DON SHOWALTER FROM USA BASKETBALL ON HIS NEW BOOK “CORNFIELDS TO GOLD MEDALS” – EPISODE 875

Website – www.usab.com

Email – dshowalter@usabasketball.com

Twitter – @dshow23

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The new book Cornfields to Gold Medals is an all-American story about Coach Don Showalter’s life journey through the sport he has coached for nearly half a century. It begins humbly, on a family farm perched atop the rolling hills of southeastern Iowa, and extends to gymnasiums in every corner of the world.

Showalter is a 10-time USA Basketball gold medalist while serving as head coach of the USA men’s U16 and U17 national teams from 2009-2018. In May of 2016, he was hired as a coach director for USA Basketball’s youth division.

A high school coach for 42 years and a nine-time USA Basketball Developmental Coach of the Year award winner, Coach Showalter owns a perfect 62-0 record at the helm of USA Basketball U16 and U17 teams.

Coach Showalter compiled a 601-346 overall record (.635 winning percentage) during his 42 seasons as a high school head coach, including 16 district titles and six state tournament appearances.

Don is also the Director of the Snow Valley Basketball School, one of the premier camps for individual player skill enhancement.

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Coach Showalter shares a few stories and lessons from his book Cornfields to Gold Medals that you’ll want to jot down as you listen to this episode. Please enjoy our conversation with USA Basketball’s Coach Don Showalter.

What We Discuss with Don Showalter

• The process for writing Cornfields to Gold Medals with Pete Van Mullem
• The stories that his former players and assistant coaches shared to help the book come together
• You make opportunities for yourself. Nobody’s going to come and knock on your door.
• Learning the value of humility from his time with legendary coach John Wooden
• Developing his coaching style and approach to working with elite players
• Encouraging players to focus on the process of improvement rather than just winning games.
• “We expect our players to get better in the off season. We have to get better before our players can get better.”
• The importance of being a life long learner
• “I tell youth coaches you’re coaching an eight, nine, 10 year old team, your number one goal is not to make them more skilled, is not to make them, better basketball players, so to speak. They will get better, but your number one goal is to make them love the game.”
•  “A player never gets good enough that they’re going to graduate from a skill.”
• Bringing Snow Valley from California to Iowa
• Coaching the 1999 McDonald’s All-America Game
• Avoiding destination addiction
• Coaching elite high school players with USA Basketball
• Getting involved with Ed Janka and the Nike Clinics back in the day
• “When you coach your team, your goal is never to win a game. That is your objective. Your goal is to develop the players you have into young men who are a real plus to society and become great dads, spouses, and leaders in the community.”

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THANKS, DON SHOWALTER

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TRANSCRIPT FOR DON SHOWALTER FROM USA BASKETBALL ON HIS NEW BOOK “CORNFIELDS TO GOLD MEDALS” – EPISODE 875

[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 back to the podcast Don Showalter from USA Basketball. Don’s third regular appearance plus his, I don’t even know, countless 58, I think round tables we’re up to, that Don has appeared on those, and he’s got a new book that we’re going to talk about, Cornfields to Gold Medals.  Don, welcome back, buddy.

[00:00:29] Don Showalter: Hey, it’s nice to be on again. You guys, you and Jason do a great job with your podcast, so I’m happy to be on them.

[00:00:37] Mike Klinzing: Well, thank you. We are thrilled to have you back on to get an opportunity to talk to you about your book. As I said, before we jumped on the pod here tonight, I spent the past week going through the book and reading it from cover to cover and it was a great read for anybody who loves the game of basketball, for anybody who loves coaching.

It’s a great read. And what I want to do is just start with, I think the first question. Which certainly gets answered in the book, but let’s dive into it a little bit more. How does the book come to be? Pete Van Mullen, your co author, comes to you with an idea, says, Hey, I want to write a book. What’s your initial reaction?

And how’d you guys kind of hash out what this was going to look like?

[00:01:21] Don Showalter: Yeah, it’s interesting, Mike, because I didn’t really know Pete that well. He was the author of a couple other books. And I first met Pete probably in the early 2000s, I went down to Kansas City to do a clinic, and he was, I’m not sure if he was part of the administrative team that was in charge of speakers or whatever, but anyway, that’s where I met him first.

And then I heard him speak, and he, because he’s a professor of kind of sports psychology, and at that time he was at Lewis and Clark College in, in Idaho, and then since then he’s moved to Washington State, or at Washington State now. But so he, so I heard him speak, and then we do a lot of as  we do a lot of USA basketball coaching academies every year.

In fact, we do six of them every year and I’ll plug the one we have this coming weekend in New York City as well. Coaches can still sign up, although we’re very, very close to. So he wanted to come to a he wanted to come to one of our coaching academies just to kind of get the flavor of what we do and how we do things.

And he came and listened to speakers and then, and then I had invited him to speak at one of ours. Coaching academies and kind of dealing with sports psychology and those kind of things. So we developed a relationship through our, through our coaching academies. And then, and then all of a sudden it kind of came like, Hey, hey, Don, can you, would you mind if.

 I’d really like to do a book on your, on how you became who you are. And I go, man, I said, the only person that may be really interested in that is my mom. And he said, I think there’d be some. some real value to that for coaches. So this was in about 2017, 16, 17, somewhere in there.

So Pete did, he spent about four years, three to four years actually getting content for the book and then putting it together. So that’s really how it came to be. And obviously we became really good friends. And He did a great job, I thought, of bringing a lot of different people into the book.

He visited with over 150 people by phone and got interviews and really tied everything together. I just didn’t imagine what it would be like to have a book written about me. You just, it’s hard to imagine when something like that happens. But Pete did an outstanding job with that. And then he got an agent and Triumph Books decided, thought it would be a good, a good sell as well.

And so Pete signed on with Triumph Books for the, for the book. And the, I guess kind of the rest is history. So. We spent a lot of time on the phone, and he spent a lot of time with a lot of different people writing the book.

[00:04:29] Mike Klinzing: All right, so here’s my question. One of the things that struck me as I’m reading the book, and you obviously have a ton of basketball seasons in your rearview mirror with lots of coaches, players, experiences, games that have been a part of your life. And when I think back on my own life and the games that I played in or the games that I coached in to go through and try to remember the details of all those things, which there’s a ton of detail in this book.

So, are you one of those guys that has. the photographic memory of, I remember this play from this game from this season and those things are crystal clear in your mind, or was it more that stuff ran together and all the other people that Pete talked to helped to kind of put those puzzle pieces together for you?

