DERONTE POLITE – UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MILWAUKEE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 735

Website – https://mkepanthers.com/sports/womens-basketball

Email – polite@uwm.edu

Twitter – @CoachDPolite

DéRonté Polite an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Women’s Basketball Program, joining the staff in July of 2019.  Before joining the Panthers Polite spent one season at Lincoln College in Lincoln, Ill. where he led the Lynx to a 16-13 record as the program transitioned from the NJCAA to the NAIA level.
 
Prior to Lincoln, Polite spent four seasons as the girls basketball coach at IMG Academy, located in Bradenton, Florida. While at IMG Academy, DèRontè was the head coach of the Academy Varsity team and assisted with the Girls National and Women’s Post-Graduate teams.
Before IMG Academy, DèRontè served one season on the staff at Bryan College, located in Dayton, Tenn.  That followed a two-year stop as the head women’s coach and assistant athletic director at Central Christian College of the Bible (CCCB). During his tenure at CCCB, he led the Lady Saints to the first two winning seasons in school history, compiling 37 victories.

He also played at CCCB, serving as a team captain from 2007-2009. As a player, DèRontè was an integral member of the 2008-2009 team that achieved the first 20-win season in men’s basketball history – capped with a second place finish in the ACCA National Tournament. He was named the ACCA National Player of the Year twice, was a two-time NCCAA D-II All-American, two-time NCCAA Academic All-American, as well as holder of the men’s basketball single-season scoring record with 833 points.

If you’re looking to improve your coaching please consider joining the Hoop Heads Mentorship Program.  We believe that having a mentor is the best way to maximize your potential and become a transformational coach. By matching you up with one of our experienced mentors you’ll develop a one on one relationship that will help your coaching, your team, your program, and your mindset.  The Hoop Heads Mentorship Program delivers mentoring services to basketball coaches at all levels through our team of experienced Head Coaches. Find out more at hoopheadspod.com or shoot me an email directly mike@hoopheadspod.com

Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram @hoopheadspod for the latest updates on episodes, guests, and events from the Hoop Heads Pod.

You’ll want to have a notebook handy as you listen to this episode with DéRonté Polite, Women’s Basketball Assistant Coach and Recruiting Coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

What We Discuss with Deronte Polite

• Having the love for basketball for as long as he can remember
• His North Carolina Tar Heel fandom
• The impact of Title IX on women’s sports and the basketball opportunities available for girls today
• His favorite moments as a high school basketball player
• Running Track at North Carolina AT&T
• His experience as a walk-on at North Carolina A&T
• Playing two seasons of college basketball at Central Christian College of the Bible
• Working with Pat Woods to start Factory Hoops
• How he got the Head Women’s Coaching job at Central Christian College of the Bible
• Being able to recognize your own mistakes
• Why coaching women didn’t require a big adjustment for him
• “Actually the best compliment I’ve ever gotten was from one of my college teammates. He said he loved playing with me because I got more excited when other people did things well than when I did things well.”
• Learning quickly from your mistakes as a coach
• Working for Coach Jason Smith at Bryan College
• Honing in on the details when you’re an assistant coach vs seeing the big picture as a head coach
• The story of how he got a coaching position at IMG
• “Not just from the player student athlete standpoint, but also from a coaching standpoint to go to IMG and to not improve in your craft, you would actually have to actively work against it.”
• Valuing the person not just the player
• Learning to give players autonomy on the court
• Building culture at IMG with players from all over the country
• Leaving IMG to go back to the college ranks at Lincoln College
• “I’m here today to to be a good teammate.”
• “I understand my actions and their consequences affect my teammates.”
• “Keeping that positive communication with my leaders so that their talk when I’m not around and they’re with the team, they’re saying the same thing.”
• Making a pitch to UWM Head Coach Kyle Rechlitz at a coaching event and then staying in touch with her so when a spot on her staff opened up he was ready
• “The details means so much at the D1 level because a lot of times you don’t have a clear cut advantage from just a player standpoint.”
• Why he appreciates honest conversations with Coach Rechlitz
• “I don’t love coaching because I love basketball. I love coaching because you get to develop these relationships.”
• “I’m supposed to be your leader, but I’m willing to serve you.”
• “I’m willing to do everything I can to help you be the best version of yourself.”
• “When it comes to mid-major basketball, development is a big part of doing well.”
• Scheduling 16 hours of team time so players have the opportunity for individual workouts/film sessions
• A willingness to learn from others and to trust yourself

Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!

Become a Patron!

We’re excited to partner with Dr. Dish, the world’s best shooting machine! Mention the Hoop Heads Podcast when you place your order and get $300 off a brand new state of the art Dr. Dish Shooting Machine!

Prepare like the pros with the all new FastDraw and FastScout. FastDraw has been the number one play diagramming software for coaches for years, and now with it’s integrated web platform, coaches have the ability to add video to plays and share them directly to their players Android and iPhones via their mobile app. Coaches can also create customized scouting reports,  upload and send game and practice film straight to the mobile app. Your players and staff have never been as prepared for games as they will after using FastDraw & FastScout. You’ll see quickly why FastModel Sports has the most compelling and intuitive basketball software out there! In addition to a great product, they also provide basketball coaching content and resources through their blog and playbank, which features over 8,000 free plays and drills from their online coaching community. For access to these plays and more information, visit fastmodelsports.com or follow them on Twitter @FastModel.  Use Promo code HHP15 to save 15%

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 key to landing a new coaching job is to demonstrate to the hiring committee your attention to detail, level of preparedness, and your professionalism.  Not only does a coaching portfolio allow you to exhibit these qualities, it also allows you to present your personal philosophies on coaching, leadership, and program development in an organized manner.

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.

United Basketball Plus has over 3,000 plays, 45 Deep Dive Courses with some of the best minds in the game including Tyler Coston, Paul Kelleher, Tobin Anderson, Dave Love and more. You can also view United Basketball Clinics, and receive 50% off in-person clinics. United Basketball Plus partnered with Jordan and Joe Stasyzyn from Unleashed Potential to create their Skill Development Curriculum. United Basketball Plus is a one stop shop to help you grow as a coach, leader and culture builder. Use the code ‘clinic’ and receive an annual membership for $50.  

The first Training Camp – Elite Skill Development and Performance Combine will be held on the campus of Western Reserve Academy, just outside of Cleveland, OH powered by Unleashed Potential & the Hoop Heads Podcast. The camp is designed for boys rising to grades 6-9 and will take place June 29 – July 1, 2023. An emphasis on improving your individual skills in the context of a team environment will be the hallmark of the Training Camp. 

Mike Klinzing from Head Start Basketball/The Hoop Heads Podcast & Joe Stasyszyn from Unleashed Potential will serve as the Camp Directors of this inaugural Training Camp.

Campers can expect 3 days of hard work, intense skills instruction, and learning how to be a great teammate on and off the court at the Training Camp.  Players will participate in 10 Elite Skill Development Sessions led by some of the best coaches from across the country.  Visit headstartbasketball.com to get registered.

THANKS, DERONTE POLITE

If you enjoyed this episode with Deronte Polite let him know by clicking on the link below and sending him a quick shoutout on Twitter:

Click here to thank Deronte Polite on Twitter!

Click here to let Mike & Jason know about your number one takeaway from this episode!

And if you want us to answer your questions on one of our upcoming weekly NBA episodes, drop us a line at mike@hoopheadspod.com.

TRANSCRIPT FOR DERONTE POLITE – UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MILWAUKEE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 735

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight, and we are pleased to welcome Deronte Polite, women’s basketball assistant coach at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:13] Deronte Polite: Thank you, man. Thank you. I’m excited to be on.

[00:00:18] Mike Klinzing: We are thrilled to have you on looking forward to talking to you about all the different things that you’ve been able to do in your career. You’ve been in many different places, you’ve had some different roles. You’ve been in the youth sports business world, which is one that’s always interesting to me.

So looking forward to diving into all those things. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about the first experiences with the game of basketball.

[00:00:44] Deronte Polite: Man, I’ve talked about this a lot and actually today I was talking to my sons in kindergarten, so he had like a little career day thing.

And so I was able to talk about what I do or whatnot, but I was like, man, when I was their age, like some people they come across like they find that love for basketball. I’ve just always loved it. Like, I don’t remember a time in my life where I didn’t love basketball, you know?

I’ve had players that they talk about, like in the sixth grade, that’s when itreally hit for them. But for me, it’s just kind of, since I can remember as a young kid, my grandmother, she worked at a cleaners and I remember listening to Carolina I’m from North Carolina, so I remember to listening to Carolina men’s basketball games on the radio and you know, and, and saying JR Reid like…

[00:01:36] Jason Sunkle: You’re just trying to butter him up. You just trying, listen, this is, you got me in, you’re already in. So I’m a Carolina fan. You got me a Carolina fan since as long as I can remember.

I’ve been a Carolina fan since  I was three or four, my dad had taped Jordan’s games when they were on cbs. Sadly, I don’t think we have the tapes anymore, but we used to sit and watch North Carolina games on vhs. And I always ride with Tar Heels.

And there’s someone at work that’s a huge Duke fan, and let me tell you, how sweet was that to end Coach K’s career?

[00:02:01] Deronte Polite: Oh my goodness. It was great. Oh baby. It was… and I got a lot of love and admiration for Coach K. Oh boy. I didn’t even care that we lost the national title. Exactly.

[00:02:19] Mike Klinzing: I know. Isn’t that true?

That’s so true. It’s crazy. Yeah. I mean, The Carolina piece of it.  I’ve told this before on the podcast, but when I was a kid, we used to go on vacation to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina every year and every year I would make my family, I’m like, we have to pull off the highway in North Carolina. I have to find a Michael Jordan jersey.

Like, I was dying to have one. So whatever. I was at the, at the, at Jordan’s heyday at Carolina, I was whatever, 11, 12, 13, right in that range. Now obviously you can find it anywhere, but at that time I bet pull off. Yeah, I’d be walking through department stores trying to find anything. There was always, obviously lots of Carolina stuff, but I could never find

Never find that, never find that Jordan Jersey. So yeah, you’re off, you’re off to a good start there with us.

[00:03:07] Deronte Polite: Yeah, man, Carolina basketball. Like I, and you know, my, my dad played, but I, I we had a good rec league system too, that. You know, I look back and I actually hit the, this guy by the name of Gary Cooper, he played at UNC Wilmington.

