TJ O’CONNOR – FORT CALHOUN (NE) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 854

Website – https://www.fortcalhounschools.org/pioneer-pride/athletics/basketball-boys/

Email – tjoconnor@ftcpioneers.org

Twitter – @coachOC34

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TJ O’Connor is in his 5^th year as the Boys’ Basketball Head Coach at Fort Calhoun High School in Nebraska. Overall, TJ has been in the coaching profession for 20 years and served as a head coach for 8 seasons. 

TJ believes that coaching gives him the opportunity to build relationships, compete, and pour into young people through the game of basketball.  

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Take some notes as you listen to this episode with TJ O’Connor, Boys’ Basketball Head Coach at Fort Calhoun High School in the state of Nebraska.

What We Discuss with TJ O’Connor

• Growing up going to games with his Dad who reffed and his uncle who coached
• Playing on the first team at his school to get to the state tournament since his Dad’s team had done it 25 years earlier
• Why his high school coach may have been ahead of his time
• His original career plan to be am optometrist
• Getting his start in coaching during college back at his high school
• “I saw what a coach could do to young people and to kind of transform the almost whole culture of a high school.”
• “I also think it’s important to find time to be around the guys when you’re not coaching, when you’re not wearing that hat. I try and do a lot of things where our guys see me in a different role.”
• “I try to immerse my family, my own family, as much into my coaching life as possible, and I try to immerse my players into my family life as much as possible.”
• Being a self-serving coach vs. a servant leader
• “It’s always has to be about these kids, not me.”
• Putting your ego aside as a coach
• Keeping practice tempo high
• “If you’re not aware of the score or you’re not aware of the time or both, then we’re just out here at the YMCA playing pickup.”
• “If you don’t think it’s helping you or can help you win, then cut it out.”
• “I want to find guys that are smarter than me. I want to find guys that are going to challenge me that are great basketball minds. I don’t want yes men.”
• “I love giving my assistant coaches a voice. I think that’s hugely important.”
• Developing players that reinforce the culture even when the head coach isn’t around
• “I’m going to do anything and everything I can to engage the parents and turn the parents into advocates for the program.”
• Having a pre-season get together for parents at his house
• “I don’t have the privilege of only having one kid on this team.”
• “What I love about coaching is, it’s one of the last few places that we really can get to the truth.”
• “I care about and love you enough to tell you the truth because there’s a lot of people out there that aren’t willing to tell you the truth.”
• “I would not even be close to where I am today if I didn’t have amazing mentors and amazing guys who’ve been in the profession a lot longer than I have that have taken the time to help me out.”

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THANKS, TJ O’CONNOR

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TRANSCRIPT FOR TJ O’CONNOR – FORT CALHOUN (NE) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 854

[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 be joined by the head boys basketball coach at Fort Calhoun High School. In the state of Nebraska, our first time going to Nebraska, TJ. TJ O’Connor, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod

[00:00:19] TJ O’Connor: Thank you for having me. Good to be here.

[00:00:25] Mike Klinzing: We are thrilled to have you on, looking forward to diving into all of the things that you’ve been able to do in your coaching career. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about some of your first experiences with basketball and with athletics.

[00:00:40] TJ O’Connor: I was pretty fortunate to grow up in a household that was, I would say, had a lot to do with athletic sports. My father runs, still runs a sporting goods store to this day. Kind of a little curbside mom and pop shop in a small town in central Nebraska called North Platte town of about 24,000 people.

And then my uncle he’s basketball coach at the junior college in town there. He’s been there, man. I want to say it’s close to 40 years. That’s a long time.

[00:01:15] Mike Klinzing: That’s a long time to be coaching, man.

[00:01:16] TJ O’Connor: Holy cow. I think he’s pretty close to coming up on 40 years. So I was just really fortunate to grow up around the game.

Had access to. The gym quite a bit because of, of my uncle being out there. So I remember as a little kid, my dad taking me out there a lot to just shoot hoops and really just do anything. I mean, we’d throw the football around in there shoot hoops, play catch, do all sorts of different things.

And so I think that’s kind of where those early seeds were planted not necessarily coaching wise, but just sports and being around sports and what they can kind of do for you from a relationship standpoint. And I was just very interested in sports, watching them, playing, being around them from a very young age.

[00:02:07] Mike Klinzing: Did you know how lucky you were to have gym access when you were a kid or was just kind of, that’s what your life was?

[00:02:12] TJ O’Connor: was? No idea really. I was just kind of like what it was, you know and looking back on it, I realized how fortunate I was just to be brought up around that environment and not to be the old guy that, oh, back in my day, but without having the technology that we have today there wasn’t phones to be on or things like that. So for me, I was always going to games. I would either be at, I mean, four and five nights a week, I would be out at a college game, watching my uncle’s team play, or I would be at My high school’s games they were, I went to the parochial school in town, the Catholic school.

We also had a public school. I would go over to their games. I would watch those games. I would watch games on TV. It’s just kind of what I did. My dad was a basketball official for 20 plus years. So when I was lucky enough to hop in the van with him, I’d hop in with him and go watch him referee.

And at the time I just kind of was like, ah, this is kind of what I get to do. I didn’t really look at it as, man, I’m so privileged to be able to do this, but that’s just kind of what I did. And I was just around it all the time and exposed to those things all the time from a very young age. Was

[00:03:32] Mike Klinzing: Was basketball always at the top of your list, or did it fluctuate between sports?

Just where were you in terms of your participation level and interest in other sports?

[00:03:43] TJ O’Connor: I think at a young age, I was kind of, I just liked whatever season we were in, you know? Small community, had the opportunity to play a lot of Different sports. I was fortunate. I wouldn’t say I was great at anything, but I was just kind of pretty good at all of them, good enough to be able to participate.

And you hadn’t quite seen the explosion of travel or AAU stuff or even select stuff so much back then. So it was kind of like you got to play little league and maybe made an all star team. You got to then play for your school team and basketball. You got to play for your school team and football, even at a young age.

And so I kind of just liked whatever season it was in. Baseball was probably my best sport. And then that was kind of the one I maybe lost interest in the earliest. I kind of gave up on that when I was about 16, probably regret that a little bit, but I would probably say about middle of my high school career, so to speak, is when I kind of started to lean more towards basketball.

[00:04:53] Mike Klinzing: When you started to lean more towards basketball, what did that look like for you? Did that mean you were putting in more time away from team practices and that kind of thing? Or you just, that was the one that captured your attention more that you were finding yourself thinking about? Just what did it mean when you leaned into basketball a little bit more?

[00:05:11] TJ O’Connor: I think, good or bad, we had a group of kids at my high school that had kind of, probably from the time we were in like sixth, seventh grade, kind of got dubbed the next group that could maybe have big things happen at our school. Kind of had a group of kids that liked basketball. We had some success when we were younger, whatever you want to categorize success as at a young age.

But we had a talented group. A couple of kids moved in to our school and, and I think just looking at maybe what kind of success we would maybe be able to have probably maybe drove my interest there a little bit. Just kind of the guys that I kind of ran with and hung out with were also big basketball guys.

And so I think that kind of just maybe steered me in that direction a little bit more than the others.

[00:06:10] Mike Klinzing: What’s your favorite memory from high school basketball?

[00:06:13] TJ O’Connor: You know, it was pretty cool that, so my dad graduated from the same high school as I did. And our high school had not been to the state tournament in 25 years when I was a senior.

The last time they had been to the state tournament was my dad’s senior year. And so we were able to go, we made it to the state tournament my senior year. We got beat by three in the semis, but it was pretty cool to break that streak. My grandfather who lived in Vegas at the time flew in and just going down and being able to experience a state tournament atmosphere and play in that and see the, see what it can kind of do to a school and community and all the people and all the excitement.

I think that for sure for me playing wise and just my high school experience for sure was the, the highlight of my younger basketball experiences.

[00:07:09] Mike Klinzing: When you think back to your time as a high school player and now you think about yourself as a coach, is there one or two things from Your high school coach that you took that you feel like became a part of you and you eventually decided to go into coaching?