In other words, how much of the stories that were told would you have remembered on your own without sort of these other people being involved? I’m just curious.

[00:05:34] Don Showalter: Yeah, great question because. As I read the book and as I read his as he did it chapter by chapter I did not remember many of the things that he wrote in the book that he got from former players and coaches and, you know.

Other people, I, I didn’t I didn’t remember the details, a lot of play things, but  as you read the book there’s some, there’s some details that, that players had really remembered and then of course it triggers my memory too with that. But I was, I was, I was blown away by what former players had remembered about our games and our season.

 a lot of it was games, but a lot of it was just.  other things other than the games the things we did off the court and so, I mean, I, I was kind of blown away by the fact that it was something other than maybe basketball games that former players remembered. Obviously they remembered the games too, but, it was, that was, that part was very interesting for me. And I think it’s good for coaches to understand. And  anybody that reads, reads the book, I think will get this flavor, but it’s, it’s important that coaches understand that  what impact you have on players goes well beyond any wins and losses you have, or any great seasons or poor seasons that you have as a team and a coach.

I think the relationships that develop from those activities and seasons and games is really what Is really what kids remember more than anything the the locker room talks after a tough loss, the next day practices after a great win, or just little things like that going and then the off course stuff like that.

 going to an Iowa basketball game together and bowling together and those kind of things. So I think we forget a lot of times and we generally a lot of times it’s years down the road, as you well know, Mike, but you is from then you, you understand that your players What kind of legacy, I guess, you leave as a coach with all your players?

[00:08:09] Mike Klinzing: I think what strikes me in that area is when you think about things that you say as a coach that have an impact on your players and on the kids that you interact with, there’s things that you never ever remember saying. That they remember that have an impact on them and those things can be positive and unfortunately sometimes those things can be negative and I’m sure that as you were going through this book and you heard some of the things that guys remembered about something that you said or an experience that you guys had, they’re probably things that you’re like, I don’t even remember.

Saying that yet something that you said can have a profound impact on the players that are under your tutelage. And I think it’s a really important thing when you start talking about, as a coach, thinking about what you say and being intentional about what you say and how you say it, because you never know what things are going to be remembered.

I have probably, there’s three or four things that. Coaches said to me over the course of my career that stick with me. I still have one thing that I think I’ve shared this on the podcast that my dad said to me when I was in maybe the Fifth or sixth grade. And I was playing this game and threw some passes that hit off a kid’s head or went out of bounds that I thought they should have caught.

And I was frustrated and angry after the game. And these guys they can’t, they can’t catch the ball. And I’m not going to pass it anymore. And I remember my dad said to me, Mike, someday you’re going to play with kids who are going to catch the ball and they’re going to score when you pass it to them.

So no matter how many times these guys drop it, you just got to keep passing them the ball. And my dad doesn’t remember. Ever saying that to me, but here I am 53 years old and I still remember it. And so I think that as a coach, it is really important to remember those things. When you think about the stories in the book, is there one that stood out to you that you didn’t remember, or maybe you hadn’t thought of in a long, long time that was kind of your favorite story that kind of came out of the book that maybe you had forgotten about?

[00:10:21] Don Showalter: Boy, that’s a great question. Yeah. The obviously some of the players were, were very talkative. I mean, they gave Pete a lot of, they gave Pete a lot of, a lot of good fodder, I guess would be, would be a thing, but  The there’s an area there where even a chapter there where it talks about, we had a kid that came from England and played for, played for us for a year and a half actually, and I did not really remember, I guess his, his play as much as I did after I read his story he came from a pretty tough neighborhood in England. And he met one of our players and then came and lived with, with my assistant coach and his, his son, who was the same age. So so that, that was an area that I had kind of forgotten about.  We had a book signing here not too long ago. And, and James Gardner, who was a kid from England was at the book signing. And then, then you realize that, oh yeah, Hey here’s, here’s everything that happened. And, and he, he says to this day that he would not be.  he’s got a great family married a local gal.

And, and so you just feel really good about where he’s at now compared to where he could have been, had he not even came over and played for us and things like that. So that’s one, to me, that’s one of the great stories that come out of that.  I, I think one of the things Pete did really well  he, he, I think he really caught the, the essence of Snow Valley Basketball School.

He actually spent a week there at our, at Snow Valley Camp and, and talking to coaches from there. I thought he really I love the fact that he got the, the, the true essence of what. Of what our Snow Valley camp is all about. And I really appreciated that aspect of it too, because I think that’s a, that’s an important part of of, of, of my life actually.

Cause I mean, we spent, we spent 25, 26, 27 years of Snow Valley here in Iowa. And then before that I worked Snow Valley camp in California. So that was, I thought that was really, a great way that that he kind of put everything together and that camp had an important piece was an important piece to, to who I am and, and really did a great job with that.

[00:13:14] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I think when I read that section, obviously having been fortunate enough to be at Snow Valley multiple times and be a part of that. And, and I think about what, what I experienced there. And then as I went through and read the book and just, Got to read through your experiences with Snow Valley, both out in California and then eventually in Iowa and just how you guys got that sort of branch started. But what struck me about all the things that you did, including Snow Valley, was just the fact that you were always looking for an opportunity and always willing to take an opportunity to go somewhere to learn from someone. And to me, that’s one of the biggest themes I think that comes through, Don, is just the fact that you were willing to go and Put yourself out there and have conversations with coaches and to not think that, hey, I know everything about the game, but instead you were putting yourself in all these different places, whether it was camps, whether it was just writing a letter, whether it was at a clinic, whether it was connecting with someone at a practice or wherever it was, you just always took advantage of the fact that there were people out there That you could learn from.

And I think that’s the one thing, if I had to put a theme on the book, it’s that, wow, you really just, the people that you got connected to, some people could say, wow, like, Coach Showalter was in the right place at the right time with all these guys. And man, how lucky was he to be able to it. Be in contact with John Wooden and Mike Krzyzewski and just all the other great coaches that you were fortunate enough to be around.

But yet, if you read the book, you realize and understand that you put yourself in places where you were able to meet coaches from all different levels. And I think that just being a learner, that’s what comes across to me. So talk a little bit about how important that part of it was to your career in terms of just Getting out there and being places and interacting with coaches and how that helped you all through every stage of your career.

