CJ ARMITAGE – FORMER MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH AT SIMPSON COLLEGE – EPISODE 1287

Website – https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-armitage-83ab06216/

Email – [email protected]

Twitter/X – @CJArmitage1

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CJ Armitage spent last season as a Men’s Basketball Assistant Coach at Simpson College before stepping away from coaching to take a teaching position in Boulder, Colorado. 

Armitage previously served as a graduate assistant at the University of Colorado during the 24-25 season following three years as a team manager. While at Colorado, he was part of the program’s winningest season in 2023-24 (26-11). The Buffaloes won two NCAA Tournament games.

Prior to his time in Boulder, Armitage coached high school basketball at International School Bangkok. He has also worked with USA Basketball’s U16-U19 national teams and has served as an assistant coach and general manager for TBT’s Team Colorado, winning the 2024 TBT Wichita Regional.

On this episode Mike & CJ discuss the importance of fostering player development and trust in the process of improvement over immediate results. Armitage reflects on his transition from high school basketball in Thailand to collegiate coaching in the United States, highlighting the distinct differences in player mentality and game culture. As he shares insights from his experiences, he articulates a profound commitment to education and mentorship, underscoring the responsibility coaches have to their players beyond the confines of the game. CJ talks openly about leaving the coaching profession to take on a teaching position while sharing the factors that went into that decision.

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Have your notebook close by as you listen to this episode with CJ Armitage, former men’s basketball assistant coach at Simpson College.

What We Discuss with CJ Armitage

• The factors that went into his decision to leave coaching for a high school teaching job
• Camaraderie among staff enhances team dynamics and decision-making
• Balancing academic and athletic responsibilities is crucial for the development of student-athletes
• The importance of process over immediate results
• The differences in youth basketball experiences between Thailand and the United States
• Why adaptability is such a key to coaching in modern college basketball
• The diverse pathways to becoming a basketball coach
• The relationship between player development, trust, and process

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THANKS, CJ ARMITAGE

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TRANSCRIPT FOR CJ ARMITAGE – FORMER MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH AT SIMPSON COLLEGE – EPISODE 1287

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

[00:00:21] CJ Armitage: Watching our players say, “All right, we are going to get better. That’s our job,” right? The wins are going to come, they’re great, but we’re going to trust the process and get better so the results follow.

[00:00:33] Mike Klinzing: CJ Armitage spent last season as a men’s basketball assistant coach at Simpson College before stepping away from coaching to take a teaching position in Boulder, Colorado.

Armitage previously served as a graduate assistant at the University of Colorado during the twenty twenty-four-twenty twenty-five season, following three years as the team manager. While at Colorado, he was part of the program’s winningest season in twenty twenty-three-twenty twenty-four, and the Buffaloes won two NCAA tournament games.

Prior to his time in Boulder, Armitage coached high school basketball at International School Bangkok. He’s also worked with USA Basketball’s U16 to U19 national teams and has served as an assistant coach and general manager for TBT’s Team Colorado, winning the twenty twenty-four TBT Wichita Regional.

Ever since I founded Head Start Basketball in nineteen ninety-three, we’ve helped young players develop their skills, confidence, and love for the game. Now we’re partnering with coaches and athletic programs to bring the Head Start Basketball camp experience to new communities. Our camps run for five days, three hours per day, and serve boys and girls in grades one through six.

You or someone on your staff directs the on-court portion of the camp while Head Start Basketball manages registration, promotion, parent communication, T-shirts, trophies, website setup, and administration. There are no upfront camp planning headaches, and the profits are divided fifty-fifty between your program and Head Start Basketball.

If you want to reach more families or strengthen your youth basketball pipeline or just create additional revenue for your program, visit headstartbasketball.com to explore hosting a camp.

[00:02:05] Kyle Juergens: Hi, this is Kyle Juergens, head boys basketball coach at Skutt Catholic High School in Omaha, Nebraska, and you’re listening to the Hoop Heads podcast.

[00:02:14] Mike Klinzing: Have your notebook close by as you listen to this episode with CJ Armitage, former men’s basketball assistant coach at Simpson College. Hello, and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Sunkel tonight, but I am pleased to be joined by CJ Armitage, former men’s basketball assistant coach at Simpson College and former graduate assistant at the University of Colorado.

CJ, welcome to the Hoop Heads pod.

Hey, Mike. Thanks for having me.

Excited to have you on. Looking forward to diving into your career, talking to you a little bit about the decisions that you made along the way, a- and again, specifically the decision to step away from college coaching, which we’ll get to in a few minutes.

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. What made you fall in love with it?

[00:03:08] CJ Armitage: Yeah, so my my childhood was somewhat unique because I grew up overseas in in Bangkok, Thailand. And I was born in the US in Colorado, but we moved over there, and that’s where I really started to kinda fall in love with the game.

My dad was a high school coach, and when I was, I think, in in fifth grade, he asked me to to be the manager for that team. And I, I just loved being around it, even from such a young age. So I started I started there, and pretty soon they were they were allowing me to coach some middle and high school teams, which was which was a lot of fun.

And basketball over there is pretty different than it is over in over in the US. But it was great, and I just knew that I really wanted to do that because of the impact that you can make on these students. I got to see it from such a young age on up, that just working with these kids overseas at lower youth levels you have a great impact on their lives, and I’m still in touch with some

[00:04:10] Mike Klinzing: That’s very cool.

And again, a good way to get yourself involved in the profession. Obviously, the influence of your dad, huge there. And then, as you said, to be able to make an impact. That’s one of the things that, CJ, I always talk about with coaches when people are kinda talking about their why. I always think about the fact that getting an opportunity to use the game of basketball that I love to be able to have an impact on the players, the kids that I come in contact with.

I always think that’s one of the best parts about being a basketball coach, is just you get to combine that love that you have for the game with then also being able to make a positive impact on the kids, the students that you interact with on a daily basis. So I think that’s really a cool thing that you had an opportunity to do.

You talked a little bit about the differences between basketball there in Thailand and basketball in the US. If you had to point to one or two things, and obviously I’m sure there’s a lot, a whole world of difference, but if you had to point to one or two things that stick out to you when you think about your experience with youth basketball in Thailand versus what we see typically today in the United States from a youth basketball standpoint

Yeah, I’d say a couple of the bigger differences are, number one, it’s a very different game physicality-wise.

And over there, there’s a lot less begging for calls, challenging anything. You get a call, you move on, just ’cause that’s how FIBA basketball is. And even from the youth on to the professional team in Bangkok, yeah, people don’t like every call, as, as I’m sure but there’s a lot less of that combative, competitiveness with the officials.