[00:07:26] TJ O’Connor: Man, I was probably not an easy kid to coach in high school, . And quite honestly at the time my high school coach was probably quite a bit ahead of the game. When he was coaching us, when I played, I graduated in 02, and he was kind of really big into the three point line and spreading people out and taking more shots from the perimeter and playing more motion offense and kind of letting it fly a little bit and for me, everything I had grown up around, there was probably a little like push pull there where it was like so many teams back then were running continuity, flex, just a much more era of control where it was like, nah, we’re pretty rigid in what we do and disciplined. And so, I think he was really ahead of his time in giving us freedom and really pushing the ball and playing with tempo and pace. And looking back on it He really just allowed us to have confidence as players, he wasn’t going to pull you out after a single mistake.

He wasn’t going to ridicule you for screwing up. And I don’t know that I fully appreciated that at the time. I think watching my uncle coach at the college level and just kind of maybe the way I was raised a little bit, I was always kind of like, We need more discipline or we need more of this or that, but as I’ve grown, I’ve really learned to appreciate my high school coach a lot more and the way that he saw things.

And I still steal a few things that we’ve run. One of my favorite sets that we run with my team is, is one that I got from him. And so he was really, again, at the time I didn’t appreciate it enough, but he was really, I think, ahead of his time a little bit as a coach.

[00:09:31] Mike Klinzing: Was coaching still not on your radar as a high school player?

Was it something you were thinking about at that point or no?

[00:09:37] TJ O’Connor: It was not on my radar at all. Quite honestly, I was chasing dollar signs. I had an uncle who was an optometrist and he did really well for himself. And I kind of looked at all the things he had and got to do. And I said, that looks pretty fun.

And I kind of want that. So I actually originally went to, started my undergrad in college wanting to go to optometry school and do some of that and it wasn’t quite on my radar. But I did start coaching right out of high school. I went and played for my uncle, ironically, at junior college and kind of still helped my first year with football.

I would go help on Friday nights. I wasn’t around much, but I would go help him on Friday nights cause I was… a quarterback and had played quite a bit was a safety on defense. So I could kind of go up top and just radio down what little information I had. So that was kind of my first taste of coaching.

And then probably the hundred thousandth sob story of blew my knee out my freshman year of college and just kind of decided it was probably time to just be a student and no longer play basketball. And so then my second year, I still finished my second year at the junior college in town.

And so my second year, I helped full time with football and basketball at my high school. And so I think probably in the back of my head, that’s when that first kind of coaching itch started to develop. But even then I was still going to go to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln that following year, and I was still kind of set on optometry school.

But I do think that’s where my first kind of seeds of coaching were planted.

[00:11:24] Mike Klinzing: When you first started and got those opportunities back at your high school, what part of it did you really like right away that you knew, hey, if I stay coaching or if this is something that I may want to pursue, what was a part of it that you really enjoyed right from the get go?

[00:11:42] TJ O’Connor: You know, probably more than anything were my football coaches. And, and more than just, The football side of it, it was the relationship that I had with them. I saw what a coach could do to young people and to kind of transform the almost whole culture of a high school. My high school football coach came when I was a sophomore and when he came.

My principal at the time, who used to be the head football coach there, he had given it up, but my principal at the time who I have to this day he’s one of the guys I have the utmost respect for and just. how he is and how he handles himself, but he came back and helped out. And our school was just a very we were probably my freshman year, we were probably, if we weren’t the worst 11 man football team in the state of Nebraska, we were competing for that title.

And the culture of our school, I mean, it was just kind of a, kind of a losing culture kids not doing the right things didn’t have any pride in yourself and your school and, and what you, what you were doing kids, how kids treated each other wasn’t great. And those guys came in my sophomore year and by the time I left as a senior you know, not only, I mean, our football team was ranked number one in the state for a little while. We went to state in basketball my senior year, but I just saw like, a whole flip in the attitude and the excitement and the demeanor and just the whole culture of our school. And the relationship that I built with those guys that just how I related to them and how they related to me and all the things that they did for me and encouraged me with, like, that was probably the thing that drew me to coaching the most was just the impact that you can have on other people, especially young people.

[00:13:51] Mike Klinzing: So, when you think about that transformation of culture, where you go from a situation where nobody really believes that athletic success can happen to all of a sudden, it starts to come together. What do you attribute that to? What was it about those coaches? Was it their ability to build relationships?

And if it was, how did they do that? What do you remember about it from your perspective as a student athlete back then?

[00:14:18] TJ O’Connor: I think it was really a big combination of things. I think the word culture gets thrown around so much building culture and establishing culture and having a great culture.

And sometimes I think we get lost in just the term of it versus, okay, really what goes into having a great culture. And I think for those guys, I think it was a combination of us the work that needed to be put in and the commitment and sacrifice that it was going to take to be successful. I think it was them exuding confidence in themselves and turn confidence in us that if we did do these things, We would see results.

I think it was creating discipline and a kind of just a bond with each other through that hard work and through that commitment. And they did build relationships. They really did, but it was also, it was authentic. It wasn’t like just, Hey, buddy. It was there was that for sure respect factor there, but you also knew that everything that they were doing for you was to help you be at your best and to have success and succeed in what it was you were doing.

[00:16:00] Mike Klinzing: I think what’s interesting, TJ, about your answer is, and it’s one of the things that And when I think about the totality of our interviews that we’ve done over the years that we’ve been doing the Who Peds Pod, one of the things that’s come through is when you ask people to talk about their memories and what are the things that are important to them in terms of Their relationship with their coaches and what they remember about their time as an athlete, whether it’s high school, college, professional, whatever it might be.

It always comes back to somebody who as a coach cared about their players and got to know them. And as you said, it wasn’t just Mike Klinzing. Hey, how you doing, whatever, this sort of fakey relationship. It was, it was a genuine caring for their athletes and nobody really remembers the one loss records.

Nobody remembers the X’s and O’s and the great play that somebody drew up during a timeout. It’s all about that relationship piece and I think to hear you talk about your experiences and how you transform a culture and how your school back then at that time while you were there.

I’m sure that that had a huge impact on you and the kind of coach you are today. So maybe tell me a little bit about how you build relationships with the kids that are in your program today. And obviously, for people who don’t know, TJ is also an assistant football coach. And so, just talk about how you build relationships with kids on both of those teams, again, where you have a different role as well.

[00:17:44] TJ O’Connor: I think that for me, I’ve gone through some kind of hard things in my personal life, hard things you know, through some things in my control, some things out of my control, but I think having empathy. is a big one in realizing that so many of these kids come from different situations.

They come from different backgrounds. They’re dealing with things that you maybe don’t always understand or even maybe take the time to figure out what they’re going through. But I try to be very authentic with our guys and I try to, without being nosy or without being weird about anything. I try to know what’s going on in their life. I try to get to know, like I like to know if guys have girlfriends, I like to know if they’re working a job, I like to know what’s going on at home and, and I don’t try to pry, but I just in conversation and I also think it’s important to find time to be around the guys when you’re not coaching, when you’re not wearing that hat. I try and do a lot of things where our guys see me in a different role. You know, like I said earlier, I have four young kids. I like to bring guys over to my house and let them see me be a dad and let them see me be a husband.

I’m big on one on ones after practice calling guys in, Hey, how’s it going? Everything good in life? I see your maybe down a little bit today. And I think just being authentic, like you said, I think a lot of people can think, well, I said hi to the guy or asked him how he was doing in the hallway, but if the only time they ever see you or relate to you is when you’re on the court between the lines with a whistle around your neck. I think that’s going to be hard to build relationships and talking about being able to coach another sport. I think it’s nice for the guys to see me in an assistant role and in a supporting role get to see me wear a different hat get to see me support a head coach play kind of like we ask our players to do. Like you don’t get to be the star necessarily all the time. So it’s good to see them get to see me in a non leadership role. I mean, I still have obviously leadership as an assistant, but not being the head guy. And so I take coaching just as serious between the lines and on the court and on the field as I do outside of it.