[00:15:33] Don Showalter: Yeah. Yeah. Mike, again, I think that’s, I mean, if I was going to say one thing to young coaches, it would always be, you know. You make opportunities for yourself. I mean, in other words, nobody’s going to come and knock on your door and say, Hey, you want to work John Wooden’s camp, type of thing. So I think coaches have to step out and get out of their comfort zone a little bit. That takes a little bit of effort. And I always tell coaches too, it says we expect our players to get better in the off season. And I think it goes back to we have to get better before our players can get better.

How am I going to do a better way of teaching something? Or if I’m going to, if we’re going to be a pressing team this year, what are some of the real intricate details of my press defense that I have to get across to our players. So I think we have to be lifelong learners, so to speak.

And I still I still feel that way. I take notes at our USA Basketball Academies, the clinics that are held from other, when other coaches speak. So it’s one of those things where if we’re really a lifelong Learner, we’re going to we’re going to continue to not only better ourselves, but our, our teams are going to get better.

And that’s one thing I go back to what Jay Wright said a long time ago, we were talking about the different aspects of. Of coaching. And Jay Wright really, he really made himself a good coach. In other words, he doesn’t feel, I kind of agree with him. He said my, at the, when I was coaching to start coaching, he said I was not a very good coach.

I Had to learn a lot. And so I think that comes from humility. Hey, you know what? I’m humble enough to admit, I don’t know everything there is to know about the game. And Jay Wright just said that because I look at him because of his humility is the reason that he got a lot better as a coach.

It wasn’t that he thought he knew everything or he thought he knew enough. To get his players ready to play or make, make, make them better. But he was humble enough to admit, you know what, I gotta get, I just gotta get better as a coach. And I think that’s kind of my, was my essence as a coach, not only as a young coach, first of all, I love the game.

And I think all of us that love the game, anything we love, we want to get better at, and that’s why it’s so important that we give. The love of the game to our players, because if they love the game, they’re going to work to get better at it. And I tell youth coaches you’re coaching eight, nine, 10 year old team, your number one goal is not to make them more skilled, is not to make them, better basketball players, so to speak.

They will get better, but your number one goal is to make them love the game. So they want to come back, they want to get better, they want to improve themselves in the game of basketball. And I think if we have that as a focus of loving the game, both for ourselves and for our players then, then we do get better.

We search out ways to get better. We attend clinics, we go to camps and that’s what I did as a young coach that just on a whim, I wrote a letter to John Wooden, and I think this is pretty well detailed in the book  I wanted to learn from the best. And I finally got on his staff as a counselor one year.

I think I got 25 bucks a week for that week of being a counselor. But I did all the dirty work. Tiled down the, tiled down the gym floors. Made sure there was water for the coaches.  basically stayed up all night kind of babysitting the players because it was an overnight camp.

Waking players up in the morning.  just everything like that as a counselor. And then they liked what I did as a counselor. And then I, that’s how I got on as a coach. So those kinds of things, I think, go a long way toward.  You making the best of every opportunity that you have, and then it’ll, it’ll, it’ll come around to you as something that that you really wanted to do and makes you better because you love the game and you love what you did.

[00:20:27] Mike Klinzing: What’s the best lesson that You took away from your time with Coach Wooden. I know there were many, but if you had to boil it down to the most important thing that you learned from your relationship with Coach Wooden, what would that be?

[00:20:38] Don Showalter: Well, I think first of all, it’s humility. I mean, here’s a guy he won 10 national championships and, and had the best players in the world playing for him.

But he was an amazing, humble human being.  my wife and, and Son and daughter, when they were young and growing up, we drove out to his camp every year. And he would always take time for, for my two kids.  they would eat with him at breakfast or lunch. He would have fun with them.

Got to know my wife really well. So I think the humility just… Was an amazing piece of his coaching. And, and him, he is a human being. And I think that’s one of the five things I have now have listed now for being a coaching DNA is being humble. So that’s one of the things I took away from him.

Coach Wooden was very fundamentally orientated about what he did in the game of basketball. I mean, here’s a guy who probably didn’t have to do line drills every day jump, stop, pivots, line drills because of the type of athlete he had all the All Americans and the people he had, but you know what?

He did it every day. So I think he conditioned his players not to get bored with the fundamentals. They just knew they were going to do the fundamentals every day. So that, I took that away from him big time.  you, you, you stress the fundamentals and you work on them every day, and I kind of go back to my saying is that a player never gets good enough that they’re going to graduate from a skill. I think that’s one of the lessons in the book in the back. So you still continue to refresh those skills. I call it refresh those skills during the practice sessions. So a long answer to what you, your question was, is what I took away from coach Wood and the first one is definitely being humble.

And then the second one is, is making sure that you spend daily, daily time on fundamentals and details of the game.

[00:23:02] Mike Klinzing: Talk a little about your relationship with Herb Livesey and how that connection to Snow Valley, California, eventually led to the idea of, hey, maybe we can bring The Snow Valley concept, the Snow Valley ideals to Iowa.  What was that process like?

[00:23:22] Don Showalter: Yeah, that’s that was, that was another probably just an opportunity that kind of, not fell on our laps, but we, Jerry Slykaus, my partner. Longtime partner with basketball and since then has passed away in a tragic car accident five or six years ago. But through the whole process of working at Coach Wooden’s camp, which was in, at Cal Lutheran in California you meet coaches and you say, Hey, what’s, what’s, what’s some other good camps to work?

And well, it always came back to the, Hey, you gotta work Snow Valley. If you haven’t ever worked Snow Valley, you need to work at least once. And then find out if you really like to work at camp like that. And so um, I worked Snow Valley out in California, run by Herb Livesey, who at that time was, was an English teacher and a coach at Orange Coast college, junior college, and he had, he, he had purchased.

Snow Valley Basketball School from legend, basketball legend, Bob Cousy. I think this story’s in the book as well, but Bob Cousy obviously played for the Boston Celtics. I think he’s actually still living at 96 years old. Moved it to the Snow Valley mountains of San Bernardino. All the camp was outside San Bernardino.

Eventually he moved it to Westmont College. In Santa, Santa Barbara and many, many coaches that listen to this are going to recognize the name Don Meyer who was one of the iconic basketball coaches, but Don Meyer helped help with the Snow Valley camp in California. And I think in some way it was a part of the administration piece to it as well.

So I worked at camp, got to know her really well. He obviously liked what I did. I worked really hard those first couple of years at Snow Valley, giving clinics to the kids and organizing myself, organizing my thoughts and how to, how to present some valuable information to the kids. no matter what the topic was.