So that in terms of game style would be the biggest one. And then in terms of youth basketball, over there you don’t really have any AAU summer basketball, anything like that. So kids are a lot more balanced in their lives. They have, they’ll play for their high school team, maybe a little bit of community basketball or something like that, but it’s not a year-round thing.

So kids there can really separate themselves if they choose to put in the work out- outside of their actual practice time. But at the same time, it allows them to have somewhat of a balanced lifestyle as well.

Had your dad coached in the US before he took himself and his family over to Thailand, or was coaching in Thailand his first experience coaching basketball?

No, so he coached over here. He coached football as, as well. He was an athlete in high school, and and he was a lot more athletic than, than I ever was. But he coached over here and and then got that opportunity over there too.

When you think about his influence on you, obviously just seeing him coach all the time and being around the game, and as you said, get an opportunity to be a manager for some of the teams that he coached, and obviously there’s an inspiration piece of that right there that got you into the coaching profession initially.

But when you think about just the kind of coach your dad was, you watching him growing up and then starting to coach yourself, are there one or two characteristics that your dad has that, had as a coach that you feel like you incorporated into who you were as a coach?

[00:07:33] CJ Armitage: Yeah. The the biggest one that I would say is probably just his ability to teach.

And he, along with being a coach, he was a elementary school principal, and then he was a teacher over in Bangkok, and he he’s gotten both the admin and educational side of actual school. But his ability to teach concepts that, that were foreign to so many kids and have them understand it, realize what they need to do, was something that I was able to take away from him, and he’s an outstanding teacher, and that was the biggest thing that he taught me.

[00:08:11] Mike Klinzing: As you started getting more into coaching while you were there in Thailand, what were some of the things that you did to try to improve yourself, improve your knowledge of the game? Where did you go? Who did you turn to? Were you books? Were you video? How were you learning more about, “Hey, how am I going to teach this?”

Are you talking to your dad a lot? Just what’s the process for trying to improve as you started to realize, “Hey I really like this. Maybe this is a direction I want to go as I move on in my life”?

[00:08:42] CJ Armitage: Yeah.

So when I was over there it was a, a foreign concept to most of our community, saying, “I want to be a professional coach.”

That, that wasn’t a a typical job, especially over, over in Bangkok. So in terms of resources for just coaching basketball, our athletic director, he played at Pomona, so he was able to to give me some insight into college basketball. And on top of that, we had a professional Thai team that was maybe 15 minutes from from where we lived, called the Mono Vampire, who I think I think COVID shut down that league.

But we went to a bunch of Mono Vampire games, which was great because I’ve loved FIBA basketball for a long time. Basketball over here is great, but FIBA you learn so much and that’s why so many coaches over here steal, concepts from from overseas. But got to learn a lot from that.

And then I I would come back every summer to Colorado To go to the University of Colorado basketball camp, which is how I later got connected and on staff there. But I got to talk to, Tad Boyle and assistants with that staff, and every summer I was just trying to find one thing that I could take away and and use.

And with that, I tried to make it my life. I was still a student for a lot of it, so I had to do classes. I was still a player then, so I had to play, but making sure that every avenue I turned to, whether it be over here with with the University of Colorado staff, like you mentioned, videos, books, I just wanted to find one thing that could s- help me or one thing I could learn not to do too.

[00:10:24] Mike Klinzing: When do you eventually come back stateside? Is your family still there? When did you come back full time and go to the University of Colorado? Just explain the transition from Thailand back to the US and kinda what your family situation is today.

[00:10:39] CJ Armitage: Yeah,

so I I graduated from from high school in in Bangkok.

And my parents, they were both at the school, so we all knew when I graduated, family was no longer there we would come back. I have a sister who graduated a couple years older from, older than me but she she was smart enough not to get into coaching. And she’s over in San Diego now, but my parents, they’re in Boulder.

And I graduated there and had some schools to to choose from in terms of where I wanted to go. Endicott College was one that was very high on my list ’cause they have some great internship programs. That’s a D3 school that had a great season last year. But I almost went there, decided, I’m going to stick with my connections at CU and hopefully be a manager and try to move up on that staff.

So picked coming to CU, and I couldn’t work with them at first because it was COVID my freshman year, and that, it was heartbreaking to me ’cause I came to this school for this opportunity and just didn’t work out. But through that year, I got a little bit lucky because our director of operations at Colorado, his wife is a professor at CU, and I was fortunate enough to be in her class, which which helped me with that opportunity more.

And that allowed me to be on staff my sophomore year through through the next four years, including a grad season.

[00:12:05] Mike Klinzing: So was your plan right from the get-go when you enrolled at Colorado was, “I’m going with the idea that I’m going to try to become a college basketball coach?” Was that the… Despite whatever the academic focus is, the focus of your career planning was, “Hey, I want to get into college coaching,” was that the mindset?

[00:12:24] CJ Armitage: Yeah, and it definitely coaching. I didn’t know if I wanted college or professional, but it was it was funny because when people would ask me what my major is, I’d I’d sometimes say it’s basketball because I I did care about the diploma. I’m very fortunate to have received one, but my my career intention with university was the job with the team.

[00:12:43] Mike Klinzing: Usually we hear that from players, right? Not from managers. So you usually- …hear players are, “I’m majoring in, I’m majoring in basketball.” It’s not necessarily guys who are on the ma- on the manager side of it, but I completely understand. I’ve told this story a couple times, CJ, on, on the podcast, but I think it’s relevant here again.

What’s funny is when I was playing, and again I’m old, so we’re talking this is a long time ago, 1988 to 1992, I’m playing college basketball. And I remember, again, it was a little bit different back then. There wasn’t as many… Maybe our team had, I don’t know, we might’ve had at any one time, maybe two, three managers at the most.

Whereas now, obviously, if you’re at a Power Five school, you might have 10 or 12 guys that are working for the program. But nonetheless, I remember as a player looking at the guys who were managers, and never once in my four years of playing did I ever think or did it cross my mind that those guys were doing that because they might have wanted to get into coaching.

My thought was always, “Oh, those guys, they just, they love hoops. They want to hang around the players. It’s cool to be around the locker room and be around whatever.” Never, ever in a million years did I ever think of it as a roadmap to be able to start a college career. And then you realize now when you look around the college basketball landscape especially the number of guys who have risen from managers at various programs to now leading big, huge powerhouse programs, both on the men’s and women’s side, it really is quite amazing how much of a valuable track it is to go and be a manager.

And again, I didn’t realize any of this, that hey, while I’m practicing or I’m going home to eat dinner after practice, the manager is getting to sit in on coaches’ meetings and get, is getting to build relationships with the coaches on the staff that me as a player, when you have that player coach, you’re not building the relationship in the same way as somebody who’s a manager is building a relationship with that person.