Actually, I think he, Calapari was there when he was there. And I wrote him a letter not too long ago just thanking him because I’m like, man, like his.  involvement in recreation for our county. We’re from a small county we have county schools and things like that. Matter of fact, where we from, everybody calls it the county, like everybody on the east part of the state, when they say the county, they know you’re talking about PCO County.

Yeah, it’s funny. And but yeah, it was just something I’ve always loved and I played a lot of different sports, but basketball was just that. It’s just like that thirst that’s never quenched, you know? And so yeah, from, from as long as I can remember, it’s just been something I’ve always loved.

And even now I walk around the house and it’s like I’m dribbling a basketball  I’m shooting a step back or something like that. That’s just something I’ve always loved.

[00:04:15] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It’s very cool. When you were a high school player, what do you remember about your summers and what you did to try to get better?

What, what was it like for you and then thinking about sort of the system that we have today compared to how you grew up?

[00:04:26] Deronte Polite: So, man, if, if I’m honest, I kind of look back on my high school years with some regret. My summers were big. I was better in the summer than I was in the year, and a lot of that’s because all I did in the summer was play basketball.

You know, whereas during the year I played football, so a lot of times I went into basketball season hurt. You know, I played baseball. I ran track. But in the summers I’m a country boy, so we got a goal outside and I’m just outside shooting like all the time. You know, I would go to camps, I would go to Carolina Camp, we had a team camp.

We would go to Pfeiffer University. Had a, a nice solid team camp that we would go to. But really it was just time in the yard and, and just working, working, working. And I remember like going to college campuses and things like that for like, sometimes it was academic camp, but I would always make my way to the rec center.

And it was like, man, can I get run with these college guys? Like when I go back the next day, can I get, like, will they pick me up? Like I know the first day ain’t going to get picked up, but the second day, can I get picked up? Can I get a compliment from a college guy to be like, Hey man, young boy can go.

So really it was just that, and I wish I did more of that. You know, like looking back when we talk about like, things you wish you could have done differently. I wish I’d done more of that during the year. You know, I listen to Pat’s episode. I wish I had talked to the janitor to try to get in and get those extra reps in throughout the course of the year and things like that.

But you know, where I was from there was like, I never even knew what travel ball was. I had a cousin that at the time we thought it was crazy that she was going to Kenston, North Carolina to be a part of a travel ball team. You know, like it didn’t, it didn’t even register where we were from.

But those were some of my best times. And then I had friends we would travel to different gyms too. So that was that was pretty cool. And this guy that I used to play against from a, a local county, his father. was like, Hey, let’s, I wanted Dete to come play with us. And so really the most of what we did we would play as high school kids against and grown men tournaments and you learn a lot doing stuff like that Sure.

For, but it was, sure. But he was forward thinking of like, Hey, I want to get y’all playing against grown men, you know? Cause y’all going to have to learn how to play. So that’s, that’s kind of the, the basis of it lot. Not really super organized, just kind of really that, that love for the game type feel. And I think now you want to try to get that, try to get a type of balance and that’s the best way to go about it.

If you can get that, that true love of the game type feel along with some of the organized stuff that we got going on, I think you can get a pretty solid foundation as a basketball player.

[00:07:03] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that’s a good way to look at it. I think that talked to a lot of guys on here who’ve had conversations about sort of the difference in the way that players grew up in the past and how.

Try to improve and the pickup basketball scene and that kind of thing and how there was really, you didn’t have aau, you didn’t have the travel, and then now you have so much more access to gyms, you have so much more access to coaching as a young player. But yet kids miss out on that opportunity.

I think it’s interesting that you sort of had a combination of an organized team, but then you’re going to play against grown men. Cause I always say that playing against guys that were much older than me and bigger than me, and stronger than me when I was 14, 15, 16 years old. Like, I always feel like that had a really big role to play in my development.

And yet kids today miss out on that. And so you kind of had a little hybrid model where you had an organized team, but then you were getting a chance to play against grown men, which a lot of kids today just don’t get that opportunity. They spend a lot of time playing with kids their own age.

And I think one of the things that’s interesting too is with you being on the women’s side of coaching, there’s no doubt I have two daughters. There is no doubt in my mind that. The system that we have today for boys, there’s, I got some questions about how much better, worse there, there’s good and bad to both sides of it.

Mm-hmm. I think on the boys side.  Cause I love the way I grew up in the game, right. With more pickup and me working on my game on my own. And I would’ve loved the AAU scene as well. But I think on the girls side, you look at the opportunities that women have and girls have to play the game today, compared to what it was like when I was growing up in the late seventies, early eighties.

I mean, it’s not even comparable. The opportunity for women and girls in the game is just so much greater because of the system we have today.

[00:08:44] Deronte Polite: Indeed. Indeed. And you know, I think Title IX had a lot to do with that, you know being around the women’s game. You know, we had this Title IX series right here at UW Milwaukee, and you had some of the older players, or even just our supporters that we have that from that generation of when things first started and they are so happy for Title ix.

And so yeah, it’s been big and, and now like you said, opportunities are bigger and better than ever where you’re seeing people from small towns kind of like getting people recruited and going off the juco and, and even if it’s just juco I grew from a town, come from a town where you didn’t have people really going anywhere.

And now those opportunities seem like they’re happening more and more than ever. And it is nice on the women’s side and the fact the amount of scholarships we get, especially at the division one level yeah, it’s pretty cool to see.

[00:09:36] Mike Klinzing:  Absolutely. Yeah. There was no possible way back in the era when I grew up, that girls had the same opportunity to play that they have. Today. And so for my own daughters, I’m thankful that they grew up in this era to be able to have access to some of the same things that male players have always had access to. And I just think that it’s been tremendous for the growth of the women’s game, is just to be able to have all that access and coaching and all those kinds of things that it just didn’t have access to in the past.

I think that’s really something that’s been a positive for, for women. When you look back on your high school basketball career, do you have a favorite memory that stands out?

[00:10:15] Deronte Polite: Ooh, My favorite memory, I would say is probably my sophomore year. So my sophomore year. Actually I got two. If I have time to tell someone.  I would say my sophomore year my, I was the youngest parent on the team going into my sophomore year. My coach was like, you’re not playing jv, you’re going to play varsity and you’re not going to start. And he was like, but it’s not about who starts the games, it’s about who ends games, who finishes the game.

And so for that year, I came off the bench. And that sophomore we’re all have pride about our senior class, but my sophomore year, that senior class, they were like grown men. Like, I mean, we went to regionals and football, like we were one getting away from the state title in basketball.

I think we finished in the final eight, track won the state championship. Baseball went to the regional finals. So it was like that senior class was crazy. But on our way to the playoffs. I’ll never forget it was a game. It was kind of looking dicey. We had people upperclassmen on the bench and I don’t know if it was like the third or fourth quarter, but we was on the road and I remember telling one of my seniors, I was like, Hey, like look for me, look for me.

And I wasn’t known as a shooter I was really the backup point guard. And he came down, he found me. Boom, I cashed one out and then we come back down again. I’m like, look for me. He found me again. I cashed another one out. Third time came back down again and then this is just who I am.

I raised up to shoot it, and then I fired a pass down to a post player. He got fouled. And I think I came out a little bit after that. And it’s so funny, like just to have people in their different philosophies, but my head coach was like, Hey, great job. Wait to find Mitchell on that pass. You know I took, I turned down that third three , the assistant coach who was like a head coach for the men’s program years ago, he’s like, man, don’t you ever stop shooting the ball.

So that’s just one of my favorite memories of just kind of like trusting yourself and, and hitting big shots in a big game. And we ended up winning, like right at the buzzer. And then I think the other moment that reach out my senior year and we didn’t handle our business like we should have because my last game, it really should have been like a regional final game against team Plymouth.

And they were a really good team. I think we had lost to earlier in the year, but we shouldn’t have had to play that early in the playoffs. We end up losing the conference tournament, should’ve we? And we should’ve been the one that two senior did, I think we end up meeting them as like a four seat or something.

And we were down by 11 with like a minute and a half left to go. And I remember looking up at the clock like, man, this could be it. And I just came down, hit like a volleyball line three and it’s just a fouling game. So we fouling. Then I come down, I hit like another volleyball line three, and I think we scored 20 points in that last minute and a half and end up losing by like one.

And you know, I’m thinking like all the emotions going be there. And it was one of the times where I was like, I didn’t have any tears. Cause I felt like we, we fought, like we did everything that we can do. That was no regret, you know? And I think that was a big lesson for me that I can be honest with my, my team about now when I talk to them, I said, really what you trying to achieve out of this thing is like no regret.

Like, you might not get everything that you want to get, but you’ll find that when you’ve done everything you could, there is a level of satisfaction there. And when you don’t have the regret, then you can kind of move on and not have something nagging at you. So those are like, probably like the two top moments that I have when I think back on my high school career.

[00:13:55] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that’s well said. And I think it’s a good lesson as a coach to be able to pass on to your players that, man, look, if you can leave it all out there on the floor and you can walk off the court with your chin up and your head held high, that there’s something to be said for that. And obviously we all like to win games, , and ultimately, especially at the college level where you are, that’s how you’re judged.

But at the same, but at the same time, right? You’re trying to pass along lessons that you can, that your players can use, not just in the moment, but that they can use for the rest of their life. And clearly, if you can get somebody to put forth their full effort in whatever it is that they’re doing, whether that’s with their family or their job, or their team, whatever.

Then, then you’ve really, you’ve really done something and, and you’ve really had an impact on their lives. So I think that’s a great lesson that you were able to take early and obviously continues to impact you today as you’re finishing up with high school. I know that just from reading your bio and taking a look at kind of what you did that you, you had sort of a unique college experience in terms of where you went and, and what the, what the timeline was.

So, so fill us in a little bit about sort of your process of how you ended up playing some college basketball and just kind of take us through the educational process for you at college.

[00:15:03] Deronte Polite: Man, my story is far from traditional you know, so again, I didn’t get like heavily recruited for basketball or anything like that.

I went to I want to say it’s this program, it’s called Networks. And so I ended up making this team for North Carolina. This is like probably the spring right before my graduation. and we go off, we play against all these teams from another state. We’re coached by college coaches, like division three coaches and whatnot.

And I had some kind of like whispering some opportunities that I probably could have pursued, but I’m like I want to try to go D one. Like I didn’t at the time. If I go, if I think back, like how I think about basketball now, I probably would’ve tried to pursue a junior college option.