And, and, and obviously Herb enjoyed that. And so throughout those years, the discussion came, I said Jerry and I said, this is, this would be a great Midwest type of camp. So we approached Herb and, and said, would you consider selling a franchise of Snow Valley? And we’ll move it to Warburg College which I’m an alumni of.

And of course, Jerry coached at Cedar Falls, which was really close to Warburg. So it was a good fix for both of us. But that’s kind of the way it was. And 28 years later we ran four sessions of 380 kids per session, Snow Valley Basketball School. And for you. For you, for coaches that really don’t quite understand what Snow Valley is, if you’ve worked the five, the old five star camps that were back in the day before there was AAU teams, before there was high school tournaments, or before there was, before there was AAU tournaments in the summertime where kids went, shoe companies weren’t involved in it.

But Howard Garfinkel. Garf was the guy who, who made the five star camp what it is. And it was all drill sessions, basket 13, young coaches like Rick Pitino, John Calipari worked his camp, really got their start at five star camp. And so this is very similar to the five star camp. And of course the five star camp kind of fell, fell by the wayside when the shoe company started their tournaments and teams and everything like that came into effect and kids just didn’t attend.

The good kids obviously didn’t attend the five star camp anymore. So that kind of fell by the wayside, but  Snow Valley is, is not an elite camp by any means. We have some really good players that attend, but  we obviously admit kids just want to get better.   

[00:27:32] Mike Klinzing: That was one of the most interesting parts of the book for me.  I just thought that I never, I don’t think in my mind I necessarily equated. Five Star and Snow Valley sort of developing kind of around the same time, the same era. And then, I guess, in some ways, diverging a little bit in terms of what, even though, as you said, the, the purpose of the two camps, I think was, was very similar in that there was a ton of teaching.

And is a ton of teaching obviously still going on at Snow Valley, but there was certainly a ton of teaching going on at Five Star. And you think about the, the roster of coaches that have gone through both of those places. And I know Five Star obviously at one point had the reputation of having the best players in the country all went there, which this is a kind of an interesting aside right down that you think about how all those players back again, I’m thinking about the era when I was in high school.

So the late eighties, that was kind of the heyday of five star and you go and you had all these future NBA players that were playing on these converted tennis courts, Robert Morris out in the hot sun. And now like kids thinking about playing outside, like nobody plays outside anymore. At least not, certainly not players who play at a high level don’t do that.

And it’s just, again, a completely different era. And I mean, I think it’s a testament to what you’ve been able to do in Iowa that Snow Valley obviously continues to thrive and despite the changes in the way that kids, parents approach the game of basketball, especially in the summertime, there was once a time when camps were really popular all over the country, a variety of different camps.

And now camps aren’t nearly as popular because everybody’s playing. Everybody just wants to play. Nobody necessarily wants to.  get better in the same way. There’s just not as much demand for it. And the fact that you guys have still continued to be able to thrive, I think is a testament to what, what you guys have built there.

And just when you think about the coaching and just the teaching and all that aspect of what people would say is that that old school camp mentality. And I think that’s what makes it special.

[00:29:48] Don Showalter: I think I said this before too, but it’s a kind of a throwback the, the camps, the camps.

Like you said, gone by he wayside, and now they’re just more of a babysitting type of camp.  even most colleges don’t have camps anymore.  I know here at the University of Iowa, they don’t have an overnight camp anymore. It’s just more of a, maybe four or five hour day camp type of thing.

Part of that is… The expense that goes with the food and the lodging is keeps getting, keeps getting more and more every year. And so you got to cover your costs and that, and you’re the coaching staff, we hire we hire about 70 coaches per session, which is. A seven to one camper coach ratio which we feel is a very positive thing for, for our cast, but you know that’s, those kinds of things are, are what, are, are what you, you have to pay for in the end.

And so I think the overnight ones camps, especially have kind of gone by the wayside with that, with that, with the colleges as well as some of the other well known. five star camps and, and just those kind of things. Most of them are day camps now. But, and that’s not saying the day camps aren’t good, because a lot of, a lot of them are.

But it’s just a different, it’s a different experience when a kid had, kid goes, stays overnight, and, lives in a dorm with somebody he may not know, makes new friends, probably for life, many of them  and gets a chance to work with coaches from all around the country and even all around the world, I think is the experience, that’s one of the experiences of why they keep coming back.

And the the low, The low ratio of campers to coaches is a great example of the individual aspect that we really think is important in Snow Valley.

[00:31:50] Mike Klinzing: I think that it’s just because it’s such a unique experience, guys who are my age especially, when I think about my experience growing up in the game, I went to plenty of overnight camps when I was a kid and so I guess I have kind of that nostalgia for, A, those types of camps and even thinking about Five Star and just playing outside and how much time I spent on the playground or on my driveway working on my game and playing the game.

And it’s just, it’s a time when I look back on that, that era of my life very fondly. And I think that one of the things that Snow Valley does so well is to be able to create that kind of experience. As you said, for kids, you get to stay in a dorm, you get to stay overnight, you’re eating in the cafeteria, you’re playing basketball from six 30 in the morning until…

Nine or 10 at night, which is something that I think kids probably did a lot more regularly back when you and I were kids, because you were just kind of out on your own, wherever you were, you were in the barn  and some of us were on the driveway or the playground or wherever it was. And when you learn in the game, and it’s just, again, it’s a different era, the way basketball is today compared to.

The way you and I grew up in it, it’s just, again, not necessarily better or worse, but, but certainly different in terms of how, how kids grow. So when you think about, obviously in the book, there’s a whole bunch of stories going through your various teams at the different schools that you coached at. And you had an opportunity to be in the state playoffs multiple times.

And just like, I love the story. The one story that It really stuck out to me that I, I kind of chuckled when I, when I read it was a story about the player that you had, it was a big guy, Matt Larson, that he went for a layup and missed the layup and you wanted him to dunk the ball. I really got a kick out, I really got a kick out of that story.

I can, I can kind of relate to it. Not that everybody was trying to ever get me to dunk cause they knew better than to ask me to try to do, to try to do that. But just tell, tell that story. I know it’s in the book, but I really, I really enjoyed that story. Maybe you can even… Add some colorful details to it.

[00:33:59] Don Showalter: Yeah, it’s an Eric, he was about a six, six, seven kid one of the tallest kids that basically I’ve, I’ve coached, I don’t we don’t get a lot of six, eight, six, nine kids, but at times he was, he was kind of a soft player, just wanted to lay it up and  and I go back to the fact that I, I really had not even thought about that incident.