And it really, when I finally realized it, which I don’t even know when I did, but when I finally realized that, hey, that’s a really good way to get into coaching, all these little pieces started to lock into place for me. But I had no idea while I was playing that was the, the route that a lot of guys were taking, and it sounds like you knew right from the start.

[00:15:03] CJ Armitage: And I was pretty lucky because we mentioned, some of the resources in Bangkok. One, one that I didn’t mention was the, the person that coached along with my dad on the varsity team, his name was Mike Rutherford, and he was a manager at Indiana with the, that powerhouse program over there.

And Dusty May was also a manager at Indiana as well. So he was the one that from that young age got me thinking about this is an option.” It’s… You don’t… i’m 5’8 and slow, so I was never going to play. And so he was, mentioning that might be an option to to go into.

It’s what he did, and he he inspired me to to go along that route. But you’re definitely right. There are there are a lot of people that get an inside scoop. You have to be able to work for it in that business, and there are long hours. But if you stick to it and you get a little bit of luck involved, then then you get some opportunities.

[00:15:56] Mike Klinzing: Tell me about your experience as a manager in Colorado and how your role evolved year over year in terms of what you got to do, what your responsibilities were, how much access you had to being involved in maybe meetings that the coaches had, or did anybody bring you in to watch film? Was there one particular guy on the staff that kind of became your mentor that you connected really well with?

Just walk me through the experience o- of kind of what you did and how you did it while you were at Colorado.

[00:16:28] CJ Armitage: Yeah, so I was lucky in terms of the timeline for when I got hired, and I ended up being at Colorado for four years. But when I got hired there there really weren’t managers the year before because of COVID.

So there were eight new managers, and then we had one head manager that couldn’t even be with the team the year prior. So he he was great, and he taught me so much and now he he just grad- graduated from from Vanderbilt Law, so he’s pretty intelligent. But he really took me under his wing right away and taught me a lot.

And my first year, I really had the opportunity to do a lot of player workouts. And so we had one former player named Evan Battey, who who’s now on the coaching staff as a player, and he’s one of my best friends now. But we would work every day for two hours on the court just he and myself.

Sometimes another manager would join us, but every day we’re working and that was my favorite part because it was a chance for me to directly impact something. Sometimes as a manager you get to learn a lot, which is great, but your direct impact isn’t always there. So working with him and other players as well was was really cool for for my growth and just my understanding of the game, ’cause he was a very intelligent player too.

My second year I got promoted to head manager and I continued to work with the players. He graduated, so I didn’t get access with him, but but we kinda started building a, a foundation for the, the next year, which we would set the all-time wins record at Colorado. And so we had guys like KJ Simpson and Tristan da Silva on that team.

But along with that, I got to work with our director of operations, Bill Carton, and he really showed me the ins and outs of what operations look like. And I got to learn about travel and simple things like ordering buses and food orders and things like that. So that gave me an in-depth look at that side of things.

And the other guy on staff that I really worked with is is Mike Roan, who is now at UMKC After being the associate coach at Colorado for a long time. But he and I were very close. We’re we’re both shorter guys, so we have the same background in terms of that. But but he was a much better player than I ever was.

So I got to work with him, and really just kept learning after I became head manager and then later a grad assistant. But it was great because it… That included being in meetings, being involved with recruiting processes just understanding, the, the little things of when players need to be at strength, when they need to be at film, watching film with players.

So I was really fortunate that the staff trusted me, that I had so much access.

[00:19:21] Mike Klinzing: When you think about the learning curve for you as a young guy wanting to get into the profession, and you’re looking around at all the things that are going on around you, right? You’re doing the player workouts. You’re trying to get in and watch film with the coaches.

You’re seeing sort of that administrative side of it, right? Talking about the buses and meals and schedules and all that kind of stuff. When you think about your growth as a young coach, what was an area that you felt like maybe was a strength initially, right from the get-go, something that you were pretty good at, that you felt fairly confident about?

And then what was an area where you felt like, “Man, I really have to soak this in and grab as much as I can,” ’cause I feel like I’m maybe, I don’t know if behind is the right word, but just an area where you felt like you needed to grow a lot in order to get to where you would want to go into, in the profession?

[00:20:14] CJ Armitage: Yeah when I got there, I felt like I had a pretty good understanding for for just the game in general. Ways you can go about trying to steal an extra possession here or there. The analytics side that’s one area that I also really contributed to to things with the program there.

But in terms of an area that I’m like, “Wow, this is just crazy,” was the film work, and because that was something we never really had in Bangkok. And I was telling even some, some high school coaches in the area when they were having scouting reports and things like that, we didn’t know who we were playing.

We just show up. We know, okay, we’re playing this team, this state, our bus is going to get here at this time. Let’s go play. And so as a coach in Bangkok, we’re coming up with our, scouting report by watching the other team in warmups ’cause film just wasn’t a big deal. We filmed our own games, but it wasn’t that in-depth.

The amount of film work you have to do in college and pro basketball is so large that it was an area that I needed to get a lot better with very quickly. How

[00:21:23] Mike Klinzing: long do you feel like it took you to get a handle on where you could sit down and watch the film and have an understanding of, hey, what am I look what am I looking for?

I talk to coaches, CJ, all the time about how when they watch film with players, there’s so many players that don’t know how to watch film, right? Like most players, high school kids if they haven’t been taught, what they’re watching when they watch film is they’re watching themselves. They’re waiting for that shot that they make or that nice move that they get going to the basket, and that’s what they’re looking to see.

They’re not really looking at the things that are going to help them to become a better player. So how long do you feel like it took you in the film room to where you felt like you had a good handle on, “Okay, I see what the coaches are watching, I see what they’re looking for. Now I can start to see those things when I’m watching for myself.”

How long do you think that took?

[00:22:14] CJ Armitage: It probably took maybe six months to a year to really start to understand it, but it’s a process that I could watch film today and it might be totally different in terms of how I watch it than I did a year ago or two years ago or however long ago. Because I feel like it changes so much with who you’re watching and what you need to watch for.

You take player X and he needs to get better at these three things, and player Y needs three totally different things. And while you’re watching film, on one clip, you can point out like 20 different things that take place, and it… Every level you go up, the margin for error shrinks and, you know, now you’re down to 10, and now you’re down to five things that go wrong.

But you can watch these NBA players, the best players in the world, and game in the finals, and every clip there are slight things that go wrong. So I’m still learning and trying to understand it better than, than I did the day before.

