MACO HAMILTON – GEORGE FOX UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 881

Website – https://athletics.georgefox.edu/sports/mens-basketball

Email – mhamilton@georgefox.edu

Twitter – @coachshark

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Maco Hamilton is in his 11th season as the head men’s basketball coach for George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon. Hamilton took charge of the George Fox program prior to the 2013-14 season after building Union HS in the state of Washington into the powerhouse program it still is today.

Hamilton was Union’s first boys’ basketball coach when the school opened in 2007. In 2009-10, his team won the Washington state championship in Class 3A. He has also assisted at Mountain View High School in Vancouver (2001-03; 04-06), the University of Portland (2003-04) and Ridgefield (Wash.) High School (2006-07).

Maco played at Fort Vancouver High School, Mt. Hood Community College (1998-99) and Eastern Oregon University (1999-01).

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Have a notebook handy as you listen to this episode with Maco Hamilton, Head Men’s Basketball Coach at George Fox university.

What We Discuss with Maco Hamilton

• “I just loved being around the game, loved playing it, loved using my imagination, and it’s something that’s been with me really my whole life.”
• How getting cut from his high school freshman team became a turning point in his playing career
• His favorite memory from high school basketball
• Being a walk-on at Eastern Washington and playing JUCO at Mount Hood Community College
• The connection he felt with his teammates at Eastern Oregon
• His dream of working in an NBA front office
• The advice he got from Chris Grant that coaching could leading to scouting in the NBA which could lead to a front office job
• “I fell in love with it. Working with those young people and just being around the game in a different facet was amazing to me.”
• His first job coaching freshman basketball
• Volunteering at the University of Portland
• “Whether you’re coaching college or high school, the impact on young people doesn’t matter.  The level doesn’t matter. It’s basketball and it’s young people and you can have influence and impact and make a difference.”
• The uncertainty that your athletes have if you don’t give them the why behind it
• Advice for connecting with players off the court
• “Am I going to go above and beyond to show that it is important that you are in my life?”
• The two biggest differences between coaching in college vs high school
• Building a high school basketball program from scratch at Union High School in Washington
• “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve matured in my ability to take feedback, to look at things differently, to make adjustments.”
• Not giving in and sticking with what’s important as a young head coach
• The challenge of becoming a head coach and suddenly not being liked by everyone like you were as an assistant
• “The opinions of others don’t have to define who I am.”
• Thinking about a return to college after winning a state championship at Union High School
• The preparation that went into his interview at George Fox
• “I’m a competitor.  I want to win games. But most importantly to me is I want to be transformational with the young men that are in my program.”
• The pushback from returning players when taking over a new program
• Figuring out the right type of player to recruit as a new head coach
• The pros and cons of AAU vs high school in recruiting
• “I like to keep the competitive energy. I want different guys going at each other.  I want different groups playing together.”
• How he used his team’s eight days this fall
• “As we talk to our guys at the end of the year we kind of write out for them areas that we want to see them improve and things that they can do to work on that.  And then we really trust that they are putting that work in”
• “I think too often, especially in the world of sports, we deem leaders as the people with the loudest voice, the most charismatic personality, the best players on a team or the most tenured players in, in a program.  And I just think those are all false.”
• “Leaders make those around them better. So if we have 16 or 17 guys in our program pouring into one another, making everyone better then, then we’re going to be really good.”
• “I want our guys to be at ease. I want them to feel confident. And so a big part of that is how I carry myself.  I don’t want to be a coach on game day who’s tense, who’s uptight who’s different than who he is. I want them to see a coach who’s relaxed, who’s joyful, who’s confident, who’s at peace.”
• Game Day Workout vs Shootaround mentality
• Establishing a game day routine
• Maintaining levity through the daily pressures of the job

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THANKS, MACO HAMILTON

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TRANSCRIPT FOR MACO HAMILTON – GEORGE FOX UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 881

[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 in Maco Hamilton, head men’s basketball coach at George Fox University in the state of Oregon. Maco, welcome to Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:19] Maco Hamilton: Hey, thanks Mike and Jason. I appreciate you guys having me on.

[00:00:25] Mike Klinzing: We are thrilled to have you on, looking forward to diving into the diverse array of experiences that you’ve had in the coaching profession. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell us a little bit about some of your first experiences with the game of basketball.  

[00:00:40] Maco Hamilton: Man, I think the earliest memory that I have is when I, well, it was communicated to me by my mother, but when I was two, I had a little nerf basketball hoop, and I think we all get that as little kids and I just fell in love with it.

That’s what I did all the time. And my fondest memory is probably when I was about six years old, I would take my socks, I’d ball them up, tape them up. And we had curtains on our window with a rod going across, kind of old school. And there was a little gap between the wall and the curtain rod.

And that was my basket, my hoop. And I would just play imaginary games. And from there, it just took off, whether it was playing with buddies in the neighborhood, going outside I just loved being around the game, loved playing it, loved using my imagination, and it’s something that’s been with me really my whole life.

I played up till high school, I did multiple sports, so I played Baseball, I did football. High school I dabbled with track a little bit. Basketball was always the love of my heart. But yeah, I dabbled with other sports as well.

[00:01:50] Mike Klinzing: As a high school player, once you kind of settled in on basketball, what did your routine look like as far as becoming a better player? How’d you go about going through that process in terms of your training, pickup basketball? Just what did your off season look like? What were you doing to get better?

[00:02:10] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, that’s great. So I have a unique story.

My freshman year of high school, I actually got cut. Not like Michael Jordan from the varsity team, but I got cut from the freshman team. And that was the first time that the game brought adversity to my life. And so it was kind of a point, a crossroad. It was either give up and do something else or go for it.

And I loved it too much. And so that was the point, Mike, where I really started to like, go heavy with training. It was working on my game every day. I started to lift weights at that point. And this was dating myself, but this was prior to trainers and workout coaches. So I really had to be very curious in terms of seeking from others and then using my creativity and my imagination to get better. And that’s what I did, whether it was going to a gym again, when I was growing up utilizing parks a lot playing pickup games at parks, working on my game, trying new things that I would see from college and pro games, and really, I just wanted to better myself.

I just wanted to continue to work and push and get better. And I was fortunate that I saw the fruits of that as my high school career progressed. And you know, I ended up having a good high school career, was able to move on after that. But yeah, so the, the training regime started at that point.

And then it was just something that literally every day I had to do something, it became an addiction.

[00:03:37] Mike Klinzing: What were some of the things you did? How’d you figure out what you wanted to work in? Because I always tell the story that when I was playing both in high school and college, I kind of had my one workout that I did.

Like I was not necessarily super creative in what I did, and I certainly didn’t have access to all the things that kids have access to today in terms of the different types of drills. So it was kind of like I had one workout that I would do and I was by myself and I had one workout that I would do if I was lucky enough to have somebody that wanted to shoot with me on a given day, but I certainly wasn’t doing all the creative things that kids are doing today. So how’d you go about just putting things together and what kind of things did you put together to work on your game?

[00:04:12] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, that’s great. And so first of all, it was, and again, I was a person that just was a basketball connoisseur.

I loved watching. I mean, I would come home Mondays, it was big Monday on ESPN. I’d watch the big East game, the big 10 game. So as I was watching games. I don’t even think I was really consciously doing it, but just kind of studying and picking things up. So I would just use my imagination and try to go imitate, Hey, I’m watching Kenny Anderson.

Okay. I’m going to try to do something that I saw him do. And then I would also talk to people. My dad was influential giving me like tips and things that I needed to work on. I remember the first time really working on shooting a pull up jump shot. As I progressed in high school, I remember learning as I got stronger, how to adjust my shot, my release point. So I had people who also spoke to me, maybe didn’t give me like drills specifically to work through, but, but tips on things that I needed to do. And so it really was imagination. It was curiosity, others pouring into me. And then it was really like. The kids who I was competing against, there was always someone that was better than me.

And so it was, how can I create an advantage? Maybe I wasn’t as quick as this person. Maybe I wasn’t as strong. So what can I do to help myself? So really just going outside, handling the ball, doing different shooting, old school stuff, getting the chair out, coming off the chair as a screener handling the ball, trying to increase my range, working on different mid range shots.