I try to immerse my family, my own family, as much into my coaching life as possible, and I try to immerse my players into my family life as much as possible.

[00:20:53] Mike Klinzing: Easier or harder or the same to build relationships with kids as an assistant versus as a head coach?

[00:20:59] TJ O’Connor: You know, for me, honestly, it’s the same. I haven’t noticed a ton of difference. Football is a little bit different beast in the sense that you know, I’m still making some decisions when it comes to playing time or reps or things like that, because I’m responsible for certain position groups or certain like special teams and things like that.

But I kind of have a saying of just like coaching is coaching. There are for sure differences and being a hundred percent differences being a head versus an assistant. But as far as the relationship piece goes, I don’t notice a ton of difference. And maybe that’s because I share a lot of our athletes, 95 percent of our basketball players are football players.

So I just kind of already have a lot of established relationships with them. So I don’t notice a ton of difference. But I don’t, maybe that’s just me.

[00:21:59] Mike Klinzing: All right, let’s work back in time. When did you know that coaching was what you wanted to do and where you wanted to end up? Was it an aha moment or was it something that built gradually over time as you just had more experience in the coaching profession?

[00:22:15] TJ O’Connor: I think it just kind of built probably two times that kind of cemented it were probably like, I mean, just simple things. I was helping out at, I was going to school at the University of Nebraska Lincoln and me and one of my childhood buddies who was also my college roommate at the time, we helped Coach Flag, 7th and 8th grade flag football team at a middle school there in Lincoln.

And it was just fun. It was just fun being around the kids and seeing them get better and chopping it up with them and getting to know them and seeing them succeed and have a little pride in themselves. And then a couple of years later my same roommate. He was a few years older than me and he had gone into teaching and coaching.

And he was actually down in Omaha coaching, he was an assistant at one of the big schools in Omaha. And he called and asked, they were looking for like a summer coach for their freshmen team. And he had called and asked if I was interested. And so I did that for a spring and first part of a summer.

And we went and played in a tournament and had some success, but it was still just like, I really enjoyed being around the kids and the energy that they gave me and seeing them learn and come together as a team and things like that. And at that point I was kind of hooked on it, so to speak, and, and knew that I wanted to go down that path and just see where it was going to take me.

So, how did that relate to your college major?

So I switched to education after my third year. So, I went two years at junior college, first year down in Lincoln. I was still kind of the trying to go down that path of… you know, maybe optometry school.

So it was my first time away from home. I had a lot of fun, too much fun. Probably did not go to class like I should, had to get the talking to from dad of I didn’t send you down there to not get your education. So after that first year in Lincoln, which would have been my third year of school, I switched over to education.

And so it took me being so late into college, it took me about another, an extra semester probably. So I was, or about a full year. So it took me about five and a half by the time I switched over to get with my student teaching and education and all that. And then I just got right into it from there.

[00:24:51] Mike Klinzing: What’s the first position that you took when you graduated and had that teaching certificate?

[00:24:57] TJ O’Connor: So I actually was fortunate to, so I did my student teaching at Miller North high school in Omaha. And when I student taught, I was also, my roommate who I had mentioned earlier, he was there as an assistant and he kind of, him and the head coach there I knew the head coach from my dad’s refereeing days and he knew my uncle from just the coaching fraternity and all that. And they had a reserve position, an assistant reserve position. So, I went and student taught there and got to coach, kind of low man on the totem pole. And then I was fortunate enough to, after my student teaching I got a full time teaching job there. And so, my first teaching job was teaching high school science at Miller North High School.

And then I was the freshman football coach and a freshman basketball coach. And that was my very first officially paid full time teaching and coaching positions.

What do you remember about that first team?

You know, some of my first teams, probably just a couple of kids, a couple of the kids.  I learned so much. I was just like, I was young. I was single. I mean, it was work hard, play hard. We had an unbelievable staff of basketball coaches. For the head coach is still, I mean, he’s not Miller North, but he’s still a head coach. He went to a small college as an assistant for a little while.

He’s still a head high school coach. And then five of our assistants are now all head coaches around the Omaha metro area, and those guys are way better coaches than I am. They’ve had a lot more success than I’ve had, but it was just a, it was a young staff. It was a hungry staff. It was. I learned so much from them and they were just a blast to be around.

All of our we were all young, most of us without kids or young kids. And so we got to spend a ton of time on basketball and be around each other a lot. And it was just, that was kind of my introduction to the coaching fraternity and how. You know, special that can be to this day, my best friends are, are other coaches or guys that I’ve coached with or, or still coach with.

So that was pretty cool. I always remember you always have a couple of special kids, but we had a freshman who I coached the freshman B team. That was my very first job. And we had a kid on that team. It was just tougher than nails and he was just undersized. And you could just see there was a lot of potential there because of how much grit that he had and how hard that he played. And I was fortunate to be able to be around for all four years of his high school career. And he went from a B team basketball player in a school of 2,400 kids to he was a part time starter slash sixth man as a senior on a team that won 20 games and went to the state tournament.

So, that was awesome to just see what that kid did just through pure work ethic, grit, determination, toughness all of those things. He’s a kid I reference to this day with our kids, and that was just awesome to see.

[00:28:08] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that was going to be my next question is do you use that example with your teams?

So when you think back to that first season and who you were as a coach then compared to who you are as a coach today, if you had to point to one thing, maybe two, and I’m sure you would say there’s a million things, but what’s something that you feel like You’ve dramatically improved in from that first season, something that you’ve grown in the profession.

[00:28:39] TJ O’Connor: I would say absolutely a hundred percent. I was a very self serving coach in those early days. Very self focused climb the ladder. Go get a head job. It’s about me. You know, your ego, you win because of what a good coach you are, and you’re losing when your players aren’t doing what you’re wanting to do.

And quite honestly, as just a young guy, it was just very self focused. And I hate to even admit that, but it was so much less about what can I do for the game and what can I do for these kids versus like, what can they do for me to show to show our head coach that I’m a good coach and I’m doing a great job with these guys to show other people that I maybe deserve to get that next job or things like that.

I hate to say it, but I was just a very. I was hungry and I was eager and I wanted to learn and I wanted to be great and all of those things. But I was just very much like looking back on it. I was, I’m just like, man, I was not a very good, good coach. I could have spent way more time with the relationship side of things.

And a lot of that’s probably just my immaturity and age and not. Not really growing into manhood and things like that, but for sure, I think being a self serving coach versus I think I’ve done a completely 180 and now I’m just a I’ve learned that servant leadership piece.

[00:30:07] Mike Klinzing: How long, how long into it were you before you started to realize that the relation shot, sip shot, easy for me to say the relationship side of it was so important?

[00:30:20] TJ O’Connor: Probably a couple of years for sure. Once I got my first head coaching job, for sure that’s kind of when I was like there’s have to be more to this. Probably hate to say it, but maybe egotistically it’s kind of like, oh, I finally got that head job, like validation of your ego or whatever.

For sure that first year of head coaching, I just, I saw, and I don’t ever want to bad mouth anybody or anything, but the program that I went to had had some struggles and hadn’t had a ton of success and just kind of seeing how maybe beat up the kids were a little bit and just kind of like, haven’t had a whole lot of success.

And I think really early in that first year we actually started off 0-3 and I could just see the kids, like, they were such great kids, and they thought that they were letting me down, and I was like, no, no, no, we have to flip this thing around, like I have to do better for you guys, and, and I just felt so bad, I remember we had a senior we were up late in that third game, and he had a brutal turnover late that led to a score.

And then we had another really bad possession and we ended up losing the game by, oh, I think one or two points. And, and this kid’s in tears in the locker room. And I vividly remember me going over and like putting my hand on him and just being like, Hey, Max, like it’s all right.

And he just flat out was like, you keep saying it’s your fault, but we keep. Letting you down. And I was just like, man, like that one hit me to my core and I’m like, you’re not letting me down. Like you guys are playing, cause they were, they were playing so hard. And I was just like, you’re not letting me down.