But at the time you thought about junior colleges, like for those who didn’t have good grades and I had great grades and so I’m thinking, you know what? I’m going, I’m going go division one and then try to walk onto a team that was kind of my mindset, but I was also really good in track and so I, like, I won the state championship in the 400 my junior year of high school.

I finished runner up my senior year and, and won states and a couple different other events too, so. Wow. Wow. My track coach had got in touch with the coaches from North Carolina, A&T. And next thing you know, I talked to them and now I’m walking onto the track program. And so I did that and one thing I found out about Track, because I did not like track in high school, it was just fun.

Like I did it, I was good at it and it was fun because we won we won two state championships as a, as a team. And then my, my senior year we were runner up to a team that had dropped down in the division. So they were upper division the year before the next year they dropped down, they end up winning.

We would’ve won it almost could have won it three years in a row. So, but what I found out about track, when you get to high college, it’s like you better love it because it is a lot of pain.

[00:16:56] Mike Klinzing: That is, look it man, it’s running like, I would say like, like track look. Like I get to some degree, I, this is what I always say about Track.

I actually coached a year at track at the school where, where I’m at. I was an assistant actually for a couple years and I was the head coach for a year. So I mean, I get it to some degree, but then part of me is, Man, like, it’s just like you just, you’re running, man. Like that’s like, that’s training for another sport, man.

That’s not a sport in of itself, but it will be fun. Hey, hey. It’ll be fun. Fun to, why?

[00:17:25] Jason Sunkle And I don’t agree with Mike on this. Lemme tell you what, Deronte, I coached cross country. So I used to run, I ran cross country in high school to stay in shape for basketball. That’s why I did it. And I felt it made me better because it made me faster.

[00:17:37] Mike Klinzing: So well see. But that’s how I, that’s how I look at it, to me it’s a means to an end as opposed to the end itself. That’s what I’m saying.

[00:17:45] Jason Sunkle: Tell the girls that I coached in middle school, Cross Country that just got a full ride to Oregon.

[00:17:51] Mike Klinzing: Hey look. More, more power to anybody who loves it, right?

You have to do what you love. I’m just saying when I look at it, part of me feels like, man, that seems like training for other sport. And yet at the same time, I do know it’d be fun if you’re fast to be able to just go out and kick somebody’s tail on the track. Oh, yes. Which I’m sure is what you’re talking about.

[00:18:10] Deronte Polite: It feels really, really good, and honestly where I’m at now, I almost feel like if you do a team sport, you need to do an individual sport to kind of work balance some things out. And I really think it needs to be a running sport because I think in running sports, you get a time to like have this self-talk in your head and you kind of learn how to do that.

Like if you running three miles, you kind of, you, you learn how to have this conversation with yourself inside your head. And I think it can translate to when you get into a sport where things kind of happen at a faster pace, but you’ve, because you’ve had this practice of self-talk, you can, it can work in that arena a little bit better.

But, but yeah, so I did the track thing and like I said, you had to work hard just to be okay, like, right. Not even to be good, just to be okay

[00:19:01] Mike Klinzing: Just to make it through the workouts. Right. And be in shape just to make it through the workouts.

[00:19:05] Deronte Polite: And the thing is, I was on academic scholarship.  I did track for like a year and a half. I think I was going to try to, I did a year well, I did one summer at U N C W. I was going to try to walk onto the team down there. But then my dean of the school of business at North Carolina A&T he’s passed away now Chrysler Craig.

But he reached out and was like, Hey, what you doing? Like he heard I was about to leave North Carolina. and I just kind of told him, he was like, man, come on back here. I’ll work something out. So he got me an opportunity to walk onto the team and I would say this is probably like one of the biggest regrets in my life.

I kind of blew the opportunity. Like I kind of, excuse my language, but I feel like I punked out, you know what I mean? Where I was grinding, I was up early in the morning, all that type of stuff. And then I got a chance to see like what the travel schedule was like. And I feel like I kind of just I backed out.

And so that’s kind of one that, the rest of my time in North Carolina A&T I was fighting to try to get the opportunity again. Finally got an opportunity my last year. Coach Eaves had been there like a couple years, so he had like a little tryout and I performed great.

I had been like working because then I learned how after that moment I learned how to really work on my craft where I was going to the Y M C A, I had to board a membership going to the Y M C A five o’clock in the morning have my own lift session going back to the Y M C A later on that night.

I learned how to work on my craft and so had this opportunity and I did very well. He called out of all of us up at the end. He chose two dudes. Both of ’em were like six, five,  I’m five 10 and some change, but he looked at me, he said, Deronte, you probably had the best workout, but I got eight guards on scholarship. I just wouldn’t have any room for you in practice. And so that was my opportunity. But again, I left the gym that day. Like, man, I did everything I could do. Two weeks later, the assistant coach, coach Alfonso Key, gave me a call back and was like, Hey, coach said, be at practice today with your gear on.

And so I got an opportunity. I basically just practiced with the team, but it was cool to be a part of that. And to be honest, man, the reason I got to play college basketball is really kind of because of tragedy. Like I ended up going through like some mental health stuff. I hate to use that as a buzzword, but it was like, I went through some deep depression type stuff and I ended up not graduating and I graduated high school with a 4.2 gpa.

In college I was a double major. I had like a 3.43 gpa doing very well and I just like hit this wall and wasn’t going to class. I mean, it was rough. So I didn’t graduate and then during that time I realized I wanted to go into ministry and I ended up like seeing about this small little bible college out in Missouri.

And I ended up going out there and coming to find out N C C A A, they didn’t have the same eligibility rules . And so it was like, as long as you don’t have a degree, you can compete. And I was able to play out there for two years. Had two great years out there. I set the single season scoring record my first year.

I think we set the team wins record my second year. And then out of that, that’s kind of how my coaching career started because I ended up, my first coaching job was back there on the women’s side.

[00:22:34] Mike Klinzing: Were you thinking coaching at any point earlier? I mean, was that something that was on your radar?

[00:22:38] Deronte Polite: Not at all. No. Not at all. I was working, I think I was working at a bank.  I lived above Pat. I lived above his garage my first couple years in Delaware. And so Pat and I, we are kind of talking about all these things we would like to do with basketball. And his wife Brandy was like, okay, why don’t y’all stop talking about this and just do it, like coach a team at the Y M C A this winter and then start doing camps in the summertime.

And we were like, okay. So that’s how the Factory Hoops Academy started where we coached the Y M C A team. We called it the Factory Hoops Academy. And then we started doing camps in the summertime around that same time. My wife and I met her at Bible college.

We went to go back to visit. And so a lot of our friends were still out there. And I was like, well, I can coach, I mean, I can work at a bank out here.  I can just we can go out, be around some of our friends because they were all still out there. And I talked to the ad because it’s that small college feel where everybody wears different hats, right?

So the ad was also the dean of women, the English professor, and she was the women’s basketball coach. And so in the women’s program they hadn’t done well at all. And so I was like, Hey Sarah and I we’re thinking about coming back out here. If I came back out here, I would love to help out with the team and she said, if you came back out here, I’ll make you my coach.  And that was the first time, like I really hadn’t thought about like really coaching, you know? And even throughout the year I wasn’t sure if this really what I wanted to do. I love the training aspect of it, but I wasn’t sure about the coaching aspect of it.

And then at the end of the year I was like, man, I love this because you can train them and then use it.

[00:24:25] Mike Klinzing: You get to see it come to fruition.

[00:24:26] Deronte Polite: Right, right, right. Whereas you’re training people, but the coach might not use some of the things, or might not need some of the things that you’ve been working on where it’s like, I can train this player directly and then be able to see them be able to use it how I think they should be able to use it.

So yeah, it wasn’t until the end of that first year where I was like, oh, I’m hooked. Like this is what I want to do.

[00:24:46] Mike Klinzing: What was something that in that first year, when you think back to that time, what’s something that you think you were pretty good at from a coaching standpoint right out of the gate?

[00:24:58] Deronte Polite: Recognizing mistakes, my own mistakes. I remember playing in this guarantee game. We were playing a division two. It was a guarantee game. We threw a zone on ’em the last like 10 minutes of the first half I think we’re down two at halftime and coming out of half.

I stayed in the zone and they ate that mess up and I was like, oh, I probably should have switched it.  I probably should have realized that the whole halftime speech was going to be about how they can eat the zone up. So I think I just had small moments like that where like I was green, but like I recognized those mistakes pretty quickly and I was able the next game.

So, the next game after a time out, I’m switching up even if it’s just for one or two possessions, I’m switching up the defense or something like that. Just to kind of keep the coach off their game plan. So I think that was probably the biggest thing, just I learned quickly from mistakes that were made

[00:26:03] Mike Klinzing: Coaching women.  Was that something that came naturally to you? Was that something that felt unnatural a little bit at the beginning? Just what was your thought process as you went into it? Coaching on the women’s side, because obviously has a male player, your experiences with male teams and male coaches for the most part, I’m sure.

So when you start thinking about that women’s side of it, what was that first year like for you in terms of, was there any adjustments? Just how’d you go about acclimating yourself to the women’s game?

[00:26:32] Deronte Polite: Well, really I hadn’t coached a lot before then. I mean, prior to that there’s this guy, Samuel Warren in Greensboro, North Carolina, who used to work me out.

And so I would pay him to work out. And then one time he was like, Hey, I got this AAU program. If you help me coach, you don’t have to pay for your workouts. And so I helped coach this AAU program. I helped coach this public league kids at one point in time, and sixth grade Y M C A team.

So it hadn’t had a lot of experience, you know? And really I just was like, I coached basketball players. That was just kind of my mindset. I think the biggest thing I was big on was just like, as a coach, just really being above reproach and making sure you’re not going in the locker room at the wrong time making sure you’re knocking on the doors and all of that type of stuff.

And I never forget my first year, my point guard, I mean, she hit this big shot. She had like this step back three. And over time, I mean, it was crazy, coach calls a timeout. So she’s walking to the bench. And the whole time in my mind as guys, we smacked each other on the butt, right?

Yep. So the whole time in my mind is she’s walking to the bench I’m thinking like, I’m just hyped she just hit a big shot. So I’m about to like smack her on the butt, and it was like mid swing, almost like, you don’t want to get fired. And I went up to the back I switched it mid swing up into the back, you know?

And so it was stuff like that. But I’ve always felt like I just coached basketball players, that’s what I coach, and yeah, there’s some differences. But I wasn’t aware of those differences a whole lot because prior to that I coached kids not adults.