Until I read it in the book again. So but obviously a lot of people did, including my assistants and, and Matt himself, but he went, he, he just got the ball in practice session. He got the ball and he just kind of laid it up there really soft. And I think if I remember right, he missed it. And next time it came down, the same thing, he missed the shot.

And I just stopped the play and I just threw him several really difficult, hard passes. And I just told him, Matt, you just dunked the ball. Just dunk it. And I had him do it about probably 10 or 15 times. He was dead at the end of that, end of that time. And the kids were applauding him every time he was dunking.

They were behind him. And so they really, the team really got into it as well. Which, which made it fun. But I’ll tell you what, after that  there were several instances in games where he could have laid it up, but he pounded it down. And I look back on that, I look back on that specific action.

And I as a coach, you, we, I could let him go cause he was, he was laying them in. And for the most part, he made a lot of them, but he needed to have that extra aggressive nature. Added to his, his play. And we had to find a way to do that. And that was just an opportune time to coach him in the fact that coaching to be aggressive and dunk it when he had the chance every time that for him, for him, Duncan was not showing off.

For him, dunking was an aggressive, dunking, the ball was an aggressive move that he really had to that he, that he needed to do in order to make, make himself a better player. And so we, we certainly emphasized that. And like I said, the, the other kids really got into it that were, they were watching because everybody’s standing around watching him dunk the ball for

it Must, it must’ve been 10, 15 times. And he was, yeah, at the end of that time, he was, he was dog tired. But I think we got our point across to him anyway.

[00:36:34] Mike Klinzing: He was convinced he needed to dunk from that point forward.

[00:36:37] Don Showalter: Yeah, yeah. And I think later on, if you, if in the book, there was a couple games where  he ended up dunking it and really turned the game around with his, with his aggressive dunks during some really crucial district or sub state games.

[00:36:58] Mike Klinzing: The coaching point worked, right? Turn the kid around and got him to be a better player, which ultimately, again, is what you’re, is what you’re looking for. Talk to me a little bit about the McDonald’s All American game that you got an opportunity to coach when it came to Iowa.

[00:37:08] Don Showalter: That was an amazing game.  Probably my first, that was in 1999.  That was probably my first or second real coaching coaching game where it was a whole bunch of elite players. Carlos Boozer was on my team, who now I go, I watch. He’s got, He’s got twin boys that are probably the top two players in the country at in the class of 25. So it’s, it’s, it’s kind of nice, neat to see what kind of goes around, comes around.

Carlos Boozer, Mike Dunleavy, who had great seat, great years at Duke and then in the NBA. Jonathan Bender, who actually broke the scoring record at a year at McDonald’s. Michael Jordan.

[00:38:09] Mike Klinzing: Michael Jordan’s,  yeah, broke Michael Jordan’s record.

[00:38:09] Don Showalter: Yep. So that was fun for him and he was on my team and that was, that was fun as well.

But yeah that, that, again, that’s just an they didn’t, nobody came and knocked on my door to coach in the McDonald’s game that, that, that year. I, I, I had been to several other McDonald’s games and the organizer is Bob Geckin, was Bob Geckin, who has since passed away here a couple years ago, but Bob was, he started the McDonald’s game in 1976.

And I would go to several other ones before I coached in them actually, had a chance to meet Bob. And we, we became we became somewhat friends and I just said I said, if you ever bring the game to Iowa, I said, I’m your guy to coach it. Just laughingly said that, not thinking it would ever happen.

But that year, if you remember right, Nick Collison was a senior and 1999 and he was obviously one of the top players in the whole country. Kirk Heinrich was also there, but he did not make the McDonald’s game that year. But but Collison did. And, and one thing led to the other and Bob Geckin said, hey, we’re coming to Ames this year.

They had, at that time, they moved it every year to a different spot in the country. So kind of based on where, where one of the better players that we’re going to play in it was, was, was from. So yeah, we, we had a great time sold out the arena at Hilton Coliseum and a very, very special, special game to coach in.

Again, it was one of those games, which one of my first ever coaching really elite players and kind of trying to understand Maybe how to coach him, what to coach him but I left, I left that game thinking, you know what, these are just high school kids. They’re obviously really good and they’re really physically gifted.

Deep down, they’re just high school, 17, 18 year old kids and who want to get better. And so they were, I couldn’t, I did not believe that they were all going to be great coachable kids, but they really were there’s, there was no one better than Carlos Boozer to coach or Mike Dunleavy or, or Or Jonathan Bender any of those guys were just exceptional to coach.

So that’s one of those things where I look back on with, with great great memories that I had got to do.

[00:40:51] Mike Klinzing: Well, that obviously is something that. As your first opportunity to coach players at that elite level, you got plenty opportunities to do that as you moved forward in your career. And I think one of the things this kind of goes back to what we talked about right at the very beginning is, and I know I’ve heard you talk about it and had conversations with you about this before, just how the opportunity comes to you.

With USA basketball. And I know one of the things that you said to me before we talked on the previous podcast was that you always have people that come up to you and say, Hey, how can I get to work with USA basketball? And how do you, how can I do that? And I know your answer is always that there’s a lot of steps that Go into being able to do that.

And part of it is what you’ve already described, which is just putting in the time and making connections and being in lots of places and trying to learn and improve your craft and grow. And as you said, you got to ask. So you had to ask to have a relationship with coach Wooden and that happened. You had to ask to coach McDonald’s all American game and that happened.

And so just tell me a little bit about the first experience with. I know that as you go through the book, there was talk a little bit about your relationship with Coach Krzyzewski and just how you kind of got connected with the brass at USA Basketball. So just kind of give us a little background on that part of your story.

[00:42:21] Don Showalter: Yeah. Again, that’s part of what I tell coaches, young coaches. They want to come in and they always ask, Hey, how can I get involved with USA basketball? Well, you know what, you’re not going to get involved with USA basketball, like right away.

I mean, you have to go through some steps you better do. If you’re a high school coach, it’s an assistant coach or a even a lower level coach, do you, the first thing you have to do is do a great job of where you are. I mean, nobody’s going to give you an opportunity to coach at a different level higher level, if you, if you can’t do a good job of coaching some ninth grade girls.

I mean, just, it’s not going to happen. So rather than always looking past where you’re at, excuse me, looking past where you’re at, do a good job of where you’re at. And, and people notice, um, if I’m an athletic director. And I have an opening, varsity opening for a high school opening. And you’re a sophomore coach.