Like we’re in this together. And I think that, that moment was a huge, like, okay, like it’s have to be about these kids. It’s always has to be about these kids, not me. That’s powerful stuff. I mean, it really is. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, and I, and it’s, I wish I could say that I always 100 percent all of the time make it about the kids.

We’re human we let our ego and we let our emotions and things like that sometimes take over. But I do think that especially since that first season, I’ve really tried to make that my base, my foundation, my go to where I circle back to when you’re having those tough seasons or you’re having those tough stretches of what are you really doing this for?

[00:33:18] Mike Klinzing: Can you give me an example of a kid first reaction to something that you might have previously when you were more self centered that you might have handled differently? Can you give me a concrete example of a way that you try to make your program, your practices, your day to day interactions kid centric, if that makes any sense?

[00:33:44] TJ O’Connor: Yeah, I think one probably too long of a story, but another pretty powerful story just happened a few years ago. We had a kid this would have been the COVID year 2020 which was kind of a disaster of a year for our program record wise, we weren’t very good. I think we lost 10 games by six or less points.

People were getting put into quarantine. I was in quarantine for a month. We had off the court issues. And it was just like one of those years that just tests your mettle and coaching of just like, my goodness, do I want to keep doing this to myself? But we had a kid who, that summer, late in the summer before that year, his dad passed away.

A young dad, one very old, I think, or mid forties. He found him he had passed away. And the kid was just in a bad place. You could see it. I mean, he wasn’t healthy physically, emotionally, everything could have been a good player for us. And you know, he was just kind of a mess that whole year.

We were having off the court issues with him, wasn’t getting schoolwork turned in, showing up late to practice. Finally got in some trouble through, through, from me and from the school. So we were going to sit him out. He got suspended and went to come back from suspension and just still was having an attitude problem and just said, Hey, I want to talk to you.

I said, I think I’m just going to step away from the team and quit. And I tried to kind of said, well, think about it for a minute. And, and we’ll come back and talk about it tomorrow. And when we came back he was like, I just really want to talk to you. And I went into that meeting thinking okay, he’s going to talk about he understands all the things that have been going on and all the things that he’s not been doing. He understands why we’ve had to make the decisions, et cetera. And he just completely blindsided me in that meeting and just like basically came after me and was just like you don’t care about me.

You’re out to get me and basically just flipped the whole, I mean, basically just spewed everything that was going on in his life and made it my fault because I was ruining his basketball experience. And he was a junior that year. And I think for sure, my young self would have been how dare you challenge me like that and how dare you try and put your problems on me and good riddance, don’t ever come back.

You’re not welcome here anymore. Don’t ever come back to our program. And I think his stepdad ran into me at a restaurant in town, probably about three months later. It was in May and season was over and it didn’t end well. And you know, his stepdad, great guy.

I mean, he just came up and was like, Hey, I would really like it if you would maybe give Owen another chance. And I said I never told him like, anything that would give him the inclination that he would never be welcomed back. I know he was going through some hard stuff. I said, but that’s going to Owen’s going to have to come talk to me about that.

Not, not you. And he was like, no, I get that. And so he came and he came and talked to me a couple of weeks later and said I want to come back out for basketball. And I said, well I’d love for you to come back out. I said, but you know, you quit on your teammates last year and you kind of quit on our program.

And I said, so if you’re going to come back out, you’re going to start at the bottom in our program. Like you’re going to be lower than any of the lowest guys, incoming freshmen that we have. And I said, and that’s you’ve got to earn back my trust. I said, but way more important than me is you’re going to have to earn back the trust of all those guys that you walked out on last year.

And so, you’re going to have to work extra hard, double hard. And quite honestly, I was like, I’ll give this kid till July. And man, I have never seen a more dramatic change in a kid. I mean, this kid was… Six months prior to this, I mean, he was a kid that you’d go, man, he’s not going to be able to hold down a job.

He’s not going to be able to take care of himself. He’s not going to be able to, he’s going to have a really hard time in life. And he actually, I mean, he was a model teammate. He was a model work ethic guy. He came back and ended up starting for us as a senior the next year on a team that you know was fortunate enough.

We went 21 7 and lost in the state semis. And more important than that is, I mean, he’s now in his he just got done getting his personal private. He’s got a pilot’s license and he’s on track to become, he’s in a four year program. He’s going to go be a commercial airline pilot. And I couldn’t be more proud of the kid and happy for the kid.

And, and you look at something like that and you know, eight, 10, 12 years ago, I don’t know if I would have been humble enough myself as a coach and not let my ego get in the way of going there’s no chance I’m letting this kid.

[00:39:34] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that’s a great story. And it’s one that I think a lot of coaches can probably relate to that, both in terms of the two sort of diametrically opposed reactions that you could have had to that situation, right? Like, you could have handled it the way you did, but I’m sure that many coaches out there could picture Sure.

Themselves saying the exact opposite thing. Well, Hey, this kid was a problem. He quit on us. Why do I want to welcome a kid like that back into?

And yet, when you start thinking about, and I always say this, like what coaching is all about and clearly, depending on what level you’re at, coaching is about wins and losses. But it’s also about, can you use the game of basketball, which we all love to be able to make an impact on the people, the kids, the players, our fellow coaches that we’re interacting with.

Can we use the game of basketball to make the people we’re interacting with. Can we make their lives better? Can we use the game to improve where people end up in life? And your story… There’s a perfect sort of collection of that in that here’s a kid who, as you said, you didn’t know if he was even going to be able to hold down a job and now he’s been transformed.

And that’s not to say obviously that that wasn’t completely done through basketball. But man, the fact that basketball and you as a coach and your program could be a part of that kind of story, I mean, that’s powerful stuff when you start talking about the impact. That basketball can have. And I think your story rings true to me in a lot of ways.

And I think it’s sort of dovetails with a lot of the stories that coaches have said to us here on the podcast that you start out when you’re young. And I think you have an ego. You think you know, pretty much everything. And you realize the longer you go along that You don’t really know all that much there’s a lot out there that you don’t know.

And that kind of transformation as a coach then allows the kind of transformation that you just talked about with that player that makes a difference in somebody’s life. And I think to me, that’s where the power. Yeah, you got to win to keep your job, especially again, the higher level you go. But man, no matter where you are, you want to be able to have that kind of impact like you just described.

That’s great stuff. For sure. All right. Let me ask you a little bit about basketball wise in terms of just how you design your program, what it looks like in some different areas. Let’s start with practices. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What’s your philosophy on practice design? Do you keep it the same day in day out in terms of the order, in terms of the things that you emphasize?

Do you like to mix it up? How do you design a practice? What does that look like for you?

[00:42:43] TJ O’Connor: I think early in the year, we probably have our core stuff pretty consistent stuff and how we do it because we kind of have our checklist of stuff that we say we need to have so that we’re game ready on game one.

And then I think it maybe fluctuates a little bit based on what we feel like we’re maybe deficient in a little bit you know, I think probably all coaches if we’re getting hammered on the boards, we’re probably going to maybe do a little more, maybe rebound specific stuff. If we’re not shooting the ball well, we might increase our shooting a little bit.

But I think there’s probably some core stuff that we do in there. And obviously we’re always, I’m big on, I don’t really do a whole lot of practices where it’s just simply one side of the ball where we’re just going to spend an hour and a half or two hours on just all offense today or all defense.

We’re always going to be touching on both sides. We’re big with competition. We’re going to try and track about everything that we do, have winners and losers, some consequence for the loser. Not anything that’s crazy, but just five push ups, five a down and back, just something to bring the point home so to speak.

And then I think probably one of my maybe weaknesses is I get really, I struggle a lot as a coach when practice is slow. I don’t like spending a lot of time going over sets. I don’t like spending a lot of time I try to teach as much as we can on the fly while we’re moving, moving, moving.