I think my creativity and my imagination was what really pushed me through the training stuff. And so that became my regimen was just using my mind and my imagination.

[00:05:52] Mike Klinzing: What’s your favorite memory from being a high school player?

[00:05:52] Maco Hamilton: Oh man, that’s a great one.  I would probably say it’s actually funny you asked that. So I just had a friend of mine sent an old Press clipping where I was player of the week in our high school league. And so that just actually triggered the question triggers the thought kind of goes side or hand in hand. So my senior year of high school, we’re playing, I’m at Fort Vancouver high school over here in Southwest Washington state, and we’re playing against Battleground high school.

And they had a young man named Richie Fromm. Richie Fromm played at Gonzaga. He was in that first wave when the Zags really took off in the late 90s. He went on to play professionally in the NBA for several years. And so we were in the same class. It was a tie game timeout.

Coach says, hey, so and so, you’re on Frohm. I said, no, no, no, coach, I got him. And so, I went out and guarded him. We worked out together, trained with him. So, I wasn’t afraid of the matchup. And he drives it, goes up for a shot, and I blocked the shot. Right near the backboard, got the rebound. Clock’s ticking, probably inside of 10, bringing it up the floor.

I look at coach, wave him off, no timeout. We go old one four flat. I make a move, shoot a little floater to win the game. That was a memory that I’ll never forget. It was against a great player. It was a really good team. That was kind of a unique moment for me.

[00:07:11] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s very cool. I mean, especially when you think about somebody that kind of goes on to become at least relatively well known.

And you can always, you can always say, you always got that one in your back pocket, Mako. That’s always fun. It’s always fun to have one of those memories in your, in your, in your pocket. Talk to me a little bit about college basketball. When did you start to think that, Hey, maybe I’m going to have an opportunity to play at that next level?

Was it something that you always dreamed about in the back of your mind? Just kind of what was your mindset as you were graduating from high school and what you thought in terms of your recruitment and what that was all like?

[00:07:43] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, I always dreamed about it. You know, that dream was there was a concern that it may not happen after that freshman year.

But I believe as I probably say the summer going into my senior year is when I felt like, okay, this is a strong probability. And it was because who I was training with in our area, we had. Three guys I mentioned Richie Frahm, Dan Dickau, who’s another Gonzaga player, NBA player, another guy named Derek Neslin, played at Portland State Hall of Famer, three guys that would go on to play at a high level, have great college careers.

They were guys that I worked out with. They were in my class. They were friends of mine. And there was a point Going into my senior year where my ability to keep up with them, to compete with them was there. And at that point it was like, okay, if these guys are high level type kids, there’s a place for me to be able to play.

And that really just continued to spark the desire that I already had. And so pushing through my senior year, my recruitment wasn’t heavy at all. I had a couple of junior colleges, couple of small colleges, and that was about it. And like most young people, I had a desire to play Division One.

And I really wanted to do everything I could to make that happen. I was fortunate enough to put myself in a position where I was an invited walk on at Eastern Washington. This was a new coaching regime, so it was the right time. They were bringing in a big recruiting class, and that was just a wonderful experience for me.

Not only to get a taste of that level of college basketball and everything that it entails but also just to be challenged by guys that were bigger, stronger, faster and really it helped me as I navigated the rest of my college career to understand the things that I needed to continue to improve upon to be an efficient and effective basketball player.

[00:09:35] Mike Klinzing: What did it look like as a walk on? I’m always curious, different programs obviously have different ways they handle that process and just integrating you with the scholarship players and that kind of thing. So just tell me a little bit about your experience kind of from, hey, you set foot on campus and here you are your preferred walk on.  So what did that look like for you?

[00:09:52] Maco Hamilton: Yeah I’ve seen the horror stories and stuff, but mine was great. Like I said, I was fortunate that it was a new coaching regime. This was the first recruiting class, and there was a point where I thought there’s gonna be an opportunity. I was gonna play. I ended up red shirting and I wasn’t ready to play, but they were giving me every opportunity to push to play.

And I really, really appreciated that. I was treated very well. I wasn’t treated as. I was very much you would have never known that I wasn’t a scholarship kid. And I thought that was really cool. So just being able to be integrated into the program, getting the same amount of reps and opportunities, especially early on was awesome for me.

I was connected with the team, roomed with other scholarship guys that were new in that class. And so my experience was healthy And great.  I ended up registering kind of late In the practice process, kind of before we started playing, ended up getting injured halfway through the year, which was tough, but it was beyond that.

I mean, it was an awesome experience. I was really valuable. I got a lot of reps. I was able to compete and play and it helped me to get better, to build my confidence. So when I ended up moving on to other stops, like I always thought back to the those experiences. And so I was very appreciative of that. That it could’ve looked a lot different if, if I wasn’t treated as part of, or kind of you know, pushed to the outside it probably would’ve done different things for my mental.

So I was really proud and pleased with the opportunities that I got there.

[00:11:25] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I think that when you start looking at programs and coaches that do it right, I think the way that they handle walk ons, I think tells you a lot about kind of what type of culture that a school and a team and a coach is building.

And look, you can do it, as you said, you can do it a lot of different ways. And you can either do it in a way that it turns out to be positive for somebody who’s a walk on, and you can obviously put those walk-ons in positions where it’s not nearly as positive. And it’s always good to hear from guys that had good experiences.

Most of the guys that we’ve had on the podcast, at least, that have had that walk on experience have had nothing but good things to say about the programs that they’ve been in, which is always. Which is always good to hear because there are, there are those nightmare stories out there, but I think there are fewer and farther between than maybe they used to be way back, way back, way back in the day.

So, after that experience at Eastern Washington, is that when you end up at Mount Hood next?

[00:12:23] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, yeah. So, my journey takes me to Mount Hood Community College. Again, a very unique, the junior college route is different. And, but it was something that was I always try to pull from the positives and my experience was great.

I had two different coaches in junior college, you don’t know who’s going to show up. You don’t know how they’re going to be, what their previous experiences are. And it was neat. It was unique, different relationships, different challenges that helped me grow and really poured into me. I was fortunate to, especially my second year there to have a really good season to get further opportunities beyond the two year route.

But man, it was different going from the division one to the Juco stuff. You’re just a different lifestyle. And again, and we’ll probably get to this later, but all these little experiences I had as a player. Really also helped shape me as a coach. And so that’s something that I really, even beyond what I accomplished or learned as a player, like I pull a lot from those experiences in my coaching.  So that was a very unique experience as well.

[00:13:24] Mike Klinzing: What were you thinking at this point in terms of academics and career?

[00:13:28] Maco Hamilton: Mike, I was always academically driven. I was always, I had career ambitions from a young age. So that never wavered in this process of chasing the basketball dream.

I never got off kilter with what I wanted to do as a professional once the basketball opportunity ceased. And so for me academically, even in the junior college environment I was able to It wasn’t rigorous, but I was able to maintain my integrity in terms of the balance and the effort in both my athletic endeavors and then obviously what I was doing academically.

[00:14:09] Mike Klinzing: After Mount Hood, Eastern Oregon is next. Tell me a little bit about how that came to be, what the thought process was there.

[00:14:16] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, so I had a few different opportunities from junior college. Eastern Oregon was a school I wasn’t familiar with. Had never been that direction of the state. But they had a coach, a gentleman named Art Fuhrman, who was persistent in the recruiting process.

I took a visit and really fell in love. Not so much with the school and the place but the program of all the visits that I had taken after my second year at Mount Hood that was the place where I felt the most connection amongst the team members. I remember. Getting there on campus, being hosted, and it felt like I had been friends with those guys for a long period of time, not that I just met them.

And it was just, it was something different. And it was something that I had never experienced in my time as an athlete. I had relationships with teammates in high school that’s pretty natural. I had good relationships with Roommates and teammates at Eastern and some at Mt. Hood, but this was the first time where the collection of individuals on the team really there was a deeper connection. So I really love that. I love the opportunities that were going to be presented to me from just a play standpoint and the need. It was very apparent that I was wanted and coached.

