:15] Kevin Snyder: Yeah. That’s just the way the world works and that’s just the way it is. Right. And you can waste time sitting around complaining about it or you can just move on. And so yeah, I told my wife, I said Colorado, great place to raise a kid. Obviously I’m biased growing up here, but great place to.

Put down roots and obviously I’ve got a great network out here. I flew out here over spring break and within three days I had three job offers to be an assistant coach at really good programs in Colorado. And so it was like literally like a 180 from my experience out in Arkansas. And so that was super encouraging.

 people were really excited about me coming back. A lot of people here remember me as a player and also remember my dad as a very successful coach. So yeah, just better network here and obviously I think I’ll have an easier go of it. I was very excited to join the staff here at Cherry Creek.

Cherry Creek is known for being one of the best, if not the best academic schools in the state of Colorado. And it’s also an athletic powerhouse. They just got named the Max Prep’s Cup Champion. They were named the number one athletic department in the entire United States. They won nine state championships last year.

Their football team has won six out of the last seven state titles. So here it’s like. Like, it’s they expect excellence in academics. They expect excellence in athletics. And so it’s a really exciting place to be. It’s also a massive school. It’s 3,800 kids, which is the same size as Bucknell, which kind of  blows my mind.

But it’s a, it’s a really good place to be. I’m excited to be here. The basketball program has not had as much success over the last couple years, and so I think the head coach here James Hartsfield was looking for some new ideas and kind of a bit of a change. And so it was really a good fit for me coming on the staff.

And I think, I think I can help them  with my background and think I can help them take that next step. Like I said, this is a place where people kind of expect to win. And as a coach, you want to be in that situation as opposed to the other, the other side of it. So, I’m excited to be here.

It’s a, it’s a great place. I’ve been gosh, teaching now for about a month. Loving it. Enjoyed working with the guys and excited excited for this upcoming season.

[01:19:23] Mike Klinzing: Alright, well that leads us into a perfect segue to the final two part question. When you look at the next year or two stepping into a new job, new home coaching, everything new, what do you see as being the biggest challenge?

And then the second part of the question is, when you think about what you get to do every day as a teacher, as a coach, what brings you the most joy? So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:19:50] Kevin Snyder: Yeah. From a personal standpoint, I think my biggest challenge is just going to be navigating this portion of my career.

Because I’ve had a number of people tell me you’re ready to be a head coach. I feel like I’m ready to be a head coach, but I also. I want to be patient and not I want to take the, I want to make the right move and not just take whatever first pops up. And a lot of life is timing and so we’ll see.

Yeah, we’ll see how it all plays out. But I think navigating these next few years of my career are going to be very difficult because I’m at a great place. I really like it here. And I don’t want to, I mean, I’ve only been here a month. I don’t want to start thinking about what’s next? Right. But I do think that’s going to be an interesting.

Kind of road to travel, and I just want to try to be smart about it. So I think that’s going to be extremely challenging from a, from a program perspective. This league is really tough. Like the state championship last year came out of this league. We’re very young. We’ve got a lot of talent. Our, our two best, well, two of our better players transferred out right before I got hired, so that was a little disappointing.

One seven footer going to IMG. And then another guard went to Christopher Columbus in Florida. But I still think. I love our group. I love our group. We’ve got a lot of talent. We’ve got really good players. We’ve got a ton of depth, which you would expect from a school this size. So I think we can compete with the better teams in the state, but I think it’s a, the biggest challenge will be consistency, getting a young team to consistently compete at a high level, which they have not been able to do over the last year or two.

And so I think that will be a big challenge, but one that I’m looking forward to. I think like we’ve got, we’ve got enough, we’ve got good pieces to work with here. The cupboards are not bare. And then what brings me the most joy, I would just say being, being a part of kids’ journeys,  what I mean?

Like however long or short that may be.  everybody’s traveling through life on it’s like a train traveling through life. And when you get to hop on that train for a little bit and then hop off is it’s really special. And  I think, like I said, I think of the people that influenced me.

Getting to, to do that for other people is really special. Like I think of guys I’ve coached, and obviously you can’t do that for everybody, right? You’re not going to be that person for every single one of your players or students. But when you do get to, to do that, like, I think about, I taught this I taught a girl, her name was Rachel at my old school in Arkansas two schools ago.