[00:28:24] Mike Klinzing: Yep. No, that makes total sense. I mean, I think again, when you come into it, inexperienced probably in some ways was better because you just kind of, this is what it is. It is, it is what it is. I don’t know. I don’t know anything, I don’t know anything different. Right. When you started putting together your philosophy and, and thinking about how you wanted to play or what you wanted your teams to look like in that first year, what was that process?

Or were you not even thinking about that? Were you just like, Hey, I have to figure this out, kind of on the fly?

[00:28:52] Deronte Polite: Well, I think Not really a lot as far as team building I was blessed with talent for that level. I think we broke the wins record. We had the first winning season in school history, won the conference.

Really it was kind of just a mindset. Like again, I was a pass first point guard. And actually the best compliment I’ve ever gotten was from one of my college teammates. And he said he loved playing with me because I got more excited when other people did things well than when I did things well.

And so that was just kind of my mindset for coaching. Like, I want us to have a versatile team. And so when I took the job, the point guard the year before, she led like the N C C A A in scoring. But they didn’t win any games. And so we brought in a player who, her first year, I think she was conference player of the year, she was region player of the year.

And I didn’t have to draw up any plays for her because she set her high as a five six guard. She set a high school rebounding record but really it was just about how I wanted to play and I wanted to play with being versatile that everybody on the court is a threat. And I remember a veteran coach in our conference who, his team was used to winning a conference.

He says, man, it’s hard to prepare for you guys because normally at this level you only got one, maybe two players to worry about, but we have to worry about every player that you have on the court. And so really that was kind of all I knew from the beginning. I wanted ball movement. I credit a lot to my high school coach, Earl Sadler.

And that’s who I was as a player, getting the ball moving, making easier plays for other people. So really that was kind of all I had.

[00:30:35] Mike Klinzing: Right. I mean, you have to go with what your experience is, right? Right. I mean, you can only take from what you know.

I think that’s one of the things, right, as a young coach that we’ve talked about on the podcast numerous times where when you’re a young coach, a lot of what you do is based off of who you were as a player and what your high school coach is and what your college coaches, if you were fortunate enough to have a college career, that that’s kind of what you do.

It’s you realize, you maybe think you know more at those younger ages. And then as you get older and you start to realize and you get exposed to. Lots of other people who have just tremendous basketball minds and you just see everything that’s out there that you realize like, yeah, I didn’t know nearly as much.

That’s right. Didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. True as I thought I did. It’s hard though. It’s hard when you’re young. You don’t often realize you have to get that life experience and that wisdom to be able to kind of understand. There are some guys that get it right out of the gate and understand how much time they have to put in and to learn the game.

But I think a lot of ’em fall into the category like I was, where it was just kind of like, Hey, I was a good player, so that must mean I’m going to be a good coach. Which obviously doesn’t translate. It does not always translate. So, you’re there for two years and then from there you get an opportunity to go to Bryan.

Is that correct?

[00:31:54] Deronte Polite:  Yep. Yep.

[00:31:55] Mike Klinzing: Alright. Talk a little bit about how that comes your way,

[00:32:00] Deronte Polite: I’m a believer and it just seems like, I don’t know, man, it seems like every step I feel like God has just kind of had some way into that.

And so I had two years at Central. I’m in this kind of stage where I’ve talked to some older coaches that were in the N C C A A and I had a coach who’s like, Hey, Devante, if you want to coach scholarship basketball, you might want to get out sooner than later. And so I was just kind of like, ah I don’t know.

And one day I applied for a job at Bryan College. The only reason I applied for the job is because I didn’t have to fill out the application . I was tired of filling my applications which in this business, it’s not really how you get jobs anyway, but, I was green. I didn’t know. I just had to send in a cover letter on a resume. So I sent it in and I think coach Smith called me. No, he didn’t call me. One of my references called me that same day, and it was my, actually my college coach who had moved on to another school.

And so he was like, Hey, so you’re applying for the Bryan College job? I was like, they called you already. He says, well, here’s the deal. I was supposed to have already told you about the job. Coach Smith had reached out to see if I knew anybody. I mentioned you, but I hadn’t had the chance to tell you yet.

And he reached out to me, said, Hey, thanks for telling Deronte about the job, , and I had never heard of Bryan College before. Never heard of Jason Smith. You know, I had just happened to look on the N A I A website so that was just crazy. So when Coach Smith called me the next day, basically it was my job to turn down.

And I took it. I took it. It was, I was in a full-time position at Central, my first year at Central. I was on a stipend, I think I went out there for like $3,000. That’s it. Like, and had to piece some stuff together to get things to work. My second year they put me on full-time salary, but I had another full-time role and then basketball was tacked on the end of that.

Yep. Well, at Bryan, I took a part-time job at Bryan because of the opportunity. And it was awesome. I learned so much from Coach Smith. I always told him, I was like, man, coach. Because I at, at Central both years I got to the regional championship game and I lost and it was That was the game to go to Nationals.

And I told Coach, I said, Coach Smith, man, if I had your defense when I was at Central, we’d have been to that national tournament, you know? So, but yeah, it, it was great. You know, coach Smith was awesome. Like I said, I learned a lot from him and he just let me go. I think I got the best sense of coach in the country and I did a lot of, I worked a lot of the, with the skills development and so I kind of that was kind of more of my time there with him.

And so I was able to kind of really hone in on those things. Working with all different positions. So, yeah, it was just great. It was great. And you know, I was only there for one year, but coach Smith a couple years after I left, he just blew that thing out, the water and he won like over a hundred games in like three years, like so great time there.

And I always, I tell people, like some of my, my coaching heroes are people that other people have never even heard of. And Coach Smith definitely falls into that category.

[00:35:17] Mike Klinzing: Was it easy to transition from being a head coach as your first experience and then go to being an assistant? Because obviously the role changes where as a head coach you’re making all the decisions and you have the final say, and once you’re an assistant, that ability to do that goes away.

So was that a big adjustment for you or was that something that you kind of adapted to pretty quickly just because that’s just the way it was?

[00:35:40] Deronte Polite: Yeah, I think I adapted to it quickly because I was a head coach. So I had like this understanding that at the end of the night, he has to be okay with the decisions that were made.

Right. I was the point guard all my life, in football, I was quarterback, you know what I mean? So, of course, like they’re these kind of leadership type qualities that I have that where you, you would like to have made in the decision here or there, but it’s nothing.

I never really, I didn’t really struggle with. I actually went into the year thinking like, well maybe this is like, I’m going to try to get this assistant coach thing. Go and see if like, this might be like my role, like this might be what it is. And so, yeah, I was able to kind of lock into not having to worry about the bigger things.

So that’s kind of how I looked at it. Like gave me an opportunity to kind of dive in on some of the details without having to worry about a lot of the bigger aspects of running a program.

[00:36:46] Mike Klinzing: Do you think that that time as an assistant helped you in your next couple of stops where you went back to being the head coach in terms of understanding sort of the mindset of an assistant and how you could better help your assistant coaches to not only improve themselves, but also to better help them to be able to help your program, if that question makes sense.

[00:37:06] Deronte Polite: Yeah. So if I’m a hundred percent honest, I never, so when I was at Central, and again, this is why I appreciate my experience. I was the head coach, assistant coach, the manager, the equipment person, I was writing my own articles, answering my own quotes all of that type of stuff.

And the AD she would like be my assistant for games and she traveled with me and things like that. But as far as practice, like all that was on my own. So even when I left to go to IMG, when I was an assistant for like our top national team, but then I had my own team. And even at Bryan, I was like the head JV coach.

But when I was at IMG I didn’t really have an assistant we helped each other out. We worked each other’s bench and things like that. But I will say I did learn at IMG to ask for suggestions and things like that. Whereas when I was at Central, she helped me in other roles being able to deal with female athletes and kind of help me to understand some things that I might not have understood, but she didn’t like, it wasn’t really like a basketball type thing.

Whereas when I got to IMG I had real basketball minds that were there. And I think I was better able to kind of seek out their opinion on certain things because I wanted my opinion, they kind of be valued when I was at. And I thought I was a resource and my opinion was valued when I was at Bryan.

And so I wanted to be able to kind of do that and I got opportunities to do that once I got to IMG.

[00:38:37] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I’m sure. Did your wife know what she was signing up for with all this coaching?

[00:38:39] Deronte Polite: Oh man, she is the best, I wouldn’t even be in this if it wasn’t for her. Because again, this coaching life is just tough.

Like, yep. We see the glitz and the glamor of those top programs and things like that. But again, I leave a full-time job, first of all, I go all the way across the country on $3,000 and she like, all right, let’s roll. You know what I mean? But again, even that was just crazy because we go out there, she had applied for this job.

We had the application that said, you have to go turn it in in person. Like you can’t, but we weren’t in Missouri yet, you know? Right. So she sent in the mail. We hadn’t heard anything from it. We get the Missouri on a Sunday, Monday, She gets a phone call about the job, about her interview.

Tuesday, she interviews Thursday, she starts working. You know what I mean? So that’s when I say, when I talk about, like, I can’t separate my life from my faith, but she’s been awesome. And even when we were at Bryan, I never forget. I got my master’s degree, which I’m not totally sure I should have done that, but on all the applications it says bachelor’s required Master’s preferred.

And I had a cool master’s program, so I am cool with that. But I remember getting my master’s degree and working in a warehouse for minimum wage the next day because my program, my time at Bryan was just part-time. Yep. And I remember my first daughter, my second daughter’s on the way.

And thinking like maybe I need to get out of this. I was going to actually going to try to be a volunteer at utc at Chattanooga and work at a bank full-time. And my wife was like, this what we do. Like, nah, something going to work out. Like this is what we do. And man, like a few months later I got the job at I M G, which is actually my first full-time coaching job.

[00:40:31] Mike Klinzing: How do you get that? What’s the connection there? How do you find out about it? What’s going on there? Because we just had a couple guys on from IMG, Jeremy Schiller, who I don’t think was there when you were there. Cause he just got the job there in the last year or two. But we also had Daniel Santiago.

[00:40:46] Deronte Polite: Oh, that’s my guy. Yeah.

[00:40:48] Mike Klinzing: So we just had, we just had Daniel on his episode hasn’t gone out yet, but it should, I’m thinking it’s probably going to go out next next week. So yeah. So just talking to them a little bit about the experience there and what it’s like. So just tell me how you how you got there.