And so it was a place that, like I said, was kind of off the radar and didn’t think much about. And it became the place where I ultimately settled and I’m just grateful for it. It was a wonderful experience developed great relationships that carry on to this day. My head coach and I are still very close.

And I’m very, very grateful for that experience and that opportunity. And from a basketball perspective we did things there in the two years I was there that hadn’t been done in the history of the program. It’s not a program prior to my, my arrival before I got there that had much of a winning history.

And we did some good things to start moving the needle. Now it’s been a program in the two decades since I’ve been gone, that’s been competing at a high level at the NAIA level. And I’m glad to feel like I was a part of that foundation. All right. Same

[00:16:31] Mike Klinzing: All right. Same question I asked you about high school.  What’s your favorite memory from your time at Eastern Oregon?

[00:16:34] Maco Hamilton: Oh man, that’s another good one, Mike. You know, I would say there, there’s probably several. One that jumps out is my junior year, first year there late in the season, we’re playing what was then known as Albertson’s College now is College of Idaho, and they were ranked third in the country.

We hadn’t beat them in years. It was a home game. It was a big game for us as we were jockeying for playoff positioning, and we upset them at home. I had a really good game individually. We played really well as a team. It was just a landmark win for our coach, for our program. I’ll never forget that.

It was, of all the games we won during, during those two years I was there, that one stands out as the one that just was great and memorable. And it was really cool. It’s always good when you play well and you win, right? And so that was kind of icing on the cake.

[00:17:30] Mike Klinzing: That’s sort of the happiest moment as a player, right? You can maybe, you can maybe take some solace in one or the other. If you don’t play as well as you liked and your team wins or you play well and your team loses, you can kind of take some solace in one or the other. But certainly as any player will attest to that, if you can combine the two, that a good game for yourself and a win, there’s nothing better than that as a player.  There’s no question.

[00:17:51] Maco Hamilton: That’s absolutely right.

[00:17:54] Mike Klinzing: So as you graduate, are you kind of locked in on coaching as a career at that point? Or what’s your thought process?

[00:18:01] Maco Hamilton: Oh, Mike, coaching was the furthest thing from my radar. My desire that I mentioned earlier that I always kind of had a career aspiration.

I’ve always wanted to work in the front office of a professional basketball organization. Going back to when I was young, I would do mock drafts, player profiles. I would write, type out reports as though I was doing draft reports. Again, when I was growing up, there was no internet.

So it was all magazine publications that would do that stuff. That was my dream. And my coach was coach from a very connected was great. And helping just us get to different places. And in my senior year, I had a conversation with a gentleman, Chris Grant at the time was in the front office, I believe, assistant GM with the Atlanta Hawks.

And, coach set up a conversation with me to talk to him about, okay, what are the next steps as I’m finishing up my degree and moving on? How can I get my foot in the door? And I’ll never forget what he told me. He said one of the big steps is scouting, being able to evaluate players.

That’s a big part of it. And how you get your foot in the door that way a lot of times is through coaching. If you have the ability to work with athletes, if you have the ability to manage rosters, to evaluate talent that way, that’s a great opportunity into the scouting world, which is then the next step into some type of front office work.

So that’s where my, my mind kind of shifted to coaching. Now, I didn’t want to coach as a career, but it was like, okay, I’m going to have to navigate this. Let me try it. So I applied for several GA jobs and they’re going to take me all over the country. And I just wasn’t at a point where I was ready to do that.

Again, coaching wasn’t something I was thrilled about. I wasn’t really sure if that was the route that I wanted to take to get in. I had done an internship with the WNBA’s Portland Fire the summer going into my senior year. So there were opportunities to maybe navigate back in that realm. So I just wasn’t sure.

So I ended up getting my degree. I went on a Three week trip with Athletes in Action. I toured with them at the summer, at the end of my graduating senior year. And so when I came back home from doing that I was still also flirting with, did I want to try to play overseas somewhere? So it’s just kind of navigating all the different things.

Well, that was the same fall when 9-11 hit. So when 9-11 hit, that kind of rocked our country, the opportunities to go overseas and stuff became trickier. And so I’m sitting at home really like figuring out what do I want to do? And so that I’m kind of taking you on a journey to how I got into coaching.

So then that led me to getting a phone call from a local high school coach who said, Hey, we have an opening on our staff, you’d be coaching our freshman team would you be interested? So I said, yeah, let me just do that. I can make a little bit of money. I can figure out what I want to do from here.

Dabble with this coaching thing. Let me see what happens. And Mike, from that point, I fell in love with it. Working with those young people and just being around the game in a different facet was amazing to me. It filled the competitive juices that I still have from my playing days. It allowed me to continue to navigate just the artistic and the imaginative side of basketball using my intellect.

My scheme knowledge to be able to articulate and to teach young people. It was what my calling was. I didn’t know it. And from that point on my journey started and that’s where the love began

[00:21:32] Mike Klinzing: What grabbed you right away. Is there one thing that just made you think, man, this is it.  I’m in the right place, even though I didn’t even know that that’s where was headed.

[00:21:40] Maco Hamilton: Honestly, Mike was just being around the game still. You know, when I was done playing, I thought that was it, that was my basketball journey. I didn’t realize there was another side to it that was fascinating.

That was required attention to detail, required commitment, required continuing to learn and grow. It was was phenomenal. And it was a different side of the game I had never experienced. That was it. And then beyond that, I just I had mentioned my experience at Eastern Oregon, The Connections.

I had a coach who poured into me tremendously. And so being able to now be the author of that with a group of young people was heaven sent. It was a joy. And it was, it felt like I was doing something that was bigger than myself. Those two things really is what sparked the fire and it just kept it burning.

[00:22:34] Mike Klinzing: At that point, were you ready to abandon the dream of being in the front office and start really looking at, okay, if I want to do this coaching thing, obviously at this point you’re coaching at the high school level. So you have to start thinking, okay, is this the level I want to be at? I know eventually you go to the University of Portland after a couple of years and work there for one season.

So just talk a little bit about sort of how you began to look at coaching as a potential profession.

[00:23:04] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, that’s exactly, exactly right. At that point, I was like, all right, this coaching thing is pretty cool. Now what I want to do with it and being kind of freshly removed from being a collegiate athlete, the desire to get back to that level was there.

And so as I started coaching and just really my mind, again, I say this with a lot of humility, but my mind in the game has always been good and I didn’t realize it. And so as I started coaching and X and O and scheme, and it was like, man, I want to do this at a higher level. Like, this is great working with high school kids, but there’s only so much you can do with 14 year olds that I was coaching and then assisting with a varsity team of 16, 17 year olds.

Like, I want to go deeper. You know, I want to, there’s more stuff that I want to do. And so that’s where the desire arose to like, Hey, let me see if I can get into the college game. Again, I didn’t, I was very naive to what that would look like. But, I was very fortunate to get the opportunity with the university of Portland.

Michael Holton was a coach at the time and he was gracious enough just to let me be around. I really wasn’t an assistant coach. I was a volunteer that just helped. in any capacity. And so that was phenomenal. It was good for me because I was able to be involved, but be back enough to have kind of a bird’s eye view of how things were done without being in the mix.

And it was really cool. And I was able to see it from a different side dabble with some things, but really just be right there in the muck of stuff and just seeing it. And that’s when I realized. Whether you’re coaching college or high school, the impact on young people doesn’t matter.

The ability to scheme and game plan and all that stuff is there. The level doesn’t matter. It’s basketball and it’s young people and you can have influence and impact and make a difference. At any point. And so that was that after the University of Portland experiment, that’s when I was like, you know what, I’m resigned to and content to just go on wherever I can get an opportunity to coach and to lead.

And so that kind of started that journey from that point moving forward. But that was a really good experience for me, because had I not had that, I may have been, and I got an opportunity to get into college coaching. somewhere else. I may have been naive to what it entailed and it may have driven me away.

I don’t know. And so I was very fortunate to have that experience.