[00:23:17] Mike Klinzing: That’s a great point about just the nuances of the game and just having an understanding of there’s always something that can be improved, right?

Talking again about players watching film. So often somebody thinks as a high school player, “I had a great game,” and yet if you go back and watch the film with a college coach that can break that stuff down and look at hey, yeah, here’s this that went well, but here’s five other things that, again, may be very small, may be very nuanced, but things that you can find that can help you to improve.

And that’s just on the individual player side. Then you start talking about what can we do as a team? How can we react to what this opponent is doing? Trying to get all that stuff together. And it is amazing what a great tool film is, and it’s also amazing the technology that we have available today to be able to cut and splice and find and go through everything so cleanly to be able to pull out all those little clips and things that you can use in practice.

I’m also, again, amazed at the number of coaches that I’ve talked to that, “Hey, we just have our video board right out there on the floor, and if we’re showing something, hey, we’re going to work on this action. We’re just going to pull up video of, hey, here’s us doing it right or here’s us doing it wrong, so these are the mistakes we want to make.”

And it’s just amazing how ubiquitous film work is and as you said right at the very beginning of your answer, how much time coaches at the college level or the pro level are spending watching film. So let me ask you just from a Colorado standpoint, first of all, and then we can talk about your experience at Simpson, which obviously different levels.

But at Colorado, if your staff preparing for a game, preparing for an opponent, how much film of the opponent Is the staff watching in order to prepare Colorado for a game?

[00:25:12] CJ Armitage: We’ll probably, and it really depends on we would split up scouts in terms of which assistant has which, which game. So each one might do it slightly different.

But I, I would guess, and the guy I worked with the most, Mike Roan, he probably watched the last five games of the recent team. But then on top of that you’re never turning it off, ’cause maybe one day, you have a Sunday game, so you get to watch all the Saturday games. So you’re just watching it, in the back of your mind, making little notes here or there.

So it is never done, and then when it’s time to actually prep it’s probably the last five on top of extra clips about each player.

[00:25:59] Mike Klinzing: How much of that gets shared with the players? So the coaches obviously are putting a ton of time in to make, have themselves be prepared for whatever things the opponent might throw at them, making sure that they’ve got every single one of those bases covered.

But from a player standpoint, obviously you can’t have players watching five games o- of the opponent. So when you’re breaking that down and sharing it with players how did the staff at Colorado go about figuring out how much of that to share with players where it’s not diminishing returns of, “Hey, it just is overkill,” or, “We’re showing them way too much,” and it’s just eventually just they’re tuning it out and it’s flying over their head?

[00:26:40] CJ Armitage: Yeah that’s a great point. And it’s different every player, sometimes you have a senior that can take in a lot more information than a freshman. But when you’re presenting film to the whole team it’s really important that we hit the bases, that it’s like, all right, we don’t want this to beat us, right?

If you have a player that they’re going to drive right every time, and they got two moves that they’ll go to when they pick it up, we’ll want to make sure we show those two moves, right? We don’t need to show the move a third, a fourth, a fifth time, because they’ll have access to the clips later, and so they can understand, all right, I…

When he picks it up going right, he’s going to step through. It won’t happen a- against, against me when I guard. So showing them in terms of individual scouts and just the player scouts, it would be like four clips, maybe five that that we’d show because those are what the player does. If they do a sixth and seventh and eighth thing, hopefully our principles can carry us through, right?

The scouting report is really there to help you if your principles don’t have you covered, and it’s the same when we would go into, portions of team, the other team’s offense and the other team’s defense, right? Our principles should be able to help us a lot. Sometimes there’s a play that our principles don’t really cover, and so we need to work on it more.

But if your principles and your process of just we’re going to be this good defensively, we’re going to be this good offensively, doesn’t matter what they run, if those are there, it allows you to not throw so much information at the players the day before the test, right?

[00:28:22] Mike Klinzing: That’s a really good explanation, and it’s one I haven’t heard it worded quite in that way, but I do love the idea of, hey, we’re spending all this time practicing what we do either individually, collectively as a team.

Hopefully we’re doing that with the idea that it’s going to allow us offensively to attack our opponent based on the principles that we have offensively. And conversely, on the defensive side of the ball, hopefully both individually and collectively, what we’re teaching is going to be able to allow us to stop our opponent in most situations.

And then to your point, if you augment that with, “Hey, here are some special things that this team does that we need to be aware of, or this individual player does that may be slightly outside of the principles,” or something that we can add to, “Hey, this is the way we play, but now here’s this just one little thing that we want to add,” that to me, I can totally see where that adds value.

And I’ve never heard it explained quite that way. I really like that explanation of, hey, we’ve got our principles, and the film work really just, again, adds to that a-a-and allows us to build off that base. If we don’t have the base it doesn’t… then we’re in trouble. But hopefully, again, the amount of time that any team is spending practicing and going through all the things that they do, then you have the film work and the scouting report that, yeah, now you don’t have to overburden the players because you’ve been teaching those principles on both sides of the ball from day one.

Again, depending on the level of where you’re at and when you start in summertime and D-I versus D-III and all that stuff. But again, you’re teaching those principles a-and making sure that the guys understand what it is that you’re trying to do and how you’re trying to, how you’re trying to do it. So I really like the way you worded that.

I think that’s something that, again, I haven’t heard it expressed quite quite in that way. Let me ask you about getting the GA job at Colorado. So obviously you finish as, as a manager. You have a relationship with the guys on staff at Colorado. But as you well know, I don’t have to tell you or, and most of our audience, getting a GA job, there’s literally hundreds of people applying for those jobs all the time.

Lots of people want to coach college basketball, so it’s not just a given. So talk to me about the process that you went through to transition from, “Hey, I graduated. I’ve done my time as a manager. Now I’m looking for an opportunity to get into the profession.” How does that happen at Colorado where you get that graduate assistant job?

[00:30:44] CJ Armitage: Yeah I was very fortunate to to be in that position. And like you mentioned, there are a lot of people that wish they could be a GA at Colorado. So I know how fortunate I am to to go through that process. One of the things I got to do as a manager is work both with USA Basketball and with TBT under Zach Rubisam, who’s now the head coach at CSU Pueblo.

He was a manager at Colorado. And while working with Zach over TBT and really with the team, it was a lot of talking to him about his opinion, just ways he would go about it. And the biggest thing he told me is if you go to another school to be a GA,” which if you get a job at another school, great that’s awesome.

But if you go and do that, yeah you’ll learn more from different coaches and you’ll get that side of things, which, at Colorado it’s been the same staff for a long time. But here you’ll get to be able to do some other things that you could show up to another school and you’re in the mail room writing mail outs for the whole time, and that’s kinda your job.