I’m just a big tempo, having a lot of energy and practicing fast and trying to learn on the fly and doing those things and then we’re probably going to cut practice down as the year moves on. Probably early in the year, we’re going to go about two hours to two hours and 15 minutes.

And then by the time we get to late January, early February, we’re probably down to about an hour and a hour and a half, hour and 15. And so I think that’s probably kind of the umbrella picture of what practice kind of looks like around Fort Calhoun.

[00:44:57] Mike Klinzing: How do you balance out? So, keeping that tempo high with making your coaching points, it’s always a question that I think is interesting to hear how people answer it because clearly, one of the trends that we have in coaching now is what you described, where you want to have a high tempo practice, you want players to be.

Getting lots and lots of reps, lots and lots of opportunity to compete. And yet, there’s still things that you have to stop and be able to coach and correct and be able to make sure that you’re doing those things. And one of the things that experienced coaches do well is they’re able to zero in on what are the important things that I need to correct today versus what are the things that maybe I can let go or overlook.

As I’ve always said, there’s, you can look at any one particular player sequence and coaches could probably find 10 or 15 things in that sequence that they could stop and give a 30 second or a minute speech about, but you kind of have to zero in. So, how do you zero in on the things that are important and how do you balance keeping that tempo high with making coaching points during practice?

[00:46:05] TJ O’Connor: I think going in with kind of a focus of what exactly do we want to get out of this drill specifically today? Not that you can’t coach all of it but there might be a day that we’re doing shell defense and we’re really hammering home closing out, closing out to the ball.

And so if that’s not getting done, we’re maybe stopping it a little bit more for that. The other thing I think is having assistant coaches that are on the same page as you and what you want to get done. I’m blessed to have our coaching staff is phenomenal. I have two former head coaches as assistant coaches on our staff.

I have great. Another couple guys that are, I mean, put in a ton of time and are, are just great basketball guys. And we spend a lot of time together because we get along, which I think is important. And so they’re guys that I can trust. And so we can get a lot of coaching done while our guys are maybe standing out of a rep while other guys are still repping it.

So we can go. And then we can if we’re doing, I always go back to shell because I love defense and I love doing that. But if we’re four on four shell, I can after these four go, I can be talking to them or my assistant can be talking to them while another group is going and just kind of keeping it going.

And I kind of try to have a rule too, of trying to keep it to a two minutes or less. If I’m talking, if I’m breaking something down, cause even kids, I think that’s about as all the longer their attention span is you want to kind of just get your point made and then go again.

And if that means you have to stop it. five or six consecutive times, then that’s what you have to do. But it’s still teach, fast rep. Okay, we didn’t get it. Stop it. Teach, fast rep again until they do get it. And then you can go those four or five straight minutes of just rep, rep, rep, fast, fast, fast.

Guys are moving, seeing guys get it and it clicks for them and things like that.

[00:48:18] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I think that’s a good point, especially about having players talk to assistant coaches on the sideline and you get the teaching point in and then you kind of let them go and get those reps. And then. If you see something that you don’t like or that you need to have corrected, then when that player steps off the floor, a coach can come in and say, Hey this is what we saw out there.

What did you see? And kind of get that corrected and make those coaching points. And when you’re able to do that, then, as you said, you can keep that high tempo going and make sure that you have the practice working and operating at the speed that you want it to operate. You mentioned that you like to track things.

That’s always been, it’s always been a little bit hard for me when I think about my own. Coaching experience because I’ve always coached at a level where it was kind of, we didn’t always have. a tremendous amount of resources or assistant coaches to be able to keep track. So, when you’re tracking things in practice, what’s your system for doing that?

How do you go about keeping track of, I’ll know even when I’m doing a, whatever, I’m doing a game of, let’s say we’re going four on four and I want to score it, maybe offensive rebounds are worth two and a defensive rebound is worth one. And if you get this, it’s worth that many points. And I know there are a lot of times where I’ll be standing there and we’ll go for, Five minutes.

And after three minutes, I’m like, I have no idea what the score is. I can’t even keep track of it as I’m trying to coach. So what’s your system for making that work for you?

[00:49:42] TJ O’Connor: The key for me is to make an assistant do it.

[00:49:45] Mike Klinzing: There you go. All right. Good. Good. I’m not, I’m not, I’m not alone. Cause I always feel like I’m like, my head is, my head is completely spinning.

My team would be like, what’s the score? I’m like, guys, I don’t know. I have no idea.

[00:49:55] TJ O’Connor: I make… I shouldn’t say make, I ask an assistant to do it. And then I also am big on, like, holding our guys accountable to, you need to know time and score. Like, most of what we do, I try to have confidence.

If there’s live play or something like there’s a time aspect to it or a score aspect to it or both. And I tell our guys, one of the big things that I will say to them is if we’re not, if you’re not aware of the score or you’re not aware of the time or both, then we’re just out here at the YMCA playing pickup without it really mattering. And so, I’m big on sometimes we’ll even have, I don’t know, punishments, if you want to call it. Like, I’ll stop a game and say, what’s the score? And if everybody doesn’t know, or somebody can’t tell me, then we got we got a down and back, we got two down and backs, or something like that.

So, sometimes I’ll have the players keep score. As far as tracking other things, I’m not a big, like you said, we’re not college coaches at Kansas or Duke or Nebraska that have 15 GAs and managers and all that running around tracking. Exactly. And, and I think you can for sure as a coach get so caught up in all of that stuff.

It almost becomes detrimental because the you’re not keeping the main thing, the main thing. I had a coach a college coach who’s now back in the high school ranks, he gave me pretty good advice young when I was. A young head coach of just, he basically said if you don’t think it’s helping you or can help you win, then cut it out.

Like there’s no need for I think sometimes we can get over gimmicky with things and just because you have 100,000 things statted up on your wall. It’s like, are all of those things necessary? Are all of those and different strokes for different folks, I suppose, but the Twitterverse now gets your, you get access to how other people do some things.

And it’s just not quite for me. I see some of these coaches post like they’ve got a hundred different contests in their program and they got leaderboards up there for 18, 19, 30 different things. And I’m just like, Holy cow. I think my mind would explode if I was trying to track all of that on top of just getting good practices in and things like that so we trying to just keep it to being really competitive, having a winner and loser, having some sort of time element or score element to a drill so that the drill matters and the guys can see that we want it high intensity and competitive and that it’s important to us.

[00:52:55] Mike Klinzing: Let me ask you about being a head coach and putting together a staff, because we’ve talked a little bit about some of the things that you’re looking for an assistant coach to do. But when you think about the process of building a good high school staff, what are some things that What you’re looking for both in an individual coach who’s going to become a part of your staff and then what are you looking to accomplish with your staff as a whole?

[00:53:24] TJ O’Connor: I think, I think it’s important to for me anyways, to have, to start off with humility and putting your staff together. And by that, I mean, I want to find guys that are smarter than me. I want to find guys that are going to challenge me that are, that I think are great. basketball minds. I don’t want yes men.

I don’t want guys that I think are just going to come in and do whatever I tell them to do. I want guys that are good people, good men and guys that are going to challenge me, but also at the same time guys, that loyalty’s a big thing for me. Obviously it’s a two-way street, but I always tell our guys you can argue with me as much as you want behind closed doors but when we walk out of here, we’re going to make a decision and, and we’re all going to stand behind that decision.

Good, bad, or in between. But first and foremost, I’m looking for quality men. Where I’m at I’m fortunate in that the school that I teach at is, we’re about 15 minutes north of downtown Omaha. Maybe a little more, maybe 20 minutes. So, I was able through my network of just having coached at Millard North and then I was the head coach at another school prior to Fort Calhoun, but I was able to just reach out to some coaches that I cold called one guy and just who I’d heard good things about from another coach who was an acquaintance of mine, another coach who was a friend of mine.

We were on kind of a group chat during COVID when you couldn’t really meet with people. I cold called him and asked him if he would be interested and he was. And so we were able to get him on staff after one year. At Fort Calhoun, I approached our junior high coach who was the old head girls basketball coach at Fort Calhoun and asked him if he would be interested in coming aboard to the high school side instead of the junior high and now he’s one of my assistants.