[00:25:27] Mike Klinzing: Right. So during these different experiences that you had as an assistant coach, what are one or two lessons that you picked up that when you eventually got the opportunity to be a head coach, you feel like made you better prepared to step into that lead role?

[00:25:44] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, that’s great. I would say number one, just how you organize and articulate I think the ability to communicate with your team is really, really important. And it doesn’t have to be like, why we’re doing this certain offensive action or why we defend a certain way. Being able to articulate your philosophy.

Aspects of your culture why we’re traveling the way we are, why we’re eating here, why we’re stretching the way we do. Just learning and watching and seeing all the stuff that is required to run a program, but yet all of the questions. And the uncertainty that your athletes have if you don’t give them the why behind it.

So that was number one, just being on top of my organization, being able to articulate. The second thing is just how you interact with your kids. That was something that I learned in my years as an assistant. How do you build the trust and how do you connect with your athletes? We ask a lot of them. We demand a lot.

And I’ve seen places where the connection between the coaching staff or the head coach and the players hasn’t been great and there’s reluctancy on the part of the kids to do everything or want to do everything. And I’ve seen the flip side of that where the connections are great and kids are willing to do whatever.

Those are the two biggest lessons that I learned that when I started when I became a head coach from day one was things that I didn’t compromise at all and make sure that they were at the forefront of what I philosophically did and executed.

[00:27:27] Mike Klinzing: How do you make sure those relationships are on point and that they’re what you want them to be?

What do you do from an intentional standpoint to make sure, obviously there’s a lot of just natural back and forth and give and take and build the relationship with the kid. But what do you do on an intentional level to make sure that you’re getting, building the kind of relationships that you want?

[00:27:47] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, that’s awesome. Like, there’s just meeting them where they’re at, stepping away from spaces that naturally bring us together. So when I was working as a high school coach and I’m a guidance counselor, like there was natural times where we’re just coming together. Whether it be a practice, an open gym, a kid needed to come to my office to get a schedule change like, where can I meet them where they’re at?

Where can we connect away from these natural spaces? That’s part of the intentionality. It’s maintaining consistency in terms of how often I’m communicating so that they know that, hey, it’s not just a one off or like I’m constantly talking to them, checking in on them, asking them questions that are not basketball related, showing them care and concern, following up on conversations that we had where there was a need to follow up on, right?

That’s a part of the intentionality. It’s inviting them in places like bring them to my house, letting them see me as a family man, going golfing with them. Hey, let’s go get lunch. Just meeting them with their families, going to their houses going to, they have a graduation party, a birthday party, like just really being a part of their existence as well.

Meeting them in spaces that are, are where they’re at. You said it, intentionality, that’s just what it is. Just being intentional. It’s being like, making it a point to connect like I would with any other relationship whether it’s a close friend, a family member, like, am I going to go above and beyond to show that it is important that you are in my life?

And that’s something that I really, really have found to be you know, necessary when you’re trying to let your players know that you care.

[00:29:33] Mike Klinzing: Biggest difference in being a head coach at the high school level versus being a head coach at the college level. You obviously spent a bunch of years as a head high school coach building the program and then you’ve done the same thing.

At the college level, what do you think is the biggest, biggest difference between the two?

[00:29:50] Maco Hamilton: I think there’s two big ones that jump out. Number one’s the recruiting part. Recruiting is a separate job in and of itself at the collegiate level. And really, Kind of going back to my career aspirations, I’m actually a GM of a college basketball program, right?

Cause I got to build the roster every year. So I’m actually getting the opportunity to do what I always loved just in a different capacity. So your ability to recruit, to build a roster, whereas in high school, kids were coming to you. You don’t know how good they were, but you were going to have a team every year.

So that was there. The second thing is 15, 16, even 17 year olds, they’re easy to mold. They’re still very young in their basketball experiences. By and large, the first time that they may really get some type of high level coaching is when they get to high school.

So they’re sponges. They’re going to soak things up. For the most part, they’re going to do what you ask them to do. When you get to college, even if you’re getting a kid out of high school, they’re coming with some experiences. At this point now, they’ve been coached for three or four years by a high school coach.

They’ve had a club coach for several years. They have a way of doing things. They have a way that they think is the right way to do it, or they have habits that they have developed through those past experiences. So when they come to you and you’re asking them to do things that are a little bit different than what they’ve done there’s going to be a little bit of a resistance or a pushback.

There’s still a lot of guys, when they get to college, they feel like they have the answers and they are going to be the difference in transforming a program. And so now their ability to adapt is what’s challenged. So to me, those are the two, two biggest differences. So it makes the whole relationship part at the college level, even that more important because now we’re getting guys that come in and they’re kind of looking at you like, wait, we’re defending that way or you’re asking me to do that. And so they got to know that I care about them, that I believe in them, that they’re valued so that they can say, all right, I’m going to trust you here. I’m not sure, but I’m going to trust you.

And then once they see the results work out, then they become creatures of habit. Now they’re all into that. But you have to they’re not just like they are in high school. You have to kind of work and massage that part of their experiences.

[00:32:17] Mike Klinzing: All right.  Let’s work backwards to the job at Union High School, which If I’m, my research is correct that you became the first basketball coach when that school began. So as the school is opening, you are starting a program completely from scratch. Is that correct?

[00:32:35] Maco Hamilton: That is correct, Mike.

[00:32:38] Mike Klinzing: All right. So that’s your first head coaching experience.  So I guess you don’t really know any different about how to compare it to taking over a program that’s established. But when you think back to that time, obviously you get to put your imprint on it. You get to put your stamp. This is kind of molding this thing in your own image. So if you can kind of go back in time to that first couple months on the job and thinking about what you had to do to put together a program, what were some of the things that at that time that you thought like, Hey, I got to get this done.

If we’re going to get the program off to the off to a good start And. And going in the direction that you wanted it to go.

[00:33:16] Maco Hamilton: Yeah. I don’t even know if I really had like a your first hundred day plan. The things that you want to do. I think I was eager to be a head coach And during my time, the years leading up to that point, I was compiling my philosophies in terms of how I wanted to run a program and what was important to me.

And so that was what I was eager to do. So it was from a culture standpoint, I was eager to start this relationship building, development of young men, helping them navigate and grow through life skills.  I was excited to do that. And we had several little things that we did to pour into that.

Schematically, I was excited to put in the defensive system I wanted to do, offensive system that I wanted to do. I was excited to pour into that and get that going. So that’s what we did. Skill wise, I was excited to develop skills of young men and really help them get their games to another level and teach them what I felt like was high level stuff.

So that was a part of it. So it was, it really was like this process of slowly building what I would do if I got a head job. And now it was like the horse at the gate, man, I was just open the gates, let me go. And then I was just going full speed with it. Maybe not a great plan, but I knew what I wanted to do.

And I think that was important and I didn’t waver on that. I didn’t compromise on that. And I think that was a big part of again, I was very naive. If I look back I was 28 years old and if I look back as a man, I probably wasn’t as prepared for the process of getting things implemented, but I knew what I wanted to do and I didn’t compromise.

And I think that allowed me to get the program going quickly in the way that that I felt like it needed to go.

[00:35:11] Mike Klinzing: What was something that you didn’t compromise on? What was something that you said, I got to stick with this no matter how difficult it is?

[00:35:14] Maco Hamilton: Oh, Mike, there’s a lot of things, man. I’m an only child.

I’m stubborn. So it was everything.  I can give you an example. Our very first game we have what we call a team time. So we would meet, I don’t know, let’s just say two hours before tip. So if it was a seven o’clock game, boys would be meeting the classroom at five and we would do like a little pregame snacks.

We’d have parents make PBJs, fruit, just some healthy stuff before the game. So I had a like a hard line rule. If you’re late. There’s a consequence. Now again, I’ve grown, but this was a 28 year old me. So we had three guys who were starting who were a minute late because they were helping one of their teammates get the cooler of food that the mom had prepared to bring it up.