So it was a safer bet to to stay at Colorado. And on top of that, it was just with a lot of people I trusted, and they allowed me to have more opportunities. ‘Cause the biggest thing that Zach and pretty much the whole coaching staff all the way to, to Coach Boyle said was, “We want to make sure that you take it if you want that and that you you’re able to continue to grow.”

So them making that statement and allowing me to say you know what? I can keep growing from here,” was was like perfect. I, how could I go elsewhere, right? And there, there are great GA jobs out there. I considered a couple others for a little bit, but it was ultimately a great chance to keep learning, even though it’s from the same staff that I learned from for the three years before.

[00:32:43] Mike Klinzing: How did your day-to-day responsibilities change going from manager to graduate assistant? Was there a lot of overlap in what you were doing day to day? How much new responsibility was added? Again, how much more, for lack of a better term, coaching activities did you get to do more of than you did when you were a manager?

[00:33:05] CJ Armitage: Yeah. So my in terms of practice, that changed a little bit just because they trusted me a little bit more. I could be up and down officiating practice instead of on the side with the clock. But that’s, I’m still not the head coach. I’m not doing any of that. So that I could have a little impact with a little more, but primarily that was the same.

It was more in the, the day-to-day other things, right? Instead of spending my time focusing all on the managers, we had a great new head manager take over after I left who who’s fantastic. He he’s going to go be a strength coach at UMKC this next year, which which is great. But he he was someone that allowed me to focus a lot more on the basketball side of things.

And so I could focus on the the analytics portion. I could focus on more film. I didn’t have to worry about making sure we had managers to rebound and things like that. So it allowed me to focus a lot more time on video analytics and more player development, which was probably my my favorite part of any of my time at Colorado.

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Were the experiences that you were having as a GA, did those continue to cement in your mind that, “Hey, this is the direction that I want to go”? You mentioned earlier that, hey, it m- wasn’t necessarily going to be college coaching. Maybe it was going to be high school coaching. Did the experience that you had during that year as a GA kind of cement for you that, “Hey, I think college basketball is where I want to be”?

Were you continuing to enjoy what you were doing during that year?

[00:36:32] CJ Armitage: For the most part, yes. There were definitely times in which I would be like what am I doing?” And now even that year, I wasn’t sold on college. Like I, I got to work again with with Zach on the TBT team, and those are pros, and I really liked coaching pros.

So part of me was like, “Maybe this is the direction I want to go.” But I think that year cemented I want to do something in this game, whether that be college coaching, maybe ops, pro scouting, pro coaching, high school. I wanted to do something along those lines. There were moments in the year, and we didn’t have a great year wins and losses-wise, right?

Which I think when you’re struggling to figure things out, losing games can can build on you. Even though you want to stay process over results the whole time, losing still isn’t fun. It wasn’t a great year wins and losses-wise. But in terms of my actual responsibilities job it made me think, “Okay, they– I’m going to be involved in coaching and teaching and doing that in some version in the future.”

[00:37:42] Mike Klinzing: So then let’s walk it to the next step when you get an opportunity at Simpson. Talk to me about how that opportunity comes across your desk, and what were the questions that you asked yourself? What were the things that went through your mind as you were trying to figure out, “What’s my next step after Colorado?”

[00:38:07] CJ Armitage: Yeah. So when that opportunity came up, I, It was a two-year GA program, so I was ready to to come back and be a GA for a second year. But I saw on-online that that Simpson was hiring. And typically, when you see a job being posted online, it’s already taken. But I I just applied for it ’cause I went you know what?

This will be something new,” but it’s the top assistant at a school. It gives me a chance to really be on the court coaching and have some ownership over the actual coaching that takes place. So saw that online and applied for it, and the interview process was longer than, than I expected.

There were maybe four interviews with Head Coach Kyle Jones there who just finished his first year at Simpson. But I actually I didn’t get it the first time I applied for it. And so after that, I was like, “Okay I’m going back to Colorado.” And I got another opportunity offered to me At a school on the East Coast.

So I was ready to go there, I was ready to move there, and Kyle texts me and says, “Hey, something, you know, came up. Our guy that took it took another position. Does it still interest you?” I s- I had to really think about that because I was, I was packing my bags to to get ready to move to the East Coast.

But it was just such a cool opportunity with a new program, a new staff, and a real opportunity to rebuild this, this program in a full-time top assistant coaching job. So I talked a lot with with a lot of the people on staff at Colorado, and they were like I think if your gut’s telling you to go to Iowa then go do it.”

So I I got lucky that ended up coming open and and I took it.

[00:40:00] Mike Klinzing: When you get there, obviously going from Division I Colorado to Division III Simpson, some changes in terms of the resources, some changes in terms of the level of talent of the player that you’re working with. Just tell me about the adjustment period and what you felt like was the biggest difference between the two.

And obviously, again, Division III has tons and tons of positives, as does Division I. Each one has some negatives that go along with it. But just the change from Division I to Division III, what do you remember thinking about in your head while you were making that transition?

[00:40:41] CJ Armitage: So I was really fortunate that my last two years as a manager at Colorado, two of our GAs, they they’d worked or played in D3 basketball.

One was Will Turgeon and the other was Nate Peterson, who coached at Lewis & Clark. And so I was talking to them a lot before I got out there in terms of what is this going to be like? Because I’m, as you mentioned, I’m used to a certain kind of basketball, right? And it was very different in terms of at Colorado, we have I don’t know what it is now, but maybe like including the GAs, a staff of 10 guys that are in the office at all times.

And so you really build a relationship with them. At Simpson, you have all the coaches offices from all the sports all right there in the same kind of wing of the of the arena. So instead of my whole world being about CU basketball, it changes to, okay, soccer’s going to need the gym at this time, and this is going to happen on the court at this time, and I need to do laundry here.

And so there are a lot more responsibilities put on you right away that have nothing to do with basketball. And they, those are fine, right? You have to understand what you’re going to get into. But then when it came to basketball and really knowing that Okay, it’s Kyle Jones, it’s Denny, and it’s me that are the coaches full-time, and we get to be as creative as we want, and that’s something that I really appreciated with with Kyle is he gave us creativity.

He’d be honest with us. He’s a very honest guy, but he’s not afraid to try new things. So if I come to him with a, a new random idea that people would just… other people might shoot down just ’cause they don’t understand it, he’s open to it. So that was really fun that it was just the three of us, and we got to create and figure out how we want to teach and what we want to teach and look at it like that.