[00:41:00] Deronte Polite: Well, first I have to say Daniel Santiago is my guy. Like, that’s such a, such a good dude. So I’m excited to hear that episode. But Mike, it’s the same old, same old. I don’t know how I got that job at IMG The only thing I can say is God, that’s all I can say. Cause and here’s the crazy thing, I talk about timing.

If that job had been opened in like May, I wouldn’t have applied for it because all I saw was high school. That’s all I thought of. And I did not want to be a high school coach. And I’m going to be honest as parents, like that’s why I didn’t want to be a high school coach. Yeah, understood. And so, but August comes around and it says full-time.

And at the time I thought like maybe at Bryan they would stacked two positions together for me, but they were adamant they weren’t going to do that. So August turns around, I hit a friend up who was in Florida. I was like, IMG. He was like, do it. So I applied for it. So when I finally get a call, and at the time Kenny Natt was the director and you know, I looked up Coach Natt’s information he played in the NBA.

Yeah, he coached in the NBA. And I said, man, I’m not getting this job. Like that’s what I said, there’s no way I’m getting this job.  So then I talked to Coach Natt, he said, coach Daley, she’s going to give you a call this, that another. So then I go look up coach Shell Daley’s resume and she played at Texas on the Jodi Conrad and you know, coach in the W N B A coaching in the S e C in three different places.

And I said, there’s no way I’m getting this job . There’s no way I’m getting this job. No one’s ever heard of little Polite. And I got an interview, even the interview, my plane got delayed and almost thought the flight was going to get canceled. I got into Bradenton like three o’clock in the morning.

And then I interviewed and I think I got the offer like a week later. Me and my wife cried in the living room. And yeah, and it was such a phenomenal experience to be there. But again, I can’t take any credit man, the whole way through, I’ll think it’s no way of getting this job.

And I end up getting it.

[00:43:06] Mike Klinzing: All right. So when you’re there, just give people an idea of what the environment’s like, because I know we talked to Jeremy, we talked to Daniel a little bit about just how unique of an environment it is in terms of the resources that you have. And just tell us a little bit about your experience coaching there, which levels you coached at and what it was like coaching a team there.

[00:43:25] Deronte Polite: Here’s how I describe I M G and, and I think I can do this because I used to work there, so I’m not breaking any NCAA rules or anything like that. Like, say you’re about to go on vacation, you take a look at the hotel that you about to go stay at, right? And you see the pictures and he like, oh man, man, the hotel is nice, right?

You get to the hotel and it’s still nice, but it’s not as nice as the pictures. Right. You know? Yep. Img you take a look at everything like, oh man, this is crazy. Like, this look really nice. You get to IMG and it’s even better in person than what you saw with the pictures and stuff online. Like it’s just an incredible experience. And I think there’s just this level of just expectation and this level of competitiveness. where like you almost can’t go to IMG and not get better. And I actually, I believe this not just from the player student athlete standpoint, but also from a coaching standpoint to go there and to not improve in your craft, you would actually have to actively work against it, you know?

Yep. Yeah. In this atmosphere if you are  a basketball player, well you are with these other basketball players that’s trying to go get it. Division one, division two, division three, whatever. They trying to go get it. When you are in the dorms, your friend is in soccer and guess what?

They trying to go get it too. They trying to make the national team, you got the football player, he trying to go get it you got the golfer, they might go pro next year. Like it’s just this. And then from a coaching standpoint, you got N B A, you got Power five, you got international experience.

Like it’s so much you got Daniel Santiago who was on the team for, at Puerto Rico who beat team USA. Like it’s just so much that like you would actually have to actively work again and you still might improve trying to like actively work against improving. You still might end up mproving because if it’s just so much there, it’s nothing like it.

[00:45:32] Mike Klinzing: I know Jeremy talked a little bit about just being able to walk down the hall and ask four or five different people questions or bumping into somebody on the court and all of a sudden you’re getting into a coaching discussion and try to. Say, Hey, okay, we have to work on this particular thing. Or what do you think about this particular way?

Mm-hmm. that we’re reading the pick and roll or whatever it might be. And he just said that he feels like it was just an incredible, and it is for him an incredible experience to be able to have all those, as you said, those mentors and, and people who are working at all those different levels to be able to have that experience.

You mentioned, hey, I don’t want to be a high school coach cause I have to deal with parents. Right. So I M G not a traditional high school environment. So what was it in terms of parents? What was that like for you? Because again, it’s not traditional, but yet people are in a lot of cases paying a lot of money to go to and IMG so parents are clearly invested.

in their children’s athletic experience. So what was the parent situation like for you there?

[00:46:34] Deronte Polite: It was I think for the most part it was good because for me, with that boarding element I felt like I was still in college. I felt like I was, I felt like I operated like I was at a small college. You know, that’s just kind of how I felt.

Yes, parents more involved as they should be, as you would expect. But I think even for as parents allowing your child to go to a place like IMG, I think there’s a little bit of a different mindset there too that you’re kind of dealing with parents who think about things a little bit differently than what you might experience at the local public high school or whatnot.

Yeah. So I had for the most part I had great relationships with my parents. And then really the biggest thing, and, and I’m not trying to, I don’t want to knock anyone, but I think the biggest thing. with high school is that your coach is around you for a shorter period of time, and they give you one message, but when you go home, that parent could be given a totally different message.

Whereas at IMG it ain’t a lot of going home. They’re getting this message and they’re not only they getting it from me, they’re getting it from the strength and conditioning coach. They’re getting it from the mental coach as well. And then they see their athletes around them.

And then also I think there’s probably more of a level of trust from parents at least initially anyway, because of a lot of times who the coaches are as far as the level of coaches and what you would expect at an I M G Academy. So I had great relationships with parents like I said, for the most part.

And then I had Coach Daley, she kind of held her own in the coaching world or whatnot. I care for my athletes and I think my parents understood that. And so I was going back to meet with teachers even though they, things that they might have been doing if they were there, I was going to do that.

And I was about the entire, the holistic athlete, not just them being a basketball player, but them as a person, them in academics as well. So I think that kind of, that helped me in my experience with my parents.

[00:48:40] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, for sure. I could see where the environment itself lends itself to parents having a trust factor with what’s going on there. You have to get past whatever trust issues you might have going into it. You obviously, as a parent, have to get past that in order to Correct, send your child there in the first place. So I’m sure that does. I’m sure that does help. Now, on the other side of it, when you’re bringing together players from all over the country and you’re putting ’em on, Different teams and then all of a sudden, okay, you got your 12 girls in front of you.

How do you go about building a team culture and getting that team to bond together? It’s not like, again, if you’re at your local public high school and maybe those girls that played together since they were in the third grade here, you’re talking about girls that are coming together from all over the country that haven’t mm-hmm.

don’t, don’t even know each other, and now you’ve have to try to build a cohesive team. So how’d you go about doing that during your tenure there at IMG?

[00:49:34] Deronte Polite: You know, I think I probably got a lot better at it year three and four. Well, like, probably my big growth years when it came to that. I think first year I got the job kind of late in November, so I got thrown right into the fire.

Like I got the job and the next week we were in California for a week, and then we were home for a little bit, then we were in DC for a week so I was kind of thrown in the fire and the program was kind of in the middle of this growth stage. So it was kind of like we had our top team and then we had some players that like played with the top team and then we kind of made like a carve out schedule for some of the other players.

We hit this big growth my second year. And again we were trying to figure things out as far as how we were doing it. We brought on our first, I think our first postgrad program. But my third year I kind of like took ownership of the younger group or even that group that was like less talented.

I was like, this is my group and I’m going to develop my time. I’m going to be intentional with my time with them, as opposed to spending more time with the top team. And. I really grew my master’s degree, I did the positive coaching program at the University of Missouri. And I really just began to dive into like my core values and just kind of wanted to make those things, to build a culture and wanted my team to have a particular culture, not just us being thrown together type deal.

And so I worked with, we have mental conditioning coaches and I really like dove into that cause I was into the sports psychology because that was part of my master’s degree. And I think I began to really just dive in on those core values and we would do a get together at the beginning of the year as a team.

And I would be a part of our mental conditioning sessions that they did as a team. And it was just big on, okay, this is who we going to be or who we going to be as a program, no matter what part of the country that you’re from. And, and I think also a big thing was I wanted to teach them how to play basketball instead of like running a bunch of plays.

And so that’s when I got into the European ball screen and just like, all right, I get to have some control as a coach cause it’s a continuity. But then they get to have some control, some autonomy as a player because as they learn the reads, they can make the reads. And so all of that kind of happened at the same time.

Learning about giving players autonomy. And things like that where I began to help them make decisions, allowed them to make particular decisions. I had a situation where, for captains, they had to apply for it to become a captain. And so yeah, those years were really foundational for me.

And I will tell you working with Lindsay Hamilton who is one of the mental coaches there at IMG Academy, she was big in kind of helping me, just talking me through, coaching me through building my philosophy and actually allowing that to flow through the programs.

[00:52:43] Mike Klinzing: The your next stop is Lincoln.  As a head coach, you go there for one year. Talk about the decision to leave img, because obviously seems like it was a place. You could flourish, and it was a place that had tons of resources. So I’m assuming that your desire to get back to the college level is what prompted you to leave IMG and take this opportunity at Lincoln?

[00:53:05] Deronte Polite: Yeah, that’s really what it came down to get back to the college level. I just kind of felt. because again, we’re competitors, right? And so I felt like I was kind of hitting the ceiling at IMG. And I wanted to kind of challenge myself. I wanted take everything that I had learned especially again over those last two years at IMG and now go apply that to a college program.

So say you lose somebody early in the year, early in the summer. And so you go and you work on your game. You work on your game, you work your game. You trying to go back and see them towards the end of the summer. I’m trying, okay, now I’m ready to play.

Cause I got some things with me. So that’s kind of how I felt going back to Lincoln. And to be honest, the transition from IMG to Lincoln was seamless because we just really operated at IMG like it was a college. And so my one year at Lincoln was awesome. There was some struggle.

They were a JUCO transitioning to a four year school. So Juco transitioning to N A I A, there was some great things going on. So I didn’t have my best player the first half of the season. I had to learn. They came off a great year, the year before. But they had some players to leave the coach left and everything.

And so I remember my first game, we had some injuries, we were down on some numbers and I knew we just weren’t going to be ready. And I knew it wasn’t going to be what everybody was used to from the year before. Because they won 25 games and whatnot and we just kind of got blown off the floor.