And I’m not sure you’ve done a really good job at the sophomore level. Why would I give you a chance to coach a varsity team? So I think that’s what. young coaches don’t realize how are you going to get a chance to coach at USA Basketball if you’re not just really where your feet are and doing a great job of coaching the teams you’re coaching right now.

So I think that’s really, that’s probably the most important thing I would tell coaches and I do at clinics all the time, is make sure that you do a great job of where your feet are. Don’t look ahead. sometimes I call it, and I’m kind of getting off track here, Mike, but I’m calling it a little destination addiction.

I see young coaches have, they always want to get somewhere else right away. I’m mentoring some really young coaches and they want to get, they want to get to the NBA, how can I be a video guy in the NBA or, you know those kinds of levels. And right now they may be a JV coach at a high school.

Well that’s, you just have to take it step by step. You can’t skip steps because if you don’t, again, if you don’t do a great job of where you’re at, you’re not going to get an opportunity. So working camps is huge. That’s how I got to know some people that eventually got to work with USA basketball in a Administrative position working camps really all over the country and like I we’ve talked about it before going to clinics I think was huge for me as a coach.

But that’s the way you get your network going. And by doing that, people you stay in touch with some really good people and something opens up, Hey I remember. Don Showalter at this camp and he worked really hard and I think he’d be good, a good fit for helping us out or whatever.

So that’s really how working with USA Basketball came into effect. And the first thing I did with USA Basketball was in 1998 coaching the Hoops Summit game. And at that time, the Hoops Summit game was, still is, still goes on. But we had our Top high school seniors play against international competition.

And we played against some international competitions. It was pretty good. Our game was in San Antonio during the final four and we played against a floppy hair kid from Germany by the name of Dirk Nowitzki. And I always said that we put him where he is in the NBA. Cause after that game  after we held him to 30, like 35 points and 23 rebounds, he was off the chart.

I mean, people, scouts loved him and they came to see him. Luis Scola was another player we played against from Argentina that was on that team. So that was my first really. Big time coaching with USA basketball. And  they loved it. They loved what I did. So after that, I was on some committees that picked, picked players that they used to have a festival, kind of like an Olympic festival where they had 40 high school players come in that were the best in the country.

And then we divided them up into a North, South, East, West. Teams of 10 on a team. Well, in 2002, we had LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Jason Kidd, Chris Paul. We’re all in that, in that festival. And so that obviously you can imagine what high level competition that was. Then I chaired the committee for several years and then FIBA started The U 16, U 17 competition in 2009.

And that was the first time that USA basketball really had anything to do with 16, 17 year olds. Before that, the youngest we had was 18 year olds.

So having been around USA basketball and coached for them and been on some committees they asked me if I wanted to coach the first U 16 team for USA basketball. Course I said yes. And at that time are the two players that are still in the league that are really making an impact.

Brad Beal, who was, who was on my team and Andre Drummond, a big guy who was on my team. We had other guys that were in the NBA for five, four, five, six, seven years, but not as long as those two guys. So at the same time, Coach K came on in 2000 and For the 2008 Olympics and the 2004 Olympics, we got a bronze medal and with our senior team.

So we kind of revamped a lot of things that we were doing with USA basketball. And one of those was they wanted some, some they wanted the teams that came up through the USA Basketball we, they wanted us all, all really do much of the same thing. So for our youth, youth, youth 16 team, it was all press.

We had a full court press the entire game. We ran, we used our athleticism. We got into the other team’s bench because our bottom seven were much better than our opponent’s bottom seven. At the same time, Billy Donovan was coaching the U18 team. Obviously he was a pressing type of coach, so he took the press and he did the same thing we were doing.

Mike Krzyzewski then came on as the Olympic coach and they played a full court press. So they wanted some, really some consistency in what was being taught all the way through the levels of USA basketball. And I’ll go back a little bit here now. I know I’m making this answer a little bit longer than maybe, maybe you wanted, but U 16 is a qualification tournament in our zone.

There’s four zones in the world and our zone is North and South America. So we have to qualify as U 16 players. For the World Cup, the next year is U 17 players. So, qualification U 16, World Cup U 17. The four zones then are represented with the World Cup, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. And it’s still that way today.

And then same with U18s, a qualification in the zone for the U19 Worlds. So Billy Donovan was, was stayed on there for several years until he got, he went to the NBA. I stayed on for, for 10 years till 2000 2017 with our youth, youth. And then of course, Mike Krzyzewski stayed on for three Olympics as well.

And so USA Basketball really tried to get the whole program kind of on a same. wavelength with our pressure defense and how we did things. And throughout those things, we won every competition, we won gold medals. So that’s kind of a little bit of the history of that and kind of how I got started with that.

And then since, since that time, I now oversee, basically, I oversee our, our U 19. I oversee our programs at that level, evaluating players, inviting players for those. Teams and getting coaches for U16, 17, which are high school coaches and 18, 19 are college coaches. So that’s my main thrust right now working for USA basketball.

[00:51:34] Mike Klinzing: Early years with USA basketball, you had to balance out. Your responsibilities as a high school coach with some of those newfound responsibilities with USA basketball and some of the international stuff that you were doing, how did you handle that in terms of obviously you coached for 40 plus years as a high school coach, this USA basketball?

Opportunity is clearly different. How did you balance out the two? What were your thoughts? What was your thought process as you were kind of going through? I know you talked in the book a little bit about how your assistants had to take over some more of the duties at the high school level because you were gone on different trips with your teams or going and watching players.

Just how did you work that part of it out?

[00:52:19] Don Showalter:  That was a little bit of a balancing act to start with. Fortunately as you read in the book, I had some great assistants and I think it’s good for your high school players too and they knew exactly what I was doing.

They knew where I was at. They knew  and I think they felt good about that. Their, that their head coach was doing these do, coaching these teams for USA basketball. I think it was kind of a little bit of a status thing for them that they knew what I was doing and where I was at, what level I was coaching.

So they would always ask me about the players I coached and what’s Brad Beal like and Andre Drummond and Jabari Parker and Jalil Okafer and all those guys. So Jason Tatum and, and those guys. So I think it was they felt really good about me coaching that level. But I also was very honest with him.

 I said, I’m going to be gone these three weeks and Chris, or depending on my assistants they, they were going to take over the program for that, for those three or four weeks, and I think it was really good for my assistants. To be the head coach, so to speak, for that time in the summertime.