[00:42:48] Mike Klinzing: How fun was it for you to get to be on the floor coaching? ‘Cause again, I talk to lots of coaches who have started their career in positions where maybe in some cases they’re not even allowed to be on the floor. And then depending upon what level you are and what your position is and what your title is, you may or may not have very many responsibilities on the floor, or maybe you’re just doing player development with one guy or w- two guys or three guys are your responsibility, whatever it may be.

But obviously at Simpson at the Division III level, you have a hand in much more of the on-floor coaching on both sides of the ball and player develop- the whole thing, right? So how much did you enjoy the idea of, hey, I actually… Again, ’cause most people interpret I’m a basketball coach, I spend all my time coaching basketball.

But I don’t have to tell you or anybody in the audience that a lot of what you do as a basketball coach doesn’t directly involve coaching basketball. But you clearly get to do a lot more of it as a Division III assistant coach than you probably did as a, a GA at Colorado. So how much did you enjoy just the opportunity to get on the floor a- and actually coach basketball?

[00:44:00] CJ Armitage: Yeah, that that’s why we that’s why most coaches get into the business. That’s what what you enjoy the most, is working with players on the court and and watching them go from, “I couldn’t do this now,” to three weeks later I got this,” right? And seeing that growth. That’s why I got into it at least.

And like you mentioned, most people in the world would think basketball coaches are either, they’re coaching practice on the court, right? But there are a lot of meetings. There’s a lot of things that have nothing to do with basketball that you’re talking through and doing that. So getting able, or being able to finally get on the court and be with the players was was great.

And and our players they listened. They took coaching, which which was also a another positive ’cause there are a lot of players in the world that don’t want to take coaching and coaches that don’t respond to that. So being able to be in a spot that I could coach and teach and be listened to was was a lot of fun.

[00:44:57] Mike Klinzing: What was the dynamic like between you guys as a smaller coaching staff? You had grown up over the past five years at Colorado it- with, as you said, a big staff. There’s 10 guys in the office at all times. There’s always, I’m sure, a conversation that could be had here or there. Division III, smaller staff.

What was the interaction like between the three of you when it came down to planning practice, putting together a specific game plan and scout for an opponent, just thinking about, “Hey, how do we want to play?” What did those conversations look like?

[00:45:31] CJ Armitage: I think they start even before you actually get into the X’s and O’s just on who you are as people.

And that is, a big Popovich thing that he would always talk about, having good people in the organization, right? And so having all three of us actually like each other, was a pretty cool thing, right? ‘Cause I, I think a lot of times on the coaching staff, you’re there to do your job, right?

But our, what we would do is, we’d sometimes go to Kyle’s for dinner. We’d be on the phone coming home from recruiting visits when we’re all off on different things. So having that personal relationship allows you to work and disagree in a professional capacity Better than it would if you didn’t have that personal relationship.

So having that was like tier one, the most important thing to take place. From there, we had different opinions from all three of us in terms of different ways to approach things, and we tried a lot of them. Some work, some don’t. But being able to disagree respectfully and say, “Okay, no this is what I believe, this is what I believe.

Okay, we’re going to either vote or this…” Or head coach is going to say, “This is what we’re going to go with Was was good because, that’s the direction we go. We all go along with it on the court so that we’re all one united team after we hash it out and decide which which way we’re going to go with.

[00:47:00] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, those conversations in the coach’s office, I know that was something that I always talked about with my head coach when I was an assistant coach at the high school level was we can have these discussions inside the coach’s office, and we can disagree, and we can hash things out, and then when we open up that door and we go out and we talk to the players or we talk to parents or we talk to administration we’ve all come to the same conclusion.

We’re all on the same page. We’re all sharing the same message with everybody, and I think that’s really important, obviously, when you have your staff and your discussions behind closed doors, that when you do come out, then you have that united front and it just makes, again, the program, the coaching staff, makes everything stronger when you go about it and do it do it that way.

You mentioned just briefly about having calls when you’re talking to each other as you’re coming back from recruiting trips, and I know that one of the things that there’s a big difference in terms of how recruiting goes at the Division I level verchus- versus what recruiting looks like at the Division III level.

So just explain from your perspective, what was the difference between the recruiting process at the Division I level at Colorado versus Division III level at Simpson in your experience?

[00:48:12] CJ Armitage: Yeah, so at Colorado, there, there are dead periods, and there’s, there are a lot of compliance rules you have to go with, and you can’t just outwork everyone by going to see other people ’cause there are rules about how many coaches are allowed to be out.

And there are a lot of, there’s a lot of construction around what the coaches can and cannot do in terms of recruiting. So I at Colorado wasn’t able to recruit, but from what I saw from from the staff, that’s… Y- you try to outwork everyone up to the limits, right? And there are strict limits imposed from the NCAA.

At Division III, you really can work as hard as you want, right? If you want to go and see kids all the time and evaluate them, you can go do that. If you want to go… how our schedule typically worked was we would do something with our team six days a week. Sunday would kinda be an off day.

But Monday, Tuesday were practice. Wednesday was a game. Thursday, Friday, practice. Saturday was a game. Game days we didn’t recruit, but that meant four days of the week After practice, we could go and go find players, go talk to players, recruit players. Y- there was a lot of things we could do to try to show them what Simpson had to offer and show them how committed we were as a staff to them, which you can’t do all of it for better or worse in at the D1 level.

[00:49:39] Mike Klinzing: Which is always interesting to me and it’s something that my son is going to be a junior this year at Ohio Wesleyan Division III school. And when he was being recruited, same thing. Guys were showing up at his games, Division III coaches showing up at his high school games during the week and whatever. And when you’re at that point as a player and then as a parent “Oh yeah, great.

These guys are here, they’re watching they’re coming to let my son know that they’re interested in him,” whatever. But you forget that they also have their own season. And so then once my son is at school and he’s playing during his season, and you see the coaches, they’re like, “Yeah, we were whatever, we had practice yesterday and then I drove to, whatever, Indianapolis to see this kid or I drove to down to Dayton to see this kid or whatever it might be.”

And you forget that at the Division III level it feels like it it’s, I’m sure you can attest to this, right? That the recruiting process and i- it’s never ending, right? It just keeps coming. And obviously Division I level has its a whole other thing with the portal and NIL and I’m sure that feels never ending too.

But Division III to your point, that you can be recruiting 365 days a year. There is no dead period where things shut down and nobody can be working. Division III you can be doing that all, all the time. A- and I think sometimes from the outside we forget that not only are Division III coaches with a small staff coaching their team in the season, but they also have to be spending an inordinate amount of time recruiting for that next season as well.

And I think sometimes from the outside people don’t always see that.

[00:51:14] CJ Armitage: Yeah. And it’s something that it never ends, people don’t see. And on top of, ’cause you mentioned the coaching, like you’re dealing with budget meetings, you’re dealing with talking to the people at housing with dorms.