And like hard line. Nope. You guys are a minute late. You’re not starting. I sat those guys the first quarter of the game. They were ticked off at me. Parents were mad at me, but I didn’t give in. That was one example. Another example was we were a team that we were going to press And play full court and get after it.

And we took some butt whoopings. We were young and not very athletic and not experienced. And we would give up a lot of points, but I never wavered. Like I wasn’t going to all of a sudden change and say, all right, man, we’re, and maybe I should have, or maybe a coach who really wanted to win would, but I was like, I’m sacrificing wins to get this style in place. So these kids are comfortable with how we’re playing. And that’s what we did. We only won five games that first year. We competed, but we got our butts kicked. We play against teams that were bigger, stronger, faster, more athletic. And they would just run through our press llike it was a layup line.

But I didn’t waver. This is what we were doing. And those are a couple of examples, but I’m stubborn by nature. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve matured in my ability to take feedback, to look at things differently, make adjustments. But at that point in my journey, like this is what we were doing.

So there were several other examples of a lot of things that we did that I just wasn’t compromising and right, wrong, or indifferent. I do think it helped lay a foundation and that part, I’m at peace with.

[00:37:22] Mike Klinzing: What part of it was harder than you thought going in?

[00:37:24] Maco Hamilton: The hardest part was for the first time, as a young coach I had only been doing this for about five years.

People didn’t, there was times where people didn’t like me. as an assistant coach, I was always well liked. I was the young coach, the players loved me, I was relatable, parents loved me because I was connecting with their kids. And I never was making hard decisions, right? I was the one that players would complain about the head coach to. That probably wasn’t great, but that’s you would get that. Parents, same thing. This is the first time where. Now, players were upset with me. Where a parent who, a day before, was nice and cordial, they’d see me after a game and I’d see a frown on their face or they’d look the other way and they wouldn’t say something.

And that was hard. I’m someone by nature who doesn’t, I’m pretty thick skinned, but, but I’m also human. And when you’re faced with letting someone down or when people are frustrated or upset with you, that’s not easy to accept. And that was the hardest part for me. And so now I was wavering not with confidence, but man, now this is a whole different part of the game that I didn’t know I was going to have to experience.

How do I now make it right yet stay true to who I am. So that created unique challenges for me in that space. But it was also good. It also helped me to stay firm in who I was to believe in myself to understand that the opinions of others don’t have to define who I am. And that was a great part of my journey.

It was some adversity that was needed. I’m thankful that I went through it.

[00:39:09] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that’s a great point. I mean, I think that when you start talking about a difference between a head coach and an assistant coach. That’s a really, really good point that you make about being the guy that everybody likes.

As an assistant, that’s a really easy role to fall into, because a lot of times, look, as an assistant, right, you’re working with guys on their individual game, trying to get them better. You’re sort of that confidant that players can come to, especially if you’re a young guy, where you’re, you’re more relatable than maybe the whole, the head coach, who maybe is a little older and more experienced.

But theoretically, then a little bit more maybe disconnected from that type of connection. And then all of a sudden you go to be in the head coach and now you’re controlling the playing time, which ultimately is what keeps players happy or unhappy. I mean, there’s lots of other factors that go into it, but let’s face it.

You can put up with a lot if you’re going to play a lot and you can put up with very little if you’re not playing a lot. And so I think that when you have to make that adjustment from being an assistant to being a head coach, It can be kind of a shock to the system of all of a sudden it’s like, Hey, I’m no longer just this carefree guy over here sitting on the bench, shrugging my shoulders when a kid doesn’t get to play.

Now suddenly that’s my decision. I think that you made a good point that I don’t think a lot of people, it’s not something that people always think about in terms of making that slide over. I mean, they know they have to make decisions, but just kind of how you have to approach that mentality. I think it’s a really good way of making sure that people understand that transition, that It does change sort of the way that you interact with players and the way that you’re able to, to build that relationship.

Because as you said, as an assistant, everybody loves you. And as a head coach, I always say, if you’re doing it right, not everybody’s going to be happy. If everybody on your team is completely happy and thrilled with where they are, then you’re probably telling some people things that aren’t the truth.

And in the long run, in the long run, that’s going to come back to bite you. And so you have to. You have to do what you think is right. You have to be able to accept the decisions. And when you do that, somebody isn’t going to be happy with you because ultimately you can only put five kids on the floor at a time.

It reminds me of this quote, Greg White, the head coach he’s a high school coach in Arkansas. He always said that when you’re a head coach and you’re talking with parents or players that every parent wants their kid on the floor with the other four best players. And that’s what the lineup that every parent wants to see is their kid and the other four best players.

And I always think that that’s kind of the way that any parent, anybody who has a, has a kid who plays we’re all biased when it comes to our kids. So it’s funny just to think, just, it’s funny just to think about all that stuff. So when in your tenure at Union did Was getting back to college always in the back of your mind or was it an opportunity that arose that you were kind of like, Oh, well, let me think about maybe doing it or was it something that you kind of had thought about Throughout your tenure there at Union.

[00:42:19] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, I was very content Being where I was at when I got the job at Union, I think, as I mentioned before, at that point, the whole college coaching thing wasn’t now at the forefront of what I wanted to do. So when I got the job at Union, I was content. I was excited to build a program and be there for a while.

I would say after my third year we won the state championship. And I think that’s when probably a lot of ego started to And I was like, man, okay, I just won it the highest level in high school. So why not try it? I can do this at the college level. So I think that’s when a desire started again, but I don’t know if it was for the right reasons or if it was a healthy desire.

And so I kind of dabbled, I looked at openings, put my name in for stuff, and nothing really, no bites happened. I had opportunities to go to other high schools in the state, a few other prominent programs, but it was like, Nothing really hit college wise. And I was naive to thinking, I mean, I just won a state title, new school, third year, we just beat as a classification where the best teams in the state are, Oh man, people are going to want me.

And when that didn’t happen, it was a reality check that, you know what? Winning is great, but that doesn’t mean your world is going to, or your life is going to change. And so that was something where it was. Almost a reset for me to stay grounded in where I was at and continue to do the best that I could do and be the best version of me where I was.

And so after those couple of months, after winning the state title and kind of my mind drifting off into la la land, when I came back to reality, I think I was back at peace with, yeah, this is the right spot for me. This is great. And I want to build, continue to build this program And let’s make it a program that’s one of the best in the Northwest year in, year out. And that was where my mind went. And then a few years later, a door opens that was unexpected. And I will say that where my headspace was when the George Fox opportunity came about was different than where it was three years prior.

After we won the state title and I was more prepared and ready to potentially take on a new challenge if that door opened. And so that’s where my mindset was when it came to you know, coaching collegially when I was like, I was very much at peace with where I was at.

[00:44:52] Mike Klinzing: What do you remember about the interview process and maybe questions that they asked you in terms of, okay, you’re a high school head coach.

What do you think you’re going to have to do in terms of adjustments to become a college head coach? Do you remember kind of what some of the line of questioning was that they went through with you during the interview process?

[00:45:09] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, I do, Mike. And I’ll tell you what, when the opportunity arose at Fox, I wasn’t ready to leave Union.

I was very, very entrenched in the community and loved my job, the school, the kids I was working with. And so when this opportunity came up, it was just a competitor in me. It was like, Hey, I’m going to go through this interview and I want to just crush this interview. I didn’t care if I got offered the job or not.

In fact, I didn’t even think I was going to get offered the job. You don’t rarely see the jump from high school to college at any level. Right. And so I wasn’t really expecting that. I just wanted to go in there and just, well, I wanted to come out of that interview feeling satisfied with how I attacked it.

So I prepared Mike for the interview like I would prepare for an opponent, like I prepared as an athlete, like I went all in. I talked to several college coaches who were either acquaintances or friends of mine to ask what’s going to be asked of me in the interview process? What are some things that I got to be prepared for?

And I went after it. I mean, I had a list of questions, pages of questions that I just prepared, had answers for. I did a mock interview, several different occasions. I had close friends of mine come and just be members of an interview committee and they were different people and I had a list of 50 questions that just fire randomly.