And so looking for, I think, quality men first, good basketball people and people that are going to challenge me and maybe have some strengths where I think that I maybe have some weaknesses.

[00:55:46] Mike Klinzing: Is that how you divide up the roles when you start looking at coaches and what they And you perceive to be their strengths and weaknesses and sort of give them responsibilities or is everybody kind of have their hand in everything or how do you approach that delegation piece?

[00:56:00] TJ O’Connor: Everybody has their hand in everything, but I do kind of give guys certain specializations. You know, for example, one of my assistants my assistant coach Bauman, who I was our girls coach and before I got to Fort Calhoun, but he was had a lot of success on the girl’s side. And his specialty was kind of press defense, run and jump, some of that stuff.

I liked that and wanted to implement some of that. So I kind of gave him a huge role in that in doing that. One of my assistants is not in the building and he can only get there about three days a week for practice but he’s there for all the games, but he’s a really good and kind of suits his personality.

He kind of gets geeks out on stats and things like that. So he does all of our scouting, all of our advanced scouting. He’s two and three and four games out on scouts. So that my mind’s not getting jumbled as we’re preparing for the closest opponent that we have. So he does all of our scouting.

And then other guys just it might differ a little bit from practice to practice, but I try and find what they like and what suits their personality and what their interests are. And we got one, one of our assistants is just, he loves to hound guys about rebounding and things like that.

So I kind of make him essentially our unofficial rebound guy he’s tracking who’s chasing and who’s not and if they’re not giving effort or if we’re not rebounding in practice just things like that. And then. You know, I love giving my assistant coaches a voice. I think that’s hugely important.

I don’t think if you’re, if you say no to your assistants all the time, they’re going to stop bringing ideas to the table. And I want all the stuff that they have and I want them to feel comfortable enough to, to bring those things and to feel involved in the whole big picture of it.

[00:58:00] Mike Klinzing: What are some ways that you give them a voice?  Do you give them, hey, you’re going to have this segment during practice, hey, we want you to talk during halftime, you’re going to say something to them during the pregame. How do you go about giving them those opportunities to be able to…

[00:58:21] TJ O’Connor: I like a lot in practice, giving them if we’re going live and we’re scrimmaging, I like having me not coach a team. And kind of given Hey, you’re with this squad and you’re with this squad. I like mixing them up where so. But the size of school that we practice everybody together, 9 through 12.

So there’s some times where I’ll go down on the younger end and work with our younger kids and, and give some of the assistants time to be that voice for the older guys and, and coach them up and do some of those things. I’ll put on the practice plan. Like you’re doing our, you’re doing our bigs, you two are going to work with our bigs today.

So here’s what we’re doing. I do kind of, so I have four assistant coaches and I kind of have them split, like you two are kind of in charge of our bigs skill development and you two are kind of in charge of our guard skill development. And then I obviously am bouncing everywhere, but I try and give them ownership of three or four things throughout the season that they can kind of just make their own and that they know.

That’s where they’re going to be having a heavy voice with our kids and they kind of take ownership of that.

[00:59:41] Mike Klinzing: What about on the player side in terms of leadership? How do you develop leaders in your program?

[00:59:48] TJ O’Connor: Man, that is one that I am, I don’t want to say struggling with right now, but that’s just, that’s a tough one.

I’ve brought in sports psychologists. I’ve brought in we’re pretty fortunate that an old coaching colleague of mine’s sister opened up a kind of a sports performance program. Her and her program have come and spoke to our kids in the preseason. Our new, we got a new football coach this year and his brother is  in the same field.

And so I’ll have him come talk to our kids, we’ll do probably like a lot of people we have captains and, and things like that, but I just really try and find times to, and practice where can have a voice, we might have segments where grab a kid and say you’re in charge of this group right now and here we go.

But I think that’s something that I honestly have been, cause I don’t think it’s been necessarily bad, but we haven’t quite last year and maybe even this year up to this point, we haven’t quite had that alpha in the room where everybody’s kind of like, all right, this guy is our thermostat and makes us go so I’m trying to find some different ways or unique ways to kind of cultivate that leadership within our players.  So if you have ideas, I’m all ears.

[01:01:23] Mike Klinzing: I always think for me, this question oftentimes comes down to, I think, a little bit of what you said and then just maybe taking it one step further, which is you have to, I think, intentionally look for ways to have your coaching staff step back and let the players take the lead on some different things.

In other words, they have to have space to be able to lead. Because a lot of times we’ll hear coaches say, ah, this team doesn’t have, they just, we just don’t have any leaders. We don’t have, we don’t have good leadership. We need more leadership. And then when you really kind of stop and look at it, The coaching staff is always, they’re always the leader.

So there’s never really a space for players to be able to do that. So when I think about it, I think like what you said where, okay, here’s a drill, player X, you’re, you’ve got whatever, you’ve got your group. You know, go ahead and lead them or hey, we’re going to make a decision about something that you as a head coach are okay with the kids making a decision.

You don’t feel like you have to micromanage it and let the kids make the decision. And those are things that again, they’re small but if you do enough of those things repeatedly over time, you’ll see that kids start to get ready for more and more of those opportunities. And you can start to include them, I think, in bigger and more important decisions.

Like you start small, and then as you get more confidence in A, delegating that to players, and then B, as they get better and more comfortable in making those decisions. Then you end up with a situation where you start developing those leaders. And to me, it all starts, like I said, with just being able to give kids space because so often, and I know this is something that when you think about young coaches and I think about myself, it’s like you kind of wanted to.

Control and have your hand and everything. And that goes to how you delegate to assistant coaches. And it also goes how you develop leaders in your program. Because most of the time, let’s face it, as coaches, we kind of have our ideas of the way that we want things to go. And right, it’s almost that way in our lives where You want to be able to control the things that are going on around you, but you realize eventually that you can’t do that and things actually work way better when you start to delegate and, but it’s hard to do.

And I think young coaches tend to micromanage things and then they just don’t develop those leaders because they don’t give them any space, if that makes any sense.

[01:03:59] TJ O’Connor: Yeah, absolutely. I think you made some great points there and terrific things and ideas that get my brain firing you know, I, I think sometimes we as coaches to kind of use it as a cop out you know, things aren’t going well, like, ah, we just don’t have any leadership.

[01:04:18] Mike Klinzing: I agree. I couldn’t agree more with that statement, TJ, you’re a hundred percent right.

[01:04:21] TJ O’Connor: I’m guilty of it at times and then when I really do circle back, I’m kind of like that’s, it’s really my fault because ultimately I’m not a big, like. And maybe we’re getting into semantics, but I’m not really big into this whole, like, player led team.

I think, I’m more into like, I think it needs to be player reinforced, because ultimately I think the head coach is responsible for the leadership and the direction that they want the program to go. And getting your influential kids, or quote unquote your leaders, to reinforce that in a way that…

They maybe have command of those situations when the head coach is not around, because I think as I’ve seen leadership evolve over the years with players, I think where the leadership is important is those moments where the head coach is not there, such as the locker room before and after a game or when the kids are down at the eating together or they’re in the hallways and where it’s like, do you have kids that are reinforcing your message that are maybe calling out cancers or things like that, that are not doing things that are beneficial for the team?

But yeah, like I said, I think sometimes as coaches, we use that as a cop out of we’re struggling and, and we kind of end up putting our foot in our own mouth because we’re sitting here to the kids going I, you guys, there’s no leaders here and we lack leadership, when really we should probably just be looking in the mirror going, well, what am I doing to lead these kids to help them be better leaders?

Chances are pretty good I’m probably not carrying my weight.

[01:06:08] Mike Klinzing: When I think about good head coaches and what they do, I think it’s setting a tone. And if the head coach sets the right tone, then the assistant coaches understand what that tone is and what the expectations are.