And I look back on that thinking, did I cheat my own team by being part of USA basketball so much? And I look back and I don’t think I did. I mean, I think it, it really worked out well. My assistants got better. My players had a lot more respect, I think, for my assistant coaches after spending two or three weeks with them in the summertime.

So I think it was a good thing all the way around that I would come back off the road and, and we’d have two or three weeks together with the team. And it was, it was just a, I think it was really a good thing. And I think the book kind of brought that out as well, that I think our players enjoyed that I was part of something that was bigger than them, the high school, than me, it was, it was USA basketball. And so I think that, that was really something that they kind of could grasp onto.

[00:54:50] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I mean, I think it had to be fun for your high school coach to be getting a chance to interact with these guys who were some of the best players in the country.

And then obviously I think one of the things that anybody that I’ve talked to, and we’ve talked to a bunch of guys who were involved with. USA basketball and some of the things that you’re doing. And they always, one of the things that they always share is that they, they learn a ton from being around the players at that level, and also from being around the other great coaches.

And obviously over the course of time, you’ve had a tremendous staff. that you were able to work with, first of all, when you were coaching those teams. And then now, obviously, you’re getting an opportunity to continue to learn as you bring guys in to, to coach and work with those teams at various levels.

So you’re coming back a better coach for those guys who you’re coaching in high school. And I think that, obviously, you were able to make it, make it work and then eventually transition into working full time with USA Basketball. One of the other things in the book, Don, that really struck me that brought back some memories were Was the chapter about the Nike clinics and Ed Janka and how you got involved attending those clinics when you were a young coach and then eventually through your relationship and being there all the time and you got to know Ed Janka and then eventually got an opportunity to become one of the speakers at those clinics.

And I know that, I don’t know, do you know the name Jerry McGinty at all? Do you remember Jerry McGinty? Sure. So Jerry was friends with it was friends with friends with Ed Janka and Jerry used to play basketball at the at the place where I would work out when I was in high school and college. And so I got to, I got to build a little relationship with Jerry and actually Jerry coached a year or two of like the Cleveland Pro Am Summer League back in the day when I was I think when I was in college and I actually played Jerry coached the team one year we had Ron Harper on the team and oh, I’ll talk.

Todd Lewis, who played at Purdue. And so anyway, so I got to have this relationship with Jerry and then through that relationship with Jerry Jerry connected me or got me through Ed to be able to go and work at Michael Jordan’s camp at Elmhurst in Chicago one summer. So kind of, again, just one of those things that as I’m reading through and I, I read the name Ed Janka, I’m like, Oh yeah, I remember.

Again, that’s a long, there’s a long time to go, but just, it’s funny how, how interconnected the basketball world is. Let’s just talk a little bit about the Nike clinics, because I think coaches today don’t realize how big those clinics were back in the day.

[00:57:26] Don Showalter: Oh my goodness.  That was and they were.  You talk about getting chance to network at those, at those clinics was, was really amazing. And, and Ed was super to me.  He rarely had high school coaches. They were all college coaches or whatever.  we just, we just kind of developed a relationship.

Part of that was because I was at a lot of Nike clinics as a young coach. And I think, well, I think somebody told him that, Hey, if you ever want a high school coach. To speak why contact coach show. Cause I think he would do a good job, fortunately. And that’s kind of what happened, but Ed put together a tremendous clinics all over the country.

His biggest one at the time was in Las Vegas. I think the one I spoke at, we had about 1500 coaches in attendance at Las Vegas. It was amazing. But he did them all. He probably did six or seven, at least all over the country. And did him very well. He had he had the best of the best speak.

Of course there were Nike coaches because Nike helped him get, get speakers. And he never had trouble getting the Nike coaches to speak which is which, which right there is a big deal because a lot of times it’s hard to get coaches at that, that high level.  to speak at clinics nowadays, especially if you’re good, if you’re doing six or seven or eight of them, but Ed was one of those guys.

He was a hustler. I mean, he got out, he promoted his clinics. He was a great guy, great guy from that standpoint. Very easy to talk with. I know he had a lot of people that were. Especially coaches, high level coaches that were always eager to speak for him. So with him at the clinic. So that, you talk about young coaches attending clinics, that certainly was one of the, one of those that helped me progress with my with my coaching abilities, with my, with my probably getting my name out there a little bit.

If you speak at a Nike clinic you have 500. 2,000 coaches at that time at the clinic. So you do get your name out there. You get a network a little bit. So that, I can’t say enough about Ed and what he did for the game of basketball. Obviously as years went by. The number of coaches attending clinics went down.

Part of that is because of the internet and what you get off the websites. And, and we weren’t quite as popular  to go to clinics, but he kept it up for a long time. He had many, many years of really good clinics.

[01:00:23] Mike Klinzing: It’s really funny when you think back to the era that those were kind of in their heyday and reading through the book and thinking back to.

My experience is at Five Star as a player and the clinics, it’s just, I mean, it’s a completely different era of, of basketball and of coaching. But I think that if you read the book, what comes through loud and clear is that there are sort of Some timeless principles that if you want to be successful as a coach, I think that your story and the story of this book really tells the coaches, it sort of lays out what the secrets are.

And we’ve talked about them tonight. Like you got to work as hard as you can and do the best job you can where you are. It’s got to be about the relationships. And the people first and you can’t skip steps and you’ve got to be humble and you got to always be willing to learn. And I think if, if coaches read this book, anybody who takes the time to sit down and go through it, you’re going to find that the story of what it means to be.

A great coach is told through, through your eyes and through your stories and through your words, but yet at the same time, I think that anybody can take the story that you have and learn what it takes to, to really have success as a coach. And again, when I think about success a lot of people, I think Don can read your story and we talked about it a few minutes ago that.

People ask you all the time, Hey, how can I get to where you are? And there’s a lot of people that want to know that. And there’s a lot of people that see, especially when they’re starting out in the business, that they see a lot of the glamour. And we talked to a ton of coaches on the podcast here.

We’ve talked to, I guess we’ve, we’ve gone on a pretty good stretch here of talking to a lot of division three head coaches. And these are guys who started out. In a lot of cases working for three, four, five, six years for nothing or next to nothing. And  the lessons that you share in the book through, through your life story, I think are lessons that apply to everybody who’s getting started.

And some people there are very few who end up getting to a place where their household names and we all recognize them. And yet at the same time, there’s so many guys. And girls out there doing a fantastic job wherever they’re at, whether that’s at a middle school or at a high school or at a division three school or at any high school, whatever that many of us may have never heard of.