So I just could prepare And be ahead of that setting. And I was ready. And so, yeah, I mean, they asked me about recruiting plans, right? I have never done recruiting before, so I knew I had to be prepared. What was my recruiting philosophy going to be like? What am I going to look for? How am I going to go about getting kids there?

It was running a program like what does it look like?  I was able to speak to like how I’m going to run a program at this level, scheduling philosophy. Again, high school coach, you just schedule local teams and it’s not hard. What was my scheduling philosophy going to be like blending the balance of academics now at the college level?

How was I going to be intentional with pouring into kids and helping them navigate that? I mean, just, and I can go on and on. There were a lot of things that, that I wasn’t you know, accustomed to doing that I had to be prepared for, but it forced me to be thoughtful as though, okay, this opportunity arises.

I’m not just saying this just to say it to pass an interview, but this is what I would do. And that was a wonderful experience for me and I’m so glad that I went through it because it forced me to really pick the brains of other college coaches to understand the nuances of this level as well, which helped me then when I got the job to not come into this thing like super naive and blind, but to have an idea and have a plan.

And that was really, really important for me. What questions did you ask them? You know, my big questions were number one, what was the expectation that they had of me? One of the things that I was very leery of if I were to make the jump from high school to college, understanding that this is bigger business, right?

This is your full time job. You can lose games in high school. And as long as Kids are having a good time and you’re coaching with great enthusiasm and effort. You’re going to keep your job here. It’s like, man, we lose games. Like I could be out. So I wanted to know what the expectation was. I didn’t want to compromise my philosophy and coaching, which I’m a competitor.

I want to win games. But most importantly to me is I want to be transformational with the young men that are in my program. And I didn’t want to have to compromise that. So that was a big question for me. Another big question was just kind of centered on, and this is a personal thing, but my family, we had just bought a house that was close to the high school I was working at.

My college campus that I’m at now is 44 miles away from where I live. What was the expectation of me in terms of proximity to campus, were they going to be okay with me commuting? What would that look like? What was the schedule? Was this a rigid show up at eight every day or did I have flexibility?

That was really, really important to me. Those are probably the two big ones that I recall that, that really stood out that I needed confirmation on before I was able to say, yes, this is what I want to want to do.

[00:49:36] Mike Klinzing: The first three months. In the college job versus the first three months in the high school job, differences, similarities, just in terms of how you remember it.

[00:49:44] Maco Hamilton: Well, the big difference, Mike, and you alluded to this earlier, when I took over at Union, it was a brand new school. I was the foundation of everything. This was the first time that I took over a program where things were established. And the coach who was there prior to me being there had been here for 13 years.

I took over a team that was very upper class heavy. So they had been in the program for two, three years, and there’s a way of doing things. I wasn’t prepared for that. No way, shape or form. And I was very naive to what that was going to look like through the interview process and what was communicated to me.

I got the feeling that a change was being embraced. So I thought, Oh, great. They want a new voice and they want to do things a different way. The players were saying they wanted accountability in a different way. So I just felt like anything I would say, they would follow and do. Going back to what I mentioned to you earlier, when you talk about the differences between coaching high school and college, now I was faced for the first time with pushback.

Now I’m telling 22, 21, 20 year old guys who’ve been here, who’ve done it a certain way, this is what we’re doing. There was some pushback and that was really, really, really hard. And that was hard the entire year. So not just the first three months that was the first year I’d see it say even probably the first two years.

There’s definitely things that I would go back and do different, but that was the biggest challenge for me. It was wanting to create the culture, create the philosophy, create the way that we were going to do things. and fighting to get that in and not wanting to compromise and change because I knew it was important that I wanted to do things a certain way.

So, yeah, some of that stubbornness maybe got in the way. There could have been some flexibility or I could have gone through and just said, Nope, this is how we’re doing it. Either step on board or move on and kind of rid myself of some of the difficulties that I had in that first year.

[00:51:52] Mike Klinzing: What about from a recruiting standpoint? What did you have to do? Obviously that’s something new that you hadn’t done during your high school years. What philosophy did you take in terms of recruiting? What kind of intangibles were you looking for? And do you continue to look for in the players that you recruit?

[00:52:06] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, my recruiting, it honestly, it is fluid. It morphs every year. I think early on learning just the, I mean, at the division three level, our financial situation is different and unique at every institution. I knew that going in, but there was a lot of things again, that I was naive to, so that was a part of it.

Learning that. Learning kind of the niche, what type of kid is going to fit the environment of George Fox and what type of kid is going to want to be at a place like this. I also had to learn and it took me a few years to figure out the type of kids we can go get. I was again, I was very well versed in the high school game.

I had coached a little bit of AAU, so I knew club coaches, high school coaches. So that was a problem, but man, I was going after the best kids, Mike. I was Oh, this kid has a small division one interest. Great. Let me get him. He’ll make our program different. And so I may have put a little too much energy into the wrong type of players.

But we also brought in some good kids as well. But I think over time, the way that I vet the things that and not just like how a kid plays, but a lot of the intangible things, things that are important to us, asking the right questions, learning more about the kid. trusting the relationship building process.

Those are things that have really developed and grown over time. Whereas in the early part of it, man, it was like, Oh, I like this kid let’s go after them and see what happens. And then we didn’t get it and all didn’t get that player. And all of a sudden, now we didn’t have a fallback plan.

So just a greater idea of how we wanted to attack recruiting, different tiers of kids, questions we wanted to ask, what we’re looking for. All of those things have continued to evolve during my time.

[00:54:04] Mike Klinzing: How do you look at AAU versus high school when you’re watching a player? Do you prefer one or the other?

Are you looking for different things in different settings? When you think about how it’s changed over the years, obviously you go back 20, 30 years ago, it was all high school. And as AAU has continued to evolve, I think that being able to evaluate so many kids in one location, lots of coaches enjoy just the ability to be able to see so many guys in such a short period of time and the efficiency of it.

So how do you think about watching a kid in their high school environment compared with watching them in their AAU environment?

[00:54:39] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, and I’m not one who balks at the club scene. Now, there are things about it I don’t like. I think kids play too many games in short windows. I don’t think coaching is always great or has the right purpose.

But in terms of the setting, I think both bring value. You know, in the AAU setting, you’re getting to see young men play with other really good players. So now there’s a role adjustment. you’re getting to see them play against other good players. I think that’s really, really important. It’s a little bit more free flowing, right?

There’s a lot of times, there’s less structure. And so now you’re getting to see how kids kind of play off kilter. You get a sense of their feel for the game. What’s their intellect like? Do they communicate in a setting where that’s really, really important? The high school stuff is great because there is more structure.

So you get to see them in roles and you’re trusting that their high school coaches are putting them in positions where they are maximizing what they do well. So you get to see that. You get to see them with defensive structure. How they are on that side of the floor. A lot of times we’re recruiting the best kids on high school teams.

So you get to see what type of leader they are. How do they influence and impact their teams? How do they handle adversity? So I think there’s really, there’s pros to both. I know a lot of coaches, But I would say high school coaching isn’t always perfect either. I think there are definitely flaws in both.

There’s flaws in our youth basketball system in America to be completely frank. We find value in both the AAU scene allows us to see a lot of kids at once, which helps us. And then the high school kid or the high school scene allows us to kind of zero in and really put our attention on a particular kid, which is also very good as well.

[00:56:34] Mike Klinzing: How do you put together your initial list? Where does that come from?

[00:56:35] Maco Hamilton: It’s very…it ranges very diverse. I mean, most of it is through evaluations that we see, whether we’re watching kids with their high school or club teams. Some of it comes from connections in the coaching world, recommendations.

Hey, there’s a kid here. We utilize some recruiting services or people that we’ve known. Some of it is, we get random emails with, with videos that we’ll kind of skim through. And if there’s something that stands out we’ll earmark a kid that way, and then try to find a time to evaluate them.

So yeah, it comes in unique ways. But yeah, I would say a lot of it, most of it is through our evaluation whether it be spring, summer you know, club stuff, winter, high school, early summer, high school, or if we see a film or we’re, we’ve been preppy to a kid from a coach or someone that we feel that we can trust going and watching their film those are ways that we really put the list together.