And the players understand what that tone looks like and what the expectations are. Then when the coach, the head coach is absent for whatever reason, whether that be a place like the locker room, whether that be a place like at a team meal, whether that be a moment where the head coach steps out to take a phone call.

I’ve been involved in programs where that’s a problem and those 15 minutes don’t look very good because the kids are like, Oh, head coach is gone. We’re going to kind of just. Slack off and it, the, the intensity level of practice drops off. And then on the other hand, I’ve been in practices and with teams and with game where it’s, it doesn’t matter who’s there, it doesn’t matter.

The players could be in the gym by themselves and the tone is the same. And I think that’s where the head coach sets that overarching tone for the program. And then if you’ve done a good job with that as an assistant, as a head coach, then that climate carries over. To whatever situation we have, whether the head coach is there or not, and that’s not easy to do, right?

I mean, that is, that is difficult to do. I think that the good coaches figure out how to set that tone so that. Again, it’s kind of like what we try to define for our kids, our students says, well, what is character? You know, character is what you do when someone’s not watching. Well, to me, the team’s character is what do they do when the head coach isn’t around.

So everybody can sort of be on their best behavior when somebody’s watching them. But what’s going on when that head coach isn’t around? Steps away or isn’t there. How are we behaving in that instance? And I think when you have a team that competes just as hard and gives just as much effort and is still as much together when the head coach is gone as when they’re there, that’s when you know you’ve got something.

I think that’s, that to me, when I hear player led team, that’s kind of what I think of is that the head coach has set the tone and then the players kind of carry that out regardless of what adults may or may not be there, if that makes sense.

[01:08:39] TJ O’Connor: Yeah, I love that. I love what you just talked about with that whole character message of what are you doing when no one’s looking?

And then what, what are you doing when the head coach isn’t there? I learned a really hard lesson that way, honestly that COVID year, because we went we went, we opened the season with our first few games. We went one on one. I had gotten two new assistant coaches or one new assistant coach.

Who had had a lot of experience. And then I got put into quarantine the afternoon of what would be our third game. And the next two games were an absolute train wreck and it, and at the time I was so upset with our kids and I was so like. I can’t believe, I mean, we, our kids, we got technicals, we got smacked in back to back games, and I was just, and I’m sitting here watching it on stream.

And it was halftime of the second one, I literally yelled into my wife, I was like, I’m going to Subway, if anybody wants anything, let me know, but I can’t watch this anymore. Oh, that’s funny. And I’m watching this unfold, and I was like, and I was so disappointed in our kids, and Literally, like, I almost had a come to Jesus moment about three days after that second game and I was like this is really, and it was a hard pill to swallow, but I was like this is really a reflection of me.

I didn’t have the culture and the leadership in place that I thought I had. I thought we had made so much progress, because that was only my second year at the school. And I was like, man, I thought we had made so much progress in year one and got so many things going in the right direction.

And then it just kind of blew up. And I was like… I knew that it would not have happened if I was there, but I was still like, the fact that it did just tells me that like, it’s not near as strong and as good as it needs to be, or what I thought it was. Yeah, it’s,

[01:10:51] Mike Klinzing: it’s tough. I mean, it’s, it’s one of those, and that’s probably one of those things again where you don’t really know until you’re sitting there watching the stream and heading to Subway, whether or not it’s going to, whether or not you’ve put that in place. And I think, again, as you get more experienced as a head coach and you learn what works and you learn what doesn’t, and of course, you know better than anybody that Every team is different and every team is made up of different personalities and sometimes you got to do different things with different teams to be able to get them to the same point where you have that climate and that culture where you want it.

And it’s not easy to do. By any means, but when you get it to that point, that’s when your program is really running. And I think that goes back to, like I said, it goes back to delegating. It goes back to, can you give up some stuff to your assistant coaches? Can you give up some stuff to your players, not micromanage it?

And when you do that, now you’re taking advantage of the power of other people and their commitment and their level of desire to see the program succeed. And it’s not just. all on you. And I think the more experience you get as a head coach, at least from what I’ve seen, is that allows you to have that perspective and to understand that I don’t have to have my hand directly in everything.

And that’s not to say again that you’re not setting the overall tone. I don’t have to micromanage every single little thing. And I think that’s the point where what you’re talking about is where you’re trying to go, what you’re trying to do with your team is to make sure that they understand what needs to be done regardless of whether you’re directly influencing that or not. If I’m sort of summarizing kind of where you’re going with that.

[01:12:50] TJ O’Connor: Yes, definitely.

[01:12:52] Mike Klinzing: All right. Let me ask you a little bit about, as a high school coach, one of the things that I hear a lot, and maybe not even as much from high school coaches, but more from college coaches who maybe have previously coached at the high school level is parents.

I can’t believe I got a deal. Like one of the things why I didn’t want to coach in high school anymore is I just, I just couldn’t deal with the parents. That’s one of the reasons why I knew I wanted to coach college basketball. I just don’t have to deal with that as much. So, what’s your way of trying to engage the parents that are part of your program and make them feel like they are a part of it.

[01:13:34] TJ O’Connor: Yeah. That’s probably from my first year as a head coach to where I am now, one of the areas I’ve maybe made the most growth. I think coming in as a first time head coach. I viewed the parents as the enemy. You know, like I’m not talking about playing time. Don’t even you know, don’t come to me with this.

Don’t do this. Almost putting them on the defensive right away. And I’ve done a complete 180 with that. A lot of that is just from I read a couple of books. I’m going to butcher the title of a basketball CEO. Another one was the politics of coaching. And then I read a Brad Stevens book and, and through all of that, I kind of just really turned towards You know, my stance now is like I’m going to do anything and everything I can to engage the parents and turn the parents into advocates for the program.

I’ve tried a couple of years ago, we started doing a basically a preseason parent get together. I have them over to my house, just parents, players aren’t there. It’s just the parents and, and let them not just be around me and my wife, but be around other parents in a setting that’s not sitting in the bleachers and they get to see parents that maybe the only time they ever interact with them is in the bleachers.

There are some parents that handle themselves completely different in the bleachers versus in a regular setting. I think one of the things that really opened my eyes to that was a few years ago, we went to we had a holiday tournament where we went and stayed overnight and we got rooms for the kids and because of discounts and things like that, we just got a block for the parents too.

And so, all of our parents stayed in the same hotel room, and they all ended up down in the hotel lobby having their, their beers and cocktails and just interacting with each other. And I really think it gave so many of them a different perspective and perception of some of the others that maybe they didn’t have just because the only time they had really interacted with them was, well, this is the guy that yells a lot at the basketball game, or this is the mom that screams at the officials, or this is the couple that is always yelling at the coach. I got to see them in a different light.

And so I try to do things like that and I try and as much as possible, I mean, anytime I’m seeing a parent in the school, other sporting events in the community, I’m trying to engage with them and have a conversation with them and just get to know them as well as get to know their kids. And I also have completely changed.

I tell the parents that I’m, I’m an open book and we can meet about anything. And I tell them, I’ll talk to them about playing time. I’ve, I’ve changed that. I said I probably got this one from Brad Stevens and it’s. You know, I’m happy to talk to you about playing time, but, but it’s going to be an honest conversation and you might not like what you’re going to hear, but I will absolutely talk to you about that.

My brother and I joke, he’s a head girls coach here in the Omaha area too. But we joke that really when it boils down to it, about 98 percent of parent meetings that you have are parent problems, when you really boil it down to the. core of it, it’s playing time. I think most of them, you can sit there and go, would we really be having this conversation if your kid was playing 20 more minutes a game?

And the answer would be no. But, I do think there’s an appreciation for that from a parent. Like they might not like it, but I think they, a lot of times can respect it and go, okay, well, I mean, at least you told me the truth, you know? I think that’s. That’s 100 percent the key to coach communication.

[01:17:39] Mike Klinzing: You can talk about that in terms of coach communication with parents, right? You can tell parents the truth about their kid and where they stand. And I think it goes to your relationship and your conversations that you have with players as well, right? Like players, as much as They might disagree with you in certain cases, but I think a lot of times players know and understand the reasons why somebody plays ahead of them in most cases.