But I knew it was going to happen because we just weren’t ready. But our guys played afterwards I said, you know what, I’m not going to go back here, sit in this office, I’m going to go out there, I’m going to sit amongst the crowd. and I’m going to take it like I’m not going to hide. And we just kept getting better and better and better and better.

And I remember we lost the game a couple weeks later, but somebody walking out, it was an older gentleman, he was like, Hey, the ladies are looking better and better, you know? And so that was just, that was great because I was able to take so much of who I was as a coach and put it into a program and honestly they played a lot differently for me than they did the previous year.

And it was a different, I go from IMG, super affluent families, a lot of affluent families to a lot of families. You know, Lincoln, there was a lot of families, some of my student athletes, they were the first generation of going to college first generation college students and things like that.

So even just being able to transition to like a totally different world, totally different experience from IMG was really, really fun. And they were just an awesome group. We didn’t have any drama, like they were tough personalities cause a lot of them from the inner city, but we didn’t have drama, it was like no fighting amongst one another.

They could snap at each other and not take it the wrong way. And so they were really a special group for me.

[00:56:07] Mike Klinzing: When you think about that program and had you stayed, what do you think, as you started to build that, that first year, what were some of the things that you started to incorporate that you think as that program would’ve continued to grow, would’ve made it successful?

What were you putting in place in terms of the building blocks that first year?

[00:56:25] Deronte Polite: Well, really, it was a time requirement. It was kind of like, I’m going to require more than what you’ve had required of you. And so we’re going to lift on a regular basis. You are going to have things required of you off the basketball court.

Once the season is over, you’ll get some time to rest. But then boom, we’re getting back to it like, you going to commit to this thing? So I think that was, that was a big thing, just the culture. I had this creed that we would say in the beginning of practice and really what it came down to was like being a great teammate.

And it started out by saying, I’m here today to to be a good teammate and, and then we would have this closing creed of basically saying, Hey, I’m still going to be a good teammate when I leave and I understand my actions and their consequences affect my teammates. So those were just some of those things.

Just those kind of building block things. And then just the ability to play with one another and play together, play team basketball, and then trust one another. And whether it is from my top player, I remember at halftime when I did get her back one time, it was at halftime, and I was like, Hey, like the ball is stopping with you right now.

I don’t need the ball to stop with you. You need to let the ball move. You are going to get opportunities to score on the back end, or you going to get opportunity to find somebody on the back end, you know? And so seeing her trust me enough to be able to do that and see it go towards winning basketball.

So I think it was just those type of things and I think we were primed and ready to do something great that next year. Cause again, the next year she was the conference player of the year, so I only had her half the season. Like that would’ve been a 20 win season if I had her the whole season.

I only had a half of the season with her, with everybody understanding my system, because we practiced at 5:30 in the morning every year every day that year. And it was because I needed everybody at practice . It was like, this is my first year and I never forget, we had some tension early on and I was in the back.

I knew they weren’t ready when I came out. They weren’t fully stretched. People had probably just gotten there, because I’m kind of like, Hey, you going to stretch? I’m not going to sit here and watch you stretch. You going to stretch on your own. And then when I come in, it’s time to be ready. And so I remember as a coach, I was ready to just go off and then I stopped myself and I said, you know what, listen.

I want y’all to understand us practicing at5:30 in the morning. It’s not me beating my chest to say while everybody’s asleep. We working and like, it ain’t none of that. I just need all of y’all here. I said, so if this is not working for you and y’all want to do it later on at night, we can do that.

I don’t want to get up four o’clock every morning I’d rather not do that. And they understood like there was this generation, they need some reasoning behind it and so, yep, they understood and from there they kind of, they bought in because it wasn’t me just trying to tell them what to do, it was like, I just want us to be as good as we can possibly be.

I need all of you there for that to happen. Because if this person is missing it’s y’all first year, understand the system. Next year it could be different because y’all understand my system, it, it could be a little bit different. But this year everything’s new, I need all of you there. I learned those things throughout the course of the year, just like, again, that autonomy piece, giving them some ownership and letting them understand this is for you.

And they ran with that. So the next year it definitely felt like it could have been something, it really could have been something.

[01:00:02] Mike Klinzing: It sounds like that communication piece is really important, right? That you have to make sure that you’re on the same page. I know we’ve talked to other coaches about the need for this generation of athlete to really, they really want to know why mm-hmm.

when you’re doing something that being able to explain to them, okay, here’s what we’re going to do, but it’s no longer enough just to say, here’s what we’re going to do and you’re going to do it because I said, so now it’s, Hey, this is what we’re going to do and here’s the why behind what we’re going to do. And it sounds to me like that was an important part of what you were trying to get done.

[01:00:30] Deronte Polite: It was. And one thing I learned, Mike, was it’s important to have a lot of communication with your leaders, especially like. During that year, because again, we started out rough, but I knew we were going to be rough because we couldn’t get the practice time that we needed because we had different people out dealing with injuries.

But it was kind of keeping that positive communication with my leaders so that their talk, when I’m not around and they’re with the team, they’re saying like the same thing. They feeling it too. And so as we were getting better throughout the course of the season they were feeling it too.

And I think at the end of the year they were sold. I think they were sold on me as a coach, as a matter of fact. Calling one of them andletting them know that I wasn’t going to be back was really tough. Yeah. And I never, I’ll never forget one of ’em said, coach, why you leaving us

That stopped me in my tracks. That was hard to answer. But I still have some good relationships with those young ladies, just being with them for a year.

[01:01:33] Mike Klinzing: That’s something that I don’t think everybody necessarily. thinks about when somebody takes a new job, right?

That you do have to go back and, and you have to talk to your players. And no matter whether or not, the next opportunity that you’re getting is a great opportunity, whether it’s from a career standpoint or geographical standpoint or whatever reason it is, that somebody takes a new job, you still have those players that you’ve gone to battle with for Yeah.

At least a year. And in many cases a lot more years than that and to go back and to have those conversations, I’m sure is incredibly emotional and difficult because look, if you’re doing a great job as a coach, then you’re building relationships with those players obviously not the same level of relationship with every single player, but clearly there’s a relationship with all of ’em. And to be able to go back in and say, Hey, I’m moving on to take this, to take this next job. And even though. rationally, your players may be able to understand of, hey, you’re getting an opportunity that is better because maybe you’re going from an assistant to a head coach or maybe you’re going from division two school to a division one school or whatever the opportunity may be.

They right, they rationally can understand, but emotionally , that’s tough. If they have a connection with you, that’s tough.

[01:02:45] Deronte Polite: That’s really tough. It’s tough, man. This is never easy. It’s never easy.

[01:02:51] Mike Klinzing: Tell us a little bit about the opportunity at UWM. How does that get to you? What does it look like? What’s the process?

Is there somebody that you know that helps to facilitate it? Just tell us a little bit about the transition.

[01:03:04] Deronte Polite: So this is awesome for, I think anybody out there that wants to get into like college coaching and, and probably coaching in general, but definitely at the collegiate level. The networking game is big and so.

Two years. My, I say my last year, img that last summer I went to this is a guy by the name of Brian Stanchek. He runs this thing called the head coaching training center. He’s a agent. We’ve had Brian on Oh, you’ve had Brian on, yeah. Yep. Yeah. Great guy. Great guy. So my, so Brian Nash, who was the director of basketball at img, now knew Brian and he was like, Hey, you should go to this.

So I went there and I’m not a big on networking. I’m an introvert. I don’t mind being to myself, but I describe it this way, I don’t shake a lot of hands, but I like to build with the hands that I do shake. And so I was at this event, a lot of coaches speaking, and my head coach, Kyle Rechlitz she was speaking and in the first five minutes I was like, I could work for her.

Like that, like in the first five minutes. So when she, when she finished, when we had a break session, she’s the first per like, she’s the only person I went up to and like introduced myself and like gave an elevator pitch to and I was just like, listen, like I think you’re brutally honest I think you care about your student athletes and I think I can learn a lot from you and I can work for you.

Like, that’s basically how the conversation went. It gave her like a 45 second elevator pitch, well, her and her top assistant, Anya Covington, they were there. So later on that night, I think we kind of met up and just had a meal and just talked a little bit and this is where Kyle is so great, she said, so listen,  I don’t know a lot about you, but you seem like a pretty nice guy.

I’m willing to network and build with you, but you have to lead it.  I’m not going, so that mean, like, if you call out, answer you shoot me a message, I’ll respond, but  I’m not going to lead the effort. You have to lead the effort. And so I got the job at Lincoln a few months later.

She had positions open then, but you know, she didn’t know me, right? So I got the job at Lincoln and then I traveled up to a practice, and again, she just loves basketball. So I traveled up to a practice and then we sat afterwards for an hour and a half. Her, myself and her entire staff. And we just kind of talked through a lot of basketball stuff.

And so I just stayed in contact throughout the course of the year. And in like the summer of that next year, I see my phone ringing and I see it’s her. And I’m like, well, did I call her something? Did I shoot a text message? Like, what? Why is she calling me? And she was like, I got an assistant that’s leaving.

Would you be interested? And I was like yes, but I will say this Mike, I never felt like I had to coach at the division one level to solidify who I am as a coach, right? And first and foremost, it’s always protecting my family. And so, again, what a lot of people don’t understand when you work at some of these smaller schools, like you maybe can’t afford the health insurance for everybody, right?

And so my wife was kind of on an island, so my prayer was like, man, Lord, we have to something have to happen because I don’t want her to we thought we had it figured out before we got there and it, it didn’t work out. So she basically had a year without health insurance. And even, I tell coach Rechs to this day, I said if you call me in June and my wife has the health insurance stuff taken care of, I was like, I don’t know.

It wouldn’t have been an easy decision because I’m thinking National Tournament the next year like I’m taking this team when we going to the national tournament, that’s going to look great on my resume, this, that, and the other. But you know what, Mike, we didn’t have a national tournament the next year because of Covid.

And so to this day, that’s just a great lesson to me to always put my family first. Like I have to put them first and foremost. But yeah, that’s kind of how it all worked out. I just kind of built that net, that relationship with Coach Rechs. And when the time came, she, she gave me a call.

[01:07:06] Mike Klinzing: So what’s it been like as you go there?

You had always worked in environments, I guess at IMG it was a little bit different. You had a huge staff of people that you could work with, but in your other positions, your coaching staff, when you’re coaching a team, it’s basically you. And now at the division one level, obviously you have a whole team of coaches, right?