And yet they’re espousing a lot of the principles that you talk about in the book. And I think what I think about coaching and what it’s about, I think your story does a tremendous job of, of telling not only your life story, but also what the life story of. A coach can be all about. I don’t know what you, when you sat down with Pete right at the very beginning and  we talked about he came to you and approached you with the idea of this book.

 I Don’t know if you had an idea that it was going to become straight, strictly a memoir or it was going to be sort of a, a how to book, but I think you guys did a really good job of kind of blending the two where. Your story gets told, but at the same time, it’s, it’s a learning experience for any coach who reads it.

So I think you guys did a really great job and, and being able to do that. Did you think about that as a purpose as you, as you got into the project? Well

[01:04:08] Don Showalter: Well, Pete and I talked about that a little bit and I was pretty adamant that we have some leadership. Lessons in the book.

And so Pete really worked with it. And then he said, well, maybe after first we thought he thought, well, maybe after each chapter, he would put in a leadership lesson and then he said, I think it’s going to be better if I just. He called them gold lessons because at the end he spells out the word G O L D, gold, and puts some leadership lessons with that, with that acronym.

So he did it at the end, excuse me, at the end of the book, he had 10 gold lessons that he, he added to it. So I was pretty adamant. I didn’t want it to be just about, you know. my life story, so to speak. I wanted to have some really good information for coaches, leadership excuse me, leadership style things and just throughout the book.

 how I got to be where I was at that period of time. And so I thought Pete did a tremendous job of writing the book. And he did all the writing. We talked a lot, but he certainly did all the writing. I’m not a writer. I don’t tend to be a writer. I don’t want to be a writer. But I thought Pete really did a great job of intertwining things that coaches can really pick up.

that happened throughout the book and then accumulation at the end of the 10 goal lessons at the end of the book. I think it was a great way to, to summarize everything that’s happened in the book about my coaching career. It really is,

[01:06:06] Mike Klinzing: and I really thought that it was well organized, well done.

You guys did a tremendous job. I’m going to take and steal one of the gold lessons, which is number four, end on a positive. So let’s take the podcast and let’s end on a positive by Letting you share what that means to you as a coach when you say, end on a positive.

[01:06:35] Don Showalter: Yeah, I think as a coach, and I’ll just read part of it there, it says, When you coach your team, your goal is never to win a game.

That is your objective. Your goal is to develop the players you have into young men who are a real plus to society and become great dads, spouses, and leaders in the community. So we talk about the wins and losses are going to come and go. If that’s your only goal, you’re never going to be happy.

I mean, you’re never going to be able to be a person who feels good about what you have given your players. So I think that’s obviously an objective. That’s an objective we all have. And then we always end practice with a, what we call a communication circle. We just, we just circle up, hold hands, answer a question of the day.

Like we’ll have players tell each other what they did good in practice. Just to get to know each other. But I think that’s, that was really good. That’s communication circles, a great way to end on a, end on a positive. And, and then  the, the positive thing, the positive vibes. Really, really come from a leadership example of, of the coaching staff.

I mean, if we’re going to end on a positive note every day, which we want to do there’s going to be things that go wrong. Basketball sometimes is a, is an ugly game because it’s full of mistakes as we all know. But I always thought, Hey, we got to have our players leave with some semblance of having a positive time in practice. So they want to come back to practice. So they want to get better at their skills. So they want to improve on the, the ugly times in the game basketball. And so this goal lesson for me number four is probably one of those that that I really put a lot of emphasis on. As well.

And  now I get to coach my grandsons teams they’re very young and they’re still youth basketball. And I just want them to come back. Want them to come back with a positive attitude and leave with a positive attitude. So I think if we can do that as a coach. We’ve really come a long way in helping them be who they are.

[01:09:01] Mike Klinzing: You’ve said it really well. I mean, I think the point you made earlier about, as a youth coach, what you want to do is have kids develop a love for the game. And if they develop a love for the game, they’re going to keep coming back to it. And that’s how they eventually are going to become really good players.

If they love it, then they’re going to want to spend time at it, help the game to grow. And I think that’s ultimately, if you’re a coach that that’s your goal is to, to develop and instill that love of the game and your players. And I think that’s a, that’s a really way, a really good way for us to end the podcast on a positive note, before we wrap up completely, just let people know again, Where they can get the book and give the title and then how people can reach out to you and find out more about what you guys are doing at USA basketball.

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

[01:09:53] Don Showalter: Yeah, for sure. Well, first of all, Mike, really appreciate the opportunity to be on your podcast again. You just do such a great job for basketball, promoting basketball, helping coaches with what you do. So you keep up the great work.

I have a lot of respect for what you do. My book, the book that I shouldn’t say my book is the book Pete wrote about me “cornfields to gold medals” is the name of it. I really liked the title. It’s kind of a catchy title as well. It just says coaching, championship, basketball, lessons in leadership.

And he rise from humble beginnings. It’s, you can get it in Amazon is a place that has the, the book. They’ve sold a lot of books on through Amazon. Barnes and Noble stores also have, have the book. I know the one here in Iowa City had the book and actually. Thank goodness it got sold out.

I guess my mom must have bought all of them down there, but they order it and they’ll have, they can order right away and it’ll be in. So those are the two big places that you can get the book. Cornfields to Gold Medals.

[01:11:05] Mike Klinzing: Don, first of all, thanks again for the kind words. Truly appreciate it.

Coming from you, again, means a ton to myself and to Jason, I say this to every coach that we have on the podcast now, coach, that when I’m talking to them about the roundtables, I always say you can contribute to a roundtable and  we’ll send you out a t shirt if you contribute to your first one, and then we’ll do a book drawing and get you a book if you win the drawing.

I said and some guys that we have on the podcast never contribute to one. Some guys contribute to the first one and get their t shirt. And then we have guys that contribute to a lot. I said, I think Coach Showalter has done every single round table we’ve ever had. So, your support of what we’re doing means the world to me.

I can’t even honestly put it into words what your support of what we’re trying to do has meant to us. I feel like it’s helped to lend what we do an air of credibility. And I don’t take the words that you just shared. I don’t take that lightly. I’m truly appreciative and I’m thankful that you were willing to come on.

The book is awesome. If you get a chance to go out and pick it up. Please, please pick up the book. If you are a coach on any level, you will love Cornfields to Gold Medals. It is just extremely well written. You will learn a ton, not only about Don Showalter, but you will also learn a lot about what it means to be a great coach.

So Don, again, thank you. Truly appreciative. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening. And we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.