[00:57:33] Mike Klinzing: All right. We’re right now in the heat of Preseason preparation and getting ready for your first game. How do you approach this preseason practices and try to get your team ready in the short window that you have in terms of practice design? And figuring out what you want to do with your team in a given year.

What does that look like? I know that’s a huge, there’s, there’s a huge, there’s a huge bunch of information that kind of goes underneath that umbrella. Just as you think about the preseason and designing practices to, to get your team ready to play, what does, what does that thought process look like?

[00:58:12] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, it’s, I mean, it really is I would say a semi slow build in terms of understand that I’m fine. We’re not going to get everything in prior to our first game nor should we think that if we did, it’s going to be flawless in terms of our ability to execute. So it’s really like the slow build of the things that are fundamentally really, really important to what we do schematically, making sure that that is in play and our kids understand that.

The second part of it. is the balance because every year we’ll have a collection of guys who’ve been in the program who understand what we’re doing, where you can push on them a little bit. And then we have new guys coming in who they’re very green and this is all new and you have to almost, I don’t want to say dummy it down, but go slower with it.

The unfortunate thing at our level we don’t have the player interaction or the gym time that you get at NAIA D2, D1 level, where we can get to know our team earlier and our players better And get stuff in over a longer period of time the eight days that we were afforded this year at the division three level were very helpful, but still it’s not like the end all be all. And so there’s always that fine line of trying to push for our returning guys. So they are staying engaged and feeling like they’re getting quality reps and being able to build on what they know, but yet moving at a pace where our new guys can adapt and get comfortable with what we’re doing.

So really it’s just a lot of foundational stuff. I’m really big on…I like teaching things from a part. I do think that’s getting harder and harder in this generation that we’re in. Visualization and imagination are great with young people now, so they need to be able to see kind of the entire picture before you break it up.

So, really, we try to balance that out well when we do part stuff, but then showing it in the whole, going back and forth between that. Wanting to do a lot of situational work. To help them be able to see the small pieces, but yet pushing in the live setting so that they’re being able to put things together at a faster pace.

So there’s a lot of like kind of almost give and take back and forth that really it becomes very fluid, very dependent upon the practice that we just had and what we were able to accomplish and where we’re at. I’m someone that’s very…I’ll move in ways where it’s like, we’re going to respond to where our guys are at versus just, Oh, this is what we’re doing today.

We’re doing this tomorrow. Like, I want to be able to meet our guys where they’re at. And if we have to go a little bit slower, that’s fine. If we’re at a point where we’re like, no, we’re doing well on this, we can kind of push on this. Then we’ll do that as well. How do you put together and

[01:01:05] Mike Klinzing: How do you put together and organize your different groups in practice?

In other words, do you have your starters playing together all the time? Do you mix guys in? Do you sign up and go from, again, kind of like what you were just describing where from one practice to the next, you’re like, Hey, I need to see this guy play with this guy, or these two guys need to separate so they can go against each other.

Just how do you think about the groupings that you make with your players in practice?

[01:01:28] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, that’s great. Normally, typically. In a season, we’re blending kids together mixing up the teams every day. It’s kind of different groups where we’ve kind of drifted now. And we’ve been doing this the last week and a half or so, is we’re putting our guys really like our top seven or eight are in a group. They’ve really separated themselves with this particular year. And it happens to be all guys have been in the program, guys who play a lot of minutes. So there’s, there’s gonna be a natural separation, right?

Just because of their experience. And so we’re just playing them together, allowing them to really build a chemistry connect. And they’re moving at a really good pace. So that’s what we’re doing now depending on how younger guys who are new to the program, how they continue to navigate, move as we move forward, we may go back to blending stuff.

But that’s typically, this is new for me. This is not typically how we do it. We’ve never really had a hierarchy where we have a top seven or eight, and those guys are always on a team. We’ve always usually blended and competed. I like to keep the competitive energy. I want different guys going at each other.

I want different groups playing together. We play a lot of guys in our rotation, so that’s, that’s acceptable for when we do that. But right now we’ve adapted and we’ve adjusted and we’re a little bit different in that respect, probably more traditional than in what you’d see in most settings.

How have you used your eight days? So, yeah, I heard another interview you did earlier and I’ve been on calls, I’m on the NABC, so hearing different coaches talk about how they utilize their eight days is different. Some conferences, as you’ve interviewed and seen, do have regulations in terms of how you can use it, right?

We were fortunate that our conference was very open. So we used all of our eight days in the fall. The reason and the positives for me and what I experienced one for us when we start school until our first official day of practice, there’s like a seven week window on. That’s just a time where I think our new guys and young guys, they get a false sense of what their schedule is going to look like.

And it’s like you go from zero to 100, right? Once the season starts, all of a sudden, your time is Limiting your time management is challenging. So being able to have the eight days early, we ended up going like once or twice a week for I think six weeks. And it allowed our guys to get a taste of what a day could look like.

So that was good. And then it just allowed us to get our hooks into our guys earlier, right. It allowed them to be on the floor. They’re here to play basketball. Obviously they’re wanting to get their education, but basketball’s what brought them here. So it allowed them to do the thing that they came here for earlier.

Be a part of that. It allowed us to slower teach our fundamental stuff early, which I loved and so we utilized the eight days in the fall. It really served that purpose. Looking ahead, we were kind of debating, do we want to use some of them in the spring or not? The springtime at that point our guys are mentally and physically exhausted from the season.

They are, I think, wanting to get their time back. I think the last thing they want is to have coach managing their time and we’re not working towards something in their mind, right? In March and April you’re seven or eight months away from October. So in their mind, you’re not really working towards something.

Whereas in September you’re close to you’re working towards something that’s right there that they can see. And then we’re also on the road a lot recruiting and stuff. So even the consistency of what our days have looked like. So we felt like, you know what, utilizing the fall is going to be the best thing for us.

And then giving them their space in the spring to kind of navigate how they’ve done. They can reset themselves and then they’ll do their summer thing and then come back in the fall reinvigorated to start up again.

[01:05:15] Mike Klinzing: Talk a little about what you try to encourage guys to do in the offseason and then how your player leadership kind of falls into, I guess, that category of, again, you don’t have the same type of contact, as you said, that other levels get the opportunity to have.

So, how important is it for you to develop those leaders on your team that can kind of get guys? in the gym and be sort of that quote unquote player led team.

[01:05:40] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, that’s very important. That’s something that we saw this summer. In fact, we have several guys from California on our roster And there was numerous occasions where some of our upperclassmen would bring guys together that were our Southern Cal kids.

And that included our new commits at that time. And they were doing stuff in the gym. It was really cool to see that. We also do a lot of like our guys do a lot of small group interactions. And so that’s a way where they can kind of talk through what they’re working on, hold each other accountable and just, again, be another source of inspiration through that process.

I’m really big on, and I actually heard you say this in that same interview as a player, like you want it to be away from your coach, right? You spend months being challenged by a coach every day, told what to do, and I was the exact same way, Mike, as a player. Like, I wanted that space to be able to use my own creativity to work on my game.

I knew the things that I needed to do to get better. We’re our best critic, right? We know. And so I wanted that freedom, and so that’s kind of where we’re at now. As we talk to our guys at the end of the year. We kind of write out for them areas that we want to see them improve and things that they can do to work on that.

And then we really trust that they are putting that work in as I communicate with them in the off season you know, whether we’re on the phone, we do a FaceTime I’m always checking in, how are you doing? How are you working? You’ve been working on your ball screen reads and you’ve been working on the tempo to your jumper.

What’s that look like? What drills have you been doing? Just a little check in. And I love for them to share with me, obviously I can’t be hands on with them or be there with them. So it’s very self led, but it’s really cool to hear what they’re doing, but we try to give them at least some tools or a template on what they can do.

And then, as I mentioned earlier, and this nowadays so many of these guys have skill coaches or trainers. And so the hope is that they are utilizing those individuals in ways that are going to help them be effective in what they need to do to be effective for us.