And other support people that are around you and around the team. So what was that like? Kind of going from, again, being the jack of all trades, that I have to kind of have my hand in everything and do everything to going back down to a back down is the wrong way to say it, but just condensing your role, condensing the things that you were responsible for. How’d you handle that and what did that look like for you in that first year at UWM?

[01:07:52] Deronte Polite: The best way I could describe being here, is my first year here, I say this is everything I’ve ever done is just on steroids.

I don’t know a better way to explain it, it is everything I’ve ever done, but boy, it is a lot. And the biggest adjustment in the beginning was just getting a pace because everything was so new and so it’s like, and I’m trying to move the family and everything, and it’s like, okay.

We got this community service event that I had no clue about. You know, and then this what workout, this is going to be the workouts. And then we might have one on this morning, and then we might have this other thing that we have to go do. Oh, now you going to be recruiting for four days and you come back six o’clock in the morning, we got practice.

So it was, it was just trying to figure out a pace early on. That was the biggest thing. But I, I honestly, again, I think life is, a lot of it is how you choose to look at it. And I was like, well man, this is a time where I can like really focus on a fewer amount of details and get more detail oriented in some things.

So that’s just the kind of way I looked at, like, I’ve always had to kind of like train and develop all positions, which I love that, I love being able to work with the post players and things like that. But it gave me, it’s given me an opportunity to really kind of be more detail oriented with the guards and the point guard position and things like that.

So that’s kind of how I went into it. Like, Hey, you get to kind of specialize for a little while, something you’ve never been able to do. It’s been fun. It’s been a big challenge. You know, division one basketball is just really, it’s tough to win period at any level, but it’s really, really tough at this level. The details means so much because a lot of times you don’t have a clear cut advantage from just a player’s standpoint. You plan against a lot of All-state caliber talent, you know what I mean, and so those details, they matter so much, but that’s how I looked at it, it’s an opportunity for me to specialize and to dive in.

[01:09:58] Mike Klinzing: Has your role changed in the time that you’ve been there?

[01:09:59] Deronte Polite: I came in as the recruiting coordinator. I’m not going to necessarily say my role has changed. I think my voice means a little bit more now. Yeah. Just because now I’m one on the staff that’s kind of been here for a little while.

Stacy Cantley, she’s been here, this is her fifth year. This is my fourth year. We have three new staff members this year. So I think just from that seniority understanding coach, knowing what she likes and things like that. So I just think that has kind of expanded things. She’s very big on understanding that it’s her role to grow her assistant coaches and things like that.

So she’s definitely given me more things to do. She’s not a micromanager. She’s like, listen, this is what I want you to do. You might not do it the way I would’ve done it, but as long as it gets done, that’s all that matters. And so that’s been helpful too.

And she’s honest. So I had an internship, never forget this. I had this internship. I was an accounting major at one point in time and I had an internship and you know, halfway through the internship I’m thinking I’m doing a great job, but turn I’m hearing from other people, I’m not doing a great job,

So I call a meeting with the supervisor and I’m like, just be honest with me. Just tell me I’m not doing a great job. And that ate at me. Cause I’m like, that’s my name. You know, like, you could be honest with me because I want to do well. And so I love that about coach.

She’ll be honest with me. She’ll tell me where I need to sharpen up things I need to get better. At the same time, when someone’s honest with you, you believe ’em when they say you’re doing well too. Now each year I feel like there’s more and more of expected of me and again, for that competitive side of me and just who we are as people, that’s been good for me also.

[01:11:46] Mike Klinzing: So I love what you said about the truth in communication. And oftentimes we’ve talked about that here on the podcast, the need for coaches to be truthful with players in terms of where they stand and how important that is. But you bring up another aspect of it is you want to have that truth being able to be told amongst the coaching staff of, Hey, you’re doing what we need you to do, or, Hey, we need you to pick it up or step it up here.

Right? And when you have that type of honest communication, again, that’s how everybody gets better, right? If nobody’s willing, if nobody’s willing to say, Hey, we need to be better at this, or, Hey, you dropped the ball on that, then nobody knows. Everybody just kind of floats along and thinks, oh, everything’s going great.

And then nobody really improves. It gets better. And if you’re a person that thrives, getting better and has a growth mindset, then you want that feedback. Look, not everybody, we don’t all, we don’t love to hear that, Hey, you didn’t do a great job. Nobody loves, nobody loves to hear that. But at the same time, right, if you want to get better, right?

It’s as a player, like players, the best players want to be coached, they want to be told they want to be, they want to be shown, they want to be helped because they want to grow and they want to get better. And I think it’s the same thing in the coaching profession. When you have that kind of communication, it makes a big difference.

Now I have to ask you this, as the only male coach on your staff, you’re in a female dominated environment. So I teach at an elementary school, so I’m in an environment where there’s a couple other male teachers in my building, but for the most part my coworkers have always been and continue to be mostly female.

So just as a male coach in a female environment, what’s that like? Do you think about that on a daily basis? Just how’s your day-to-day in terms of making sure that you’re building the kind of relationships with your fellow coaches and all those things when it’s sort of a unique situation that not every male coach is in,

[01:13:41] Deronte Polite: Yeah. It is a little different. I don’t know, Mike. I just look at people as people and they let me be, it probably has more to do with them than me.

[01:13:58] Mike Klinzing: Sometimes they’re like, it’s just Deronte right?

[01:14:00] Deronte Polite: Yeah. They just let me be and again, I’m more of an introvert coach, like, when I first got here, because again, like my door, even when I was at Lincoln, my door was always closed.

Like, that’s just, I’m a door closed type person. And so coach, she’ll be like, you can open it every now and then you know, could you unlock it just so I can you know, so That’s funny. But I think I just have a good group. They let me be I think from the beginning they were very helpful and Covington, Stacey Cantley, Molly Hansen, they were just big on just wanting to help me thrive.

And so that’s just I think it’s our culture as a program. So again, I think you, maybe you dropped me into a different situation with a different culture, and it might weigh on me a little bit more, but we, we just have, I think we have good culture to where, I always say this, I want my stress to come from the work, not from the people that I work with.

And I’m just in a good situation where, I mean, for Covid, we were down an assistant. The covid year we were down an assistant. We couldn’t, we weren’t able to hire ga and we didn’t travel with any, and it was not an issue. You know, no one complained. I only think we had a formal plan. We just went to work, you know?

And so that’s just kind of how I look at it. I look at it as people that that I rock with. And we can have ’em over to the house for dinner. They can have me over. We have a good time with one another. And so I don’t really look at it any other way because they kind of, they let me be the introvert that I am

[01:15:37] Mike Klinzing: No, that makes sense. It makes total sense. I think that that’s really what you want when you talk about your coworkers. It’s, you want to be accepted, respected for who you are, and then reciprocate that respect. And that’s where you really develop the kind of workplace that you want to be in day out day in, day out on a mm-hmm.

And that gives you the opportunity to build those relationships with your coworkers and your staff. Talk a little bit about building relationships with players. As an assistant coach. What are some of the things that. you do to try to build that rapport with the players so that you can push ’em and get the most out of ’em and, and, and really have those lifelong relationships that they’re going to call you up 10 years from now.

[01:16:17] Deronte Polite: I would say that’s the biggest part of, I’ll say that’s why I love coaching, right? Like, I love basketball, but I don’t love coaching because I love basketball. I love coaching because you get to just develop these relationships. At that college level. They’re at this age where they’re just figuring out a lot of stuff and you’re kind of there to help guide that.

And  Honestly, coach Rechs, when I was at HCTC, she answered a question like the way I would’ve answered it, about culture and building those relationships. And I think that’s where I was like, you know what? I can work for somebody like that because they in this thing for the same reasons I’m in this thing.

So it is against that honesty piece, right? I never forget BJ Armstrong, he said, I think Tex Winter said, do you give me the permission to tell you the truth? You know? And so I think it’s that peace. But just knowing like they, they just know that Icare for them about who they are more than just a basketball player.

And that’s just who I am. I mean, that’s just who I try to be as a person. And so I don’t have like a formula of any or anything like that. I’m honest with them, I encourage ’em when they need to be encouraged.  I let ’em know when they can do better. But I love hearing about their family.

I love hearing about some of the things they got going on. I could be the hype man when they need me to be the hype man. And I think even as coaches, simple things, as far as I remember when I was doing, started out doing training and, and doing workouts for my players and I never wanted them to, like, if they were shooting, I didn’t want them to rebound the basketball.

Like I wanted to go get it because it’s like, that’s me like serving you. Only thing I want you to think about right now is, is making these shots. It’s my job to go get, even now I’ll tell, like, listen, I tell you. Not going to get that re I’ll go get the rebounds. You know? And so, cause I so kind of just trying to have a servant leadership, I guess, type mindset, I guess that’s the way you could describe it, that I want to say, Hey, I’m supposed to be your leader, but I’m willing to serve you.

I’m willing to do everything I can to help you be the best version of yourself. And I think that just people that have been that to me. Those are people that I still call today, people that I might write a letter to today. And so I want to I’ve been able to kind of have some of that same impact.

This past la the earlier this year we were playing at Purdue Fort Wayne, and that point guard that I was telling you about, they hit that step back three.  I coached her sister as well, and before the Purdue Fort Wayne game all three of the sisters, all four of the sisters was there, and the little baby was there.

They surprised me and it brought tears to my eyes. Like, I get the waterworks going, but it’s stuff like that. I’m like, man, that’s why I do this thing. Because they just they just decided to surprise me. Like that was something they thought of to make my day and I hadn’t coached them since 2013.

And here you talking nine years later they showing up in Fort Wayne, Indiana to surprise their own coach. You know, like that, stuff like that, man. So I just, just trying to be that servant leader and just want them to know that, hey, I’m here for you and I’ll do whatever I can to help you out.

[01:19:32] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I think that building those kinds of relationships and putting your athlete first and making sure that they know that it’s about them and it’s not about you. And it, yes, it’s not always easy to do. It’s not always easy to do. But I think ultimately if you go into it as a coach with the mindset of I’m here to serve my players as opposed to looking at it the other way around. And I think a lot, there’s a lot more coaches today that look at it that way than maybe there were in the past. I think you think of like the, my way or the highway type coaches and those coaches, there’s fewer and fewer of them anymore because that style coaching just doesn’t, it just doesn’t work anymore.