So it’s you only have a few of you and if you’re going to outwork everyone you can be successful.

[00:51:34] Mike Klinzing: What was your favorite part of that experience this year at Simpson? W- if you h- if you hang your hat on one thing that you really enjoyed, what was that one thing?

[00:51:44] CJ Armitage: The thing I probably enjoyed the most was seeing…

And we’re still in, in a rebuilding phase of this program at Simpson. It’ll be their staff’s third year this, this coming year, and I think that they’re they’re going to be fairly good. But when we came in, like the year before was, they had four wins or something like that, and my favorite part was seeing where we were at Thanksgiving.

We lost by 40, 30, 40 points on the road right before, a mini Thanksgiving break, and coming back from that, changing a couple things. Yeah we did change some, some things schematically in X’s and O’s, but watching our players say, “All right, we are going to get better. That’s our job, right?

The wins are going to come, they’re great, but we’re going to trust the process and get better so the results follow.” And see that as we got better the results followed. And, at one point we were third in the conference after being, out, out of the tournament the year before, and we couldn’t maintain that for the full season.

It we lost a few down the stretch, but watching them go from, this low point to, “No, our job’s to get better,” and really buy in to getting better and seeing that translate into results was a lot of fun.

[00:53:06] Mike Klinzing: So that goes back to what you talked about at the very beginning, right? Of what you enjoyed in your first experiences in Thailand, right?

Is pouring into players, seeing them improve and get better. You’re still talking about the same thing when it comes to coaching your guys at the college level. And as that season ends, what is your mindset? I want to walk through the decision that you eventually made to step away, at least temporarily, from coaching a- and walk through what that conversation was like inside of your mind.

I think there’s a lot of value in what we’re about to talk about because I think there are a lot of coaches that get to a point in their coaching career where they look around and they say, “Hey, do I want to continue this?” We all know that it’s a very difficult job. It takes a lot of time. There’s a lot of sacrifices to be made in order to be able to be a basketball coach, especially at the college level.

And so I just want to kinda go through your thought process so that maybe somebody who’s out there listening that is going through these same kinds of things in their own mind can learn from the experience that you had of kinda trying to make that decision

[00:54:18] CJ Armitage: Yeah. And I think there are a million reasons why someone is a coach or decides to leave.

And for me, it came back to what we were talking about my why, along with mixing that into just opportunities that were presented to me. So after the season ends, I’m still fully on board. I was pretty happy there. It it was a good– In terms of basketball, like we’re building something special, like good relationships with the staff.

I liked the community I was in as, as a human being outside of basketball. So that was my plan to to be there. And, I got to later on in, in the summer because that was– I was like, “Nah I’m ready for year two, and we’re going to, we’re going to keep building.” I got an opportunity through through a friend of mine to, to come back here and and I’m in Boulder now and teach.

And when I got the, the call that this was an option, my, My mindset was all over the place because on one hand I liked what I was doing, right? But on the other hand, I’m going, “Is this really what I need to be doing right now?” Because there are always going to be opportunities to get back into college basketball if I really pursue it hard enough.

Opportunities are out there, right? You have to get a little lucky, but they’re out there. And so my thing was I really wanted to teach and help students. And while that happens in college basketball, it also means that certain times you have to sacrifice that for winning games. And this isn’t about one team or anything like that, it’s just the organization as a whole.

And I think anyone following college basketball knows that there are some issues in college basketball right now, and that leads to the athlete and the student not being looked at holistically and not being helped. W- when college basketball first started, this was about helping student athletes get a college diploma.

Now they’re finishing their, now it’s five years, and a lot of students aren’t getting a college diploma, right? And they’re leaving with some money, which is good for them, but that’s the extent of their experience, and now they have to figure things out. So part of me was just like, “I want to teach and really help students holistically.”

The other part of me was saying, “The industry itself isn’t great right now.” And like I said, there are a lot of reasons to get out of it and there are a lot of reasons to be in it. My why was helping people grow and learn. Other people’s whys are winning basketball games, so it really depends on what people want to do.

When

[00:57:10] Mike Klinzing: you think about the opportunity to come back and teach, tell me a little bit about more about the job that you’re taking. What is it that you’re teaching? What level are you teaching at? Just trying to get a feel for exactly what you’re getting into in terms of this new step in your professional life.

[00:57:29] CJ Armitage: Yeah. So I came back. The, the opportunity was to go through an alternative pathways program to become a certified teacher, and so this year I’m getting to teach high school social studies in an alternative school. So it’s a choice school, it’s a public school, but it’s students that that you really have an opportunity to to help them not just pass the SAT or do things like that, but help them be great members of the society, be lifelong learners, and and do more than pass a test, right?

[00:58:01] Mike Klinzing: Has anybody approached you yet about coaching basketball?

[00:58:06] CJ Armitage: I, I’ve talked to a… yes and no. Not really at the college level. There m- maybe high school, but in terms of right now I’m kinda committed to this program. In, in a few years, who knows? But but I’m pretty happy with…

i’ve… we’re, like, 10 days in to to this program and on top of that I’m getting certified as well, but I’m enjoying what I’m doing right now.

[00:58:32] Mike Klinzing: How do you keep your basketball fix? What do you do?

[00:58:36] CJ Armitage: Yeah it’s tough ’cause there’s alw- there’s always an itch for it, right? So I’ve been really fortunate.

The school I’m at is very close to the University of Colorado, and so I’m in touch with the staff there. I’ll be at practices and some games this year, so I can still be somewhat involved with them there. Just the other day I was playing our director of ops in ping pong. I still have those relations there, and it’s similar to the lifelong learner concept of wh- whatever it might be.

I really like the game, so I’m going to keep watching it. I’m going to keep following it. I mentioned to you a couple friends are coaching at UMKC this year, so I’m going to get to follow that program. And along with some, some local ones. So there are options out there to continue to watch and be somewhat involved from the outskirts.

[00:59:24] Mike Klinzing: Besides the changing landscape of NIL and the portal and just how different things are, and I know that you’ve had the opportunity with the staff at Colorado to talk and interact with those guys who were there prior to all this kinda coming on board. And I’m sure you’ve talked to coaches from other schools who coached prior to this NIL era, for lack of a better way of saying it.

What’s the consensus within the profession of the people that you talk to about where this thing is, where they think it’s going? Again, I think there’s nobody who’s necessarily against players earning some compensation, but there clearly has been just this Wild West of nobody really knows who’s coming, who’s going, what th-this is.

So just the guys that you talk to that have been in the profession for a while, what sense of kinda where the profession is in relation to where the college basketball landscape is? How are those two things interacting?