[01:07:54] Mike Klinzing: What do you do with leadership during the season as far as developing that amongst your guys?

Are you looking for guys who are kind of natural leaders? And are you trying to develop that in each guy? Do you formally try to develop leaders? How does that play out within, within the season with your guys?

[01:08:11] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, I’m a big believer that, that leadership is a skill that just needs to be worked.

I think leaders come in all shapes and sizes with different voices, different personalities. I think too often, especially in the world of sports, we deem leaders as the people with the loudest voice, the most charismatic personality, the best players on a team or the most tenured players in, in a program.

And I just think those are all false. I think there is a sense of empowerment when you’ve been in a program for a lot of years, or a sense of empowerment when you’re. Looking around the room and you’re like, I’m the best dude, but to me that can also be abused. And so we’re very intentional about how we develop leaders.

We want all of the young men in our program to be leaders. And again, some people will have influence in different ways than others. And for us, as we get to know our guys on a personal level and who they are as people, we can help navigate them in ways where their influence is there, but simply.

Leaders make those around them better. So if we have 16 or 17 guys in our program pouring into one another, making everyone better then, then we’re going to be really good. We do a lot of different things to help with that. We have one on one conversations where I am really speaking into them in ways that we feel like they can have influence and given them.

Tools, tips, guidance, and then allowing them to talk and share kind of what the challenges are you know, what they feel good about. We do small group settings where our guys come together. They’ll have different topics. Some are player led, some are coach led. There’s a combination where they’re just talking through things, where their voice is heard.

We do a leadership council where our team comes together without coaches, and they’re able to, to talk through everything. Whether it’s things that we’re doing as a program, whether it’s life stuff but their voice is heard. We are really just trying to help these guys find their voice.

And find their influence. And once that is identified, and once they find those subtle ways that they can really speak truth and into their teammates, then it’s about really just allowing them to go and do that and giving them those opportunities to do that. And so that’s really big for us.

[01:10:28] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, giving them space, I always think is an important part of it, right? That you have to be able to, as a coach, figure out where are areas where I can step back or where can I have the staff step back and give players the opportunity to sort of take the reins And lead in these different areas. And that’s hard to do.

I mean, especially as a young coach without a lot of experience, I think young coaches, sometimes you feel like you have to micromanage everything and you have to again, that’s part of how you get to be successful, right? Having your hand in a lot of stuff and learning and whatever. But then I think ultimately when you really, when you really get to a level where you feel like you know what you’re doing, it’s easier to, it’s easier to step back.

And to me, I think with leadership, that that’s a really big key is you have to give guys the opportunity to. to step into that leadership role and provide that open space. And because if you don’t, they’re just, you can talk about leadership all you want, but if you never give players an opportunity to really step into that leadership role, it’s much more difficult to develop the kind of leaders that you want.

Let’s put it that way. So, all right. When you’re thinking about game day, walk me through what a game day looks like from your perspective as a head coach. And then kind of from your team’s perspective, what are you hoping to accomplish in the hours leading up to a game? What does it look like?

[01:11:49] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, I think well, for me, first of all it’s trusting the preparation leading up to it, right?

My mind is always thinking a new thought might come in. I’m always just staying on top of what we’ve prepped for game plan wise, what we’re going to do. So I’m not, all right, we’ve done all of our prep work now. I don’t need to think about it. It’s still there, but it’s trusting the preparation, trusting the work that we’ve done through the film, through the conversations, through what we’ve done on the floor to be ready for that.

It is my disposition I want our guys to, to be at ease. I want them to feel confident. And so a big part of that is how I carry myself.  I don’t want to be a coach on game day who’s tense, who’s uptight who’s different than who he is. I want them to see a coach who’s relaxed, who’s joyful, who’s confident, who’s at peace.

And so that’s something that is really, really important to me as well. For our guys what we do we want them to have as much normalcy as possible. You know, staying in their routines that they have. And we do have a pretty structured routine that we do and we’re consistent with it.

But really, everything starts with us. You know, we have, we call them game day workouts. Obviously in the basketball world, shoot arounds. We like the term game day workout because I feel like it has a little bit more of an effort connotation to it versus a shoot around where I think that can become laxed.

So we want our guys to understand that during that window, whether we’re just getting shots up, whether we’re dry running offensive actions that we’re going to do that day, whether we’re walking through or jogging through just defensive scheme, adjustment reminders, like we want to deal with pace and energy.

We want the effort to be there and then we do a team dinner. We do that at pregame meal, I should say. And we usually do that about three and a half hours before tip. And then our routine really starts two hours before tip. We get together. We do what we call our team time. I mentioned that earlier is where we just kind of speak about life skills, how we can apply something in life to the game of basketball.

We want our guys being challenged and who they are as people, but yet seeing the correlation between sport and life. We go through a mindfulness segment. We do a game plan review. We give our guys time especially in non conference games when we have non double headers to give our guys time on the court and we’ll do some structured on court skill work.

We give them time to work with the AT staff just to get their bodies right, whether it’s stretching any type of recovery stuff that they need to do. And then yeah, then we, we kind of meet final thoughts, do our stretch routine and I’ll usually have some type of, Word of inspiration and then we hit the floor and we’re ready to roll.

So we have a pretty set rigid routine that is good and our guy and we’re consistent with it both home and away so our guys know what to expect and I think that’s really, really important.

[01:14:46] Mike Klinzing: Got it. All right. Final question. Two parts. Part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge?

And then part two, when you think about what you get to do every day, what brings you the most joy? So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:15:02] Maco Hamilton: Yeah, I think the biggest challenge is for me to maintain levity and who I am. Again, we’re in a business where winning and losing is a big part of how, not all the other things are that are behind the scenes are not visibly seen, don’t get a lot of attention.

And so winning and losing is a big part of that. And so my biggest challenge is maintaining levity through that. Again, we’re building a program. We’re trying to win. We’re going to try to bring the best guys in and do right by them to win games. But circumstances happen. And sometimes things don’t always go the way you want or expect, so can I maintain levity through that? And then my, the biggest joy, Mike, is just doing what I do, is I talk to you about when I first started coaching, how I fell in love with it, being around the game, being challenged by the process of scheming, of running a program, of being able to connect with young people and pour into them.

That love hasn’t gone away. It’s still burning, it’s still there. Every day when I Get to come to the office and meet with a player go have lunch with them, check in on them, practice plan, watch film. Like, I love it. It’s a fun challenge. It’s not only a challenge in competing for excellence to win, but it’s also a challenge in competing for excellence to help build young people who are going to be difference makers when they leave our program.

So that’s what I love And that trumps everything else. Yeah, it’s well

[01:16:33] Mike Klinzing:  Yeah, it’s well said. I mean, I think that when you start talking about what coaching is all about and the kind of impact that you can have, that’s really what you’re looking for. And as you said throughout the podcast that you’re competitive just like anybody is competitive and wants to win.

And yet at the same time, there’s ultimately a bigger mission that goes along with that. And I think the best coaches are able to do both, right. You’re able to win games and you’re also able to have that kind of impact. So before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how people can connect with you, find out more about your program.

So if you want to share social media, email, website, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then after you do that, I will jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:17:20] Maco Hamilton: Yeah. I mean above. People to go check out our website GFUBruins.com. You can go and follow us or just Google George Fox athletics, probably the best thing to do.

But yeah, you can learn a lot about our program. There’s a lot of little video clips and things that just kind of give you some insights of who we are. You can follow me on social media, Twitter @CoachShark where you find me and you get some tidbits there. You can follow all of our George Fox athletics.

If you just. George Fox Athletics. We’re on Instagram, we’re on Twitter. You know, our men’s basketball program, George Fox Men’s Basketball or MBB are on those platforms as well. And then all of my contact information is on our athletic website. So if, if anyone out there is interested in emailing me, connecting, if there’s things they want to know about our program, questions, curiosities, whether you’re a coach or player, we love to be able to expose what we do.

So I’m always available for that.

[01:18:20] Mike Klinzing: Awesome. Maco, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight. Really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening, and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.