Today’s athlete just has a different perspective and I think that when you look at building those relationships, when you talk about making sure that those athletes know that you’re there to serve them, to be there for them, to help them be at their best, both on and off the floor, that’s really where you start having success.

And then you start having those stories like you just told that here’s your athletes that are coming back years after you’ve coached them and letting you know that, Hey, we appreciate everything that you did for us back when we were players. And that’s really one of the most special feelings.

Yeah, it was special as a coach. Yeah. Without question. Tell me a little bit about the, about the practice setting there at UWM and what you guys do in terms. practice planning and just how you go about preparing your team. Let’s just take it, say we’re in or not right now, we’re in the middle of the season and you’re getting ready to prepare for a game. What’s it look like on the practice floor as you’re getting prepared for a game? How do you guys go about planning, practice and then executing to make sure that you’re ready for, for a game?

[01:21:21] Deronte Polite: Yeah. It’s well I’ve been to different college practices and I’ve been to some practices where the head, the assistant coaches don’t talk at all.

You know, they don’t say anything. And that’s not here so coach, she wants your idea. So we kind of collectively chime in when it comes to planning practice, things that we need to work on. And really a lot of our focus is on us. We really try to focus on who we are as a team, growing and developing our players.

Individually and as a team we look at mid-major basketball, development is a big part of doing well. And so when it comes to practice, we have some things that like, hey, these are some things that we’re going to do on a daily basis because this is the type of team that we want to be.

And we’re kind of a very detail oriented, like scout based team as well. So like, say for instance, we’ll start on our Scout stuff maybe two days out for the game. And we’re really hitting on, like, really a lot of times it’s just personnel. We want to know what they like to do.

Cause no matter what action they have the player is going to revert to who they are as a player, right? And so that’s really kind of a big part of how we go about things. And so, we may do some personnel breakdowns without practice guys they have to be a particular type of player or something like that, and really kind of work on that part of it.

But really the, the most part of it, especially at this point in time in the year, is just focusing on getting Milwaukee better. And so we’ll take a particular portion of practice, say like we, we need to do a better job with our post passing or making a particular read or something like that.

You know, we’ll take some time whether it is individual position, group work, or it is a full team. We do things like that to focus on that. And like I said, we do a lot of like, position breakdown. So we’ll do what we call guard post breakdown. We do that in the middle of practice as well, where everybody might take their own position group and they might be working on something different or they might be working on the same thing, but you get more reps because it’s less people.

So yeah, I would say it’s very, we’re very development oriented and we kind of split practice up. A lot of times it’s going to be half defensive practice, half offensive practice, unless we got a lot to correct in a particular area.  And then it might be, Hey, practice guys, you going to love playing offense today?

You know, so it might be one of those things that happen every now and then too.

[01:23:54] Mike Klinzing: How much film do you share with your players?

[01:23:55] Deronte Polite: A lot. We share all our practices. We share game film with them. We share our scout film with them for them to be able to watch on their own.

But then coach she, the way she does it, we don’t ever schedule out our we allow 20 hours. We don’t ever schedule out the whole 20 hours. And that’s because we want to give players opportunities to get extra film sessions with their coach, their position coaches and extra workouts with their coaches.

So we might operate at like 16, like they might have an extra four hours in the. Where they can do whether it’s a shooting workout, it’s a defensive workout, or like it’s practice breakdown or game film breakdown, like whatever it is. So yeah, we do a lot. And we’ll probably dive into it a little bit more because there’s some details that we need to really get fixed.

You know, this year, the, the previous years it was a very like old, it was an older team and then with Covid we had like seniors that came back for an extra year. Yep. And so when the new players, it was kind of like, y’all have to get in where you fit in because we trying to win this championship and, and we don’t have time to rehash all the details with the older group.

So now with this new wave actually, they’ve been dependent on to win games and things, we have to dive into the details a lot more. I’m not saying we weren’t detail oriented, they just want as many foundational details. Now we have to get more to some foundational details because this group, they kind of got thrown into the fire.

[01:25:31] Mike Klinzing: That’s funny how different teams have different needs when it comes to scouting and film work and how much they can handle and how much they can’t handle. I think you talk to coaches and they’re always like, you have to get a feel for your team and who they are. I think that’s a big piece of, of understanding and, and being, I guess adaptable, flexible as a coach to understand that, hey, this group can handle and benefit from, watch it a lot and have super detailed scout reports.

And then there’s other groups that like, you can share that stuff with them and it’s flying over their head and we might as well be talking on the wall over here, because they’re just going to go out and play and do what they do. So it’s interesting how that whole thing kind of comes together when you look at it.

Where you’ve been over the course of your career and where you are now, and the different opportunities that you’ve had, if you could take one lesson that you could share with other coaches that are listening, one thing that you think has been the key to the success that you’ve been able to have, you could boil it down.

What would that one thing be? Ooh, I know that’s a tough one, man. That’s, that’s really throwing, that’s really throwing you on spot because there’s a million things you could probably share.

[01:26:45] Deronte Polite: I think probably a willingness to learn from others and trust yourself. So not thinking that you know so much that you can’t learn from someone else. and then finding a way to like make that your own, to where you are able to kind of maybe reject some advice because this is the way that you want to do it.

And having confidence in doing it because this basketball thing, different philosophies win. I remember when I was at HCTC, one coach got up and spoke. The next coach that got up started out by saying I would do everything different than way he does it. So I think that’s, that’s kind of been the thing, like just being willing to learn, being willing to hear from other people being at a place like IMG Academy and regardless of what people might think about other people, don’t let that affect my opinion to them.

And and I’m not saying that like within just the context of IMG Academy, I’m just saying that in life, period. Just being able to learn from people and then find a way to make it your own. I’m more than what you want to do. And then when you do what you want to do, that you’re confident in it and you’re okay with how the results end up because you’re ultimately confident in what you’re doing.

[01:28:12] Mike Klinzing: Confidence not cockiness. Right? I think the right, there’s, there’s a fi there’s a fine line there. Yes. And if you’re confident, then you’re willing to listen to other people and take their advice and grow from it. And yet at the same time, you’re confident enough to, to be able to make your own decision if you disagree.

And I think that’s really, where you’re coming from on that. Yeah. All right. We’re coming up on an hour and a half, Deronte. So I want to ask you one final two part I want to ask you one final two part question. Okay. So, part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as your biggest challenge?

And then the second piece, when you think about what you get to do every day, when you get up out of bed in the morning, what brings you the most joy? So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:28:54] Deronte Polite: Okay. Biggest challenge. Biggest challenge. If I’m a hundred percent honest, biggest challenge is, Like, what’s next?

Because I’m from the east coast. My wife’s from the east coast. We’ve never lived around family. I have a older daughter who lives in North Carolina. You know, she’s Ball is life her freshman year. I got a chance to actually go out and do some recruiting with her last week.

So I think the biggest challenge is just kind of navigating this career and trying to figure out what’s next. You know, my wife loves it here. And, but at the same time, like I have goals… that head coach itch hasn’t left, you know? Right. Yeah. I’ve determined now that’s just kind of who I am. And so I appreciate the autonomy that I have here to still make decisions and things like that. But my basketball mind is still going. So you just kind of, I still have things that I want to kind of do that I want to play with that I want to be creative and you just have a different ability to do that as a head coach than an assistant coach.

So I think that’s probably the biggest challenge of just trying to figure out what that looks like and how I want to try to navigate that. And then, what was the second part? Biggest joy. Biggest joy as it concerns..?

[01:30:22] Mike Klinzing: I’d say professionally. Professionally. Because obviously we know your biggest joy comes from your family. There’s no question that comes through loud and clear, so. Right. I don’t think we need to clarify that. So let’s stick with professionally.

[01:30:31] Deronte Polite: Man, I love practice. I, man, it’s my favorite part of the day. I just love practice. No matter how I’m feeling when we get in between them lines I might be like in a little salty mood even at the beginning, but boy, once them shoes start squeaking that ball start bouncing, we start blowing the whistles.

Woo. It just, I don’t know, I just, I really, really enjoy practice. And then sometimes this year I wore a scout team jersey a little bit more too coach got me having to do some stuff with the scout team.

[01:31:12] Mike Klinzing: Nice. All right. There you go. You get to lace them up a little bit.

[01:31:13] Deronte Polite: Right! I enjoy practice. I enjoy the process of getting better and seeing players kind of pushed and pulled in those environments and seeing them get better and then seeing it translate to the game. But you don’t that consistent performance in the game unless you see it in practice.

And so that’s I get better in practice, you know? So I, yeah, I love practice.

[01:31:43] Mike Klinzing: All right, before we get out. That’s well said. And I think that it’s a, it’s, it’s amazing to me always the number of coaches that talk about how much passion they have for practice and they like the games, but the practice environment where you can really, you’re really teaching and you’re really involved in, in teaching the game.

That that’s what so many coaches, so many coaches. Love that piece of it. Before we wrap up, I want to give you a chance to share how people can get in touch with you, find out more about you and the program there at UW Milwaukee. Start out, you can go social media, you can go website, you can go email, whatever you feel comfortable with.

And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and, and wrap it up.

[01:32:19] Deronte Polite: So yeah. My Instagram and my Twitter, that’s where I’m mostly on those two things and they’re the same @CoachDPolite. Mike, if you don’t mind me sharing, my wife and I came up with these journals, the playbook journal.

Yeah, absolutely.

[01:32:37] Mike Klinzing: Which Deronte is nice enough to share with Jason and I, they’re fantastic. Go ahead.

[01:32:42] Deronte Polite: Yeah, sure. Yeah, so you can, you can find those on gettheplaybookjournal.com. It’s a great journal with basketball diagrams. We even come up with some football ones got volleyball ones on the way as well.

If you can, if you’re in Texas, KBA coach, they have ’em. And then a good friend of mine, defense on the string, Jennifer Sep, they’re on her website as well. So but yeah, that’s it. And then mkpanthers.com. We won the conference, regular season conference two years ago, and so we’re trying to get back into that battle to make that run to the NCAA tournament this year.

So you can check us out there. We got a fun group and we kind of play a little bit everywhere, so we always say if you’re not from Wisconsin, it’s best to be from Ohio. Because if you’re in Ohio you can kind of get to a lot of all the away games. We play in a fun league.  The Horizon League is a really, really nice league.

[01:33:34] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Deronte Cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight. It’s been a lot of fun getting a chance to hear about all the things that you’ve done in your career, and we really appreciate you taking the time.

And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.