And her dream was to go to Oxford. She’s one of the best students I’ve ever taught. And she came to me and said, will you write my letter of recommendation? And I was like, oh boy, this is like one of the biggest responsibilities of my career. That’s right. Because she is like, she was like, if not the best, one of the top three kids I’ve ever taught in my life.

Like, brilliant, like she’s going to cure cancer or something in the future. And so I was like, all right, let’s do it Rachel. Let’s, let’s make this thing sing. And so  I took a lot of time writing that letter of recommendation. And sure enough like a couple months later she came to me and said, I got in, I’m going to Oxford.

And so that’s awesome. We went, we went out to celebrate. We got dinner with her mom and my wife came out and yeah, like that moment I will remember for the rest of my life, like helping just, and that was just like a little small thing, like she got into Oxford, like without me. It wasn’t me. Like I taught her in a few classes, but trust me, It was me getting out of her way.

And, but just being able to like be a help in some tiny little way was, gosh, that’s like, that feeling is like the greatest feeling on earth. And so just having that. With your students and with your players, when you do get to experience that there’s nothing better. And it, to me, it’s a, it makes a life worth living.

Like I think about again, like I said earlier in this podcast, you have a limited time on Earth, so how are you going to spend it? And to me spending it, teaching and coaching, there’s some days where you’d want to leave and not come back. But but man, it’s just, it’s, it’s yeah, it’s a good way to spend a life.

[01:24:07] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. Impact, right? I mean, the ability to be able to have an impact on someone’s life is, it’s invaluable. And I think it always for me comes back to, as a teacher or a coach, you never know what you do or what you say. How somebody that you’re teaching or coaching is going to take that to heart and grab it with them.

And unfortunately, sometimes we think back to some of the stuff that somebody said to us that’s negative and that you would use it to fuel us. At the same time, I’m sure you and me and just about anybody listening to this show has things that somebody said to them that inspired them in some way. And probably if we go back and talk to those people, they’d have no idea that they even said something that we remember and are going to carry with us for the rest of our lives.

And it just speaks to the power that we have as, as teachers, as, as coaches, as people who have an impact on young people that it just always reminds me that you have to make sure that what you’re, what you’re saying and what you’re doing, you’re intentional about it because somebody’s always watching and listening and trying to take something from you and you, you want them to, you want them to take the positive.

And again, I can think of the number of things that just, that you cited in the podcast from people that have been around you, that have impacted you, and those quotes. And those are things that, those are things that you live by. Those are things that you take and. That impact you every single day when you have to make a decision of, Hey, I can reference this person, I can reference this, this experience.

And that’s what, again, speaks to the impact that we can all have as, as teachers and coaches. So it’s well said. Kevin, before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how can people reach out to you, get in touch with you, find out more about what you do. So share email, social media, website, whate, whatever you want to throw at us.

And then I’ll jump back in and wrap things up. Sounds good.

[01:26:04] Kevin Snyder: Yeah. So I have a Twitter account. I’m probably not as active as I should be but it’s @KevinSnyder2408. That’s my handle. You can just search Kevin Snyder. I’m on there. You can email me. My email is the same thing. KSnyder2408@gmail.Com.

And yeah, would love to hear from other coaches. Some of my favorite memories as a coach are just from conversations like this, like having this with you, Mike. So yeah, would love to hear from anybody if anybody wants to chat about anything. Yeah, especially if you, if you want to talk offense gimme  gimme an email or shoot me a dm.

You defense guys you, you can find somebody. No, I’m kidding. Anybody. Love to, love to hear from anybody.

[01:26:47] Mike Klinzing: There we go. All right, Kevin, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us. Really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening. We will catch you on our next episode.

Thanks.

Your first impression is everything. When applying for a new coaching job. A professional coaching portfolio is the tool that highlights your coaching achievements and philosophies, and most of all helps separate you and your abilities from the other applicants. The Coaching Portfolio Guide is an instructional membership based website that helps you develop a personalized portfolio.

Each section of the portfolio guide provides detailed instructions on how to organize your portfolio in a professional manner. The guide also provides sample documents for each section of your portfolio that you can copy, modify, and add to your personal portfolio. As a Hoop Heads Pod listener, you can get your coaching portfolio guide for just $25.

Visit coaching portfolio guide.com/hoopheads to learn more.

[01:27:52] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast presented by Head Start Basketball.