I do think that when you get in trouble as a coach is when you don’t share The truth of the player and when you try to beat around the bush about, well, this and then if you did that maybe then you’ll play instead of like, look, this kid is better than you right now and if you want to play more, you’re going to have to do X, Y, And then give the kids some things that they can work on, like, Hey, here’s a couple drills that you can do to help you work on that particular skill or Hey, when you’re playing in a game, you need to really focus on this or that.

And I think too often, I’ll go back to again, I think sometimes young coaches, you try to be everybody’s friend and please everybody and you realize that you just can’t do that. So to me, that. That communication piece of telling the truth and being proactive, when I think of communication, those are the two most important things I think when it comes to coaching is you got to tell people the truth and you got to communicate proactively and not just communicate after there’s an issue or a problem that somebody comes to you with.

If you communicate early and often, just like on the court, right, that you’re going to be better off.

[01:19:27] TJ O’Connor: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know that you could say it any better than what, what you just said of just I think honesty and the truth that builds trust, whether they like it or not.

I mean, it builds trust. They know they’re going to get an honest answer from you. And I love the piece about being proactive. Like I mentioned, I think earlier, we do a lot of one on ones with our kids and, and I try and be very upfront with where kids stand and where they’re at both personally and in relation to their peers you know one week after the season starts we sit down one on one with every kid and say hey here’s where you’re at.

This doesn’t mean they can’t change, but here’s where you’re at after the season, here’s where you’re at. Here’s where you need to what you need to work on And so I think at least the kids know where they stand and like you said, I think as a young coach sometimes maybe you’re afraid or you’re worried about that confrontation, but it’s inevitable and it has to happen.

And I think communicating it with parents in a way of one of the big things I like to say to, to our parents is I don’t have the privilege of only having one kid on this team. And I understand that’s your kid and that’s your baby and you’re trying to do everything you can to advocate for your kid as you should.

But I also need you to respect the fact that like, I don’t have the benefit of just being able to make decisions for one kid. And generally a lot of the decisions that I have to make are going to benefit one kid or family at possibly a little bit of the detriment of another kid or family.

And that certainly is not personal. And it has nothing to do with what type of a kid or human or parent or whatever that I think Or you are. That’s just kind of the nature of the beast and I do think going back to the core of it, building those relationships and having those relationships with kids, it’s not going to eliminate all the problems.  We’re certainly going to have ’em, but it certainly, I think helps.

[01:21:39] Mike Klinzing: They know where the truth comes from, right? When you have a relationship with a kid, and even though you might tell ’em a hard truth, That’s going to be much better received than it would be when you haven’t built that relationship, when they don’t trust you, when you haven’t told the truth in the past.

It gets real dicey real fast, and people tend to get upset when you’re not… When you’re not honest and when you beat around the bush. And so, for any coaches that are out there that are just getting started, have those tough conversations early, rip the Band Aid off and get the truth out there as quickly as possible.

Because once the truth is out there, then you can figure out what to do about it. If your coach tells you, hey, Kid X is better than you. If you want to play, you got to be better than him and here’s some things you can work on. Well, now I know what I can do. I can go out and I can try to get better versus if the coach just says, well this, maybe.

And now I’m kind of stuck because I don’t really know where I stand as a player. So, coaches have those conversations. Tell the truth. Even if it hurts, tell it to the players, tell it to the families. Be honest and share with people what your thought process is and how you made that decision. And as a result of that, I think even though people may not always love what you have to say, they’re going to have a lot more respect for who you are and what you do than when you just Thanks.

kind of beat around the bush and don’t tell, don’t tell kids and families the truth. And that’s been my experience over the years with, with any situation I’ve been in when, when you don’t get the truth, that’s when problems come up. So I couldn’t agree more TJ.

[01:23:27] TJ O’Connor: Yeah, absolutely. And quite honestly, it’s one of the things I love about sports and what I love about coaching is, it’s one of the last few places that we really can get to the truth, and one of the last few places that we can and are kind of expected to tell the truth.

And I tell our kids, and I know it’s probably an old saying, but I’m like I care about and love you enough to tell you the truth because there’s a lot of people out there that aren’t willing to tell you the truth. Because they’re afraid of what you might think or whatever, but ultimately what we need and usually what’s best for us is the truth.

And I think in a lot of areas in young people’s life these days, they’re not getting told the truth. They’re getting told what they want to hear and it’s not a good thing for them.

[01:24:20] Mike Klinzing: That 100% truth. And I think that our young people out there are, are missing that. And if we could get if we could get that problem corrected, TJ, you and I and Jason be millionaires. We could figure out how to, how to get that, how to get that problem rectified. All right, we are coming up close to an hour and a half.

So I want to ask you one final two part question. 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.

[01:25:03] TJ O’Connor: I think my biggest challenge, our biggest challenge is just probably internal. It’s probably the stress I put on myself the expectations that I put on myself where, where we play at in our league, in our area is an extremely tough. Area of basketball with the level that we play at, the size of school that we are in Nebraska.

And so I put pretty high expectations on myself and on our program. And I think being able to manage those in a healthy way and being able to manage those without putting too much pressure on the kids or myself or our coaches, and just being able to find that joy in the game while at the same time challenging our staff, myself, our kids to be the best that we can be.

And basketball specifically, I think coming up, we’ve got a really good senior player coming, but then we’re going to be pretty young. So I think being able to have some patience with some of our young players and just trust and the old saying of trust in the process and just trying to get a little bit better each day and hopefully be playing our best basketball at the, at the end of the year. And then probably the most joy I think is just being able to kind of blend or bring together, immerse my family with my team and our program and just my boys are starting to get to the age where they’re around practice a lot and they get to be around the gym kind of like I did growing up seeing my wife embrace kind of being the coach’s wife and the team mom and her support and just seeing how we’ve just been able to kind of blend my family life with my coaching life, so to speak, and just seeing how that works together and seeing how good the community and my assistant coaches families are to my family and to my kids and how the players are and their families are is just, that brings a big smile to my face and brings just my heart a lot of joy being able to see those things happen.

[01:27:24] Mike Klinzing: Being able to connect those two quote families, right? You’re the family of your team and then obviously your family at home and you can connect those two and, and meld them together as much as, as humanly possible.

I just think that’s the best of both worlds. So that’s very well said TJ. Before we. Get out. I want to give you a chance to share how people can connect with you, find out more about you and your programs, whether 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.

[01:27:55] TJ O’Connor: Yeah you can reach me at email. You can find me pretty easily on our Fort Calhoun, if you just Google  Fort Calhoun High school in Nebraska. You can find my email on there. My email is TJOConnor@ftcpioneers.org. My Twitter handle is @CoachOC34. That’s my personal one. Our basketball Twitter is @FTCbasketball. So those are the best ways to get ahold of me. I’m a pretty open book. I certainly say that with extreme humility. I can probably help young coaches out more because of all the mistakes that I’ve made. And I’ve been I like to give back simply because I would not even be close to where I am today if I didn’t have amazing mentors and amazing guys who’ve been in the profession a lot longer than I have that have taken the time to help me out and answered questions and taking phone calls and, and text messages and all those things. And so I’ve been so blessed with the game of basketball and probably more specifically the coaching profession and just the relationships that I’ve been able to develop through that.

And just the help that those guys have given to me and how good they’ve been to me. I just want to be able to give back whatever little I possibly can. So I’m more than happy to chat with anybody or tell them what we do that’s worked or hasn’t worked or anything along those lines, so I just appreciate you guys having me and, and being able to talk shop for a while, so I’m just very grateful for that.

[01:29:59] Mike Klinzing: TJ, we cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us. You also, as we said off the top, have helped us to break new ground and get into the state of Nebraska with our first coach from your state. So that’s an exciting bit of accomplishment that you’re our first Nebraska guest.

So congratulations on that. Hopefully you will not be the last and to everyone out there. Thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.