[01:00:33] CJ Armitage: Yeah, and it’s interesting that you mention, no one’s against them, them making some money because when this first started a couple years ago, that was what the consensus was.

I’m all about players being able to be compensated. People have made money off them for years. Now It’s changed in terms of because a lot of people don’t believe that players are just getting compensated. And they’re making money, but do they, should they be making these amounts of money with the transfer portal, which I think is part of the discussion here, that both these things with NIL and the transfer portal, their timelines matched up with when they started to change, right?

And because it’s happening so quickly, college basketball has had a tough time getting ahead of what’s all going to hit them. So the consensus that I’ve understood is it’s a crazy world, and the understanding is it’s probably not going to get much better in the next couple years. What I think might happen is we’re going to see a lot of players who…

And my mindset is these players deserve to make money. And if someone’s going to offer you all these millions of dollars, I’d take the money. If someone offers me $4 million, absolutely. But so I have no fault on these players for going to do this. But what might happen is you get players that make a bunch of money at young ages without financial literacy, and they graduate maybe with, maybe without a diploma.

And then you unfortunately see what happens to a lot of professional athletes, which is they they lose a lot of money. So I’m hoping that doesn’t happen. But if that did happen, I think that would be a reason that the college basketball would finally say, “Okay, let’s put in some guardrails,” even though some are l- overdue.

[01:02:28] Mike Klinzing: It’s just a difficult position that I think college basketball and college sports are in. It feels like the NCAA in so many ways is somewhat, I don’t even know if afraid is the correct word, but afraid to put those guardrails in place because it seems like any time they go to court, the NCAA is losing.

And as a result, it feels like they’ve t- almost thrown up their hands and been like we can’t really do anything about this, and this is kinda what we have.” And so I think that, there’s definitely, with the college basketball coaches that I’ve talked to there’s definitely some frustration.

And I think the guys who have handled it probably the best or looked at it in a certain way are the guys who have just said that This is the situation that it is, and it goes back to what you talked about in terms of your why, right? I think a lot of coaches share your why, right? They want to have an impact on young people, and yeah, they want to win games, and they want to make money, and there’s other things that they may want to do along the way.

But I think ultimately, most coaches in some way, shape, or form want to have an impact on the players that they coach. And I think the guys that, at least that I’ve talked to, that seem to be the most positive about kinda where we are have just said that, I used to be able to make an impact on a guy over the course of four years.

Now, I’m– may only get the opportunity to make an impact on a guy for nine months while he’s in my program.” And so I think that’s just, again, the mindset that coaches have have– had to have to try to figure out exactly what they can do to be able to make sure that it all, to make sure that it all makes sense.

So it’s– I, I don’t think it’s an easy… It’s not an easy answer. I don’t think any of us, you and me, are not going to solve that on the podcast tonight, and there’s probably a lot smarter people than the two of us trying to figure it all out and ha-have yet to do that. I think eventually, probably the federal government is going to have to have some type of impact in the court system a-and figure out what this thing is ultimately going to look and Again, 10 years from now I think you and I will sit here and probably look back at this conversation and be like, “Yeah, we had no idea what direction that it was going to go.”

And I don’t think anybody who, even the people who are involved in it, i- as at an administrative level at a coaching level, nobody knows where this thing is going to end. I will say that I’m not sure that the system that we have right now, how sustainable it is. I guess we’ll… it remains to be seen.

But if you are a, if you are a player right now, and to your point, if you have some financial literacy and you’re a good player that can play at a Power Five school, you got a chance to put away some pretty good money and set yourself up for a pretty good life. If you play your cards right and do right by your money a- and graduate with a degree and you get all the, all three of those things coming out of school regardless of whether you have a professional career or not in, in basketball following up, you’re going to end up in a pretty good spot.

[01:05:36] CJ Armitage: Yeah. No, no doubt. And it’s interesting because I don’t know what, like you mentioned, what kind of guardrails are going to come up in, in the future and what kind of changes, what will be made. But I think most people agree that it’s it’s a crazy time in college sports, whether you’re in the business or not in it.

[01:05:54] Mike Klinzing: All right, so that being said, final question for you. When you look ahead over the next year or two, and as a guy who is not necessarily changing professions because you’re still impacting kids as a teacher, as a coach, I think those two professions are very much intertwined, but when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge professionally a- as you move forward?

[01:06:20] CJ Armitage: The biggest challenge that I find is based on the processes. And while you mentioned, coaching and teaching, that’s somewhat intertwined in terms of how we educate. And I believe that although in coaching, I truly believe in building a process, and if you do that correctly, you’ll get the results you want.

I think sometimes in that business, you’re going to still be faced with people that are less patient than your process demands. So at the end of the day, while you want to fully, obey the process and fully commit to it, you still have to get results to a certain extent or the process, you won’t see it through to its end.

In terms of learning that in terms of teaching, it’s really important to understand that each student this is just the start of their process. Even though I’m dealing with high schoolers and people might say it’s the end of, or nearing the end of their educational journey,” I would disagree with that because people should be lifelong learners.

Do people really remember the math they were taught as a ninth grader from unit three? Probably not. But they understand how they picked up on learning, right? How to learn, how to continue to learn their whole life so they can apply that to themselves. And so understanding that while the results might matter a little bit in terms of certain standards and tests, which are important that we achieve those, it’s more important that students understand the process even more so because we’re not really judged nearly as much on the results as we are as a basketball coach.

[01:08:05] Mike Klinzing: Said, right? I think the timing the, the timing of being judged as a coach, it comes down to a two-hour game and a scoreboard. And in teaching, it’s a much longer game. Not that it’s not a longer game in coaching as well, like you descri- described, but especially when you’re coaching at the college level, there is a bottom line of wins and losses that you get judged and that judgment comes a lot faster than it does when you’re talking about teaching high school students and what they’re eventually going to do for the rest of their adult lives.

So very well said there in terms of just, again, the connection between teaching and coaching and how they’re similar, but sometimes i- not exact in terms of just that process that you go through of trying to impact athletes or impact students i- in whatever way that you can. Before we wrap up, CJ, I want to give you a chance to share, how can people connect with you, find out more about what you’re doing?

Share email, social media, whatever you feel comfortable with, and then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up

[01:09:06] CJ Armitage: Yeah. People can either reach out to my email or my Twitter. My email is [email protected]. Armitage is spelled A-R-M-I-T-A-G-E. My Twitter is cjarmitage1.

[01:09:21] Mike Klinzing: Perfect. CJ, 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, and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.

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[01:10:25] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast, presented by Head Start Basketball