TOM HARRINGTON – BUCKEYE (OH) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 732

Website – https://buckeyebucks.org/teams/3405589/boys/basketball/varsity

Email – tharrington@buckeyeschools.org

Twitter – @HoopsHarrington

Tom Harrington is in his 8^th season as the Boys’ Basketball Head Coach at Buckeye High School in Medina, Ohio.  Harrington previously served two stints as an assistant coach at Brunswick High School under Joe Mackey.  He also was the Head Coach at Highland High School for one season.

Harrington played his college basketball at Baldwin-Wallace University where he was a three year starter and two year captain setting the single season school record for assists with 168.

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Have a notebook handy as you listen to this episode with Tom Harrington, Boys’ Basketball Head Coach at Buckeye High School in the state of Ohio.

What We Discuss with Tom Harrington

• Coaching multi-sport athletes and the need for cooperation between coaches
• “We’re very, very intentional about setting up our schedules so that kids don’t have to make a decision between one sport or the other.”
• “Every time we’ve ever had a kid recruited for basketball, the coach says, do they play any other sports?”
• The dangers that club sports pose to high school athletics
• “You’re always worried about the next practice, the next game, your next opponent. Sometimes you just have to enjoy the moment and be thankful for what you have.”
• “I didn’t really understand working as hard as I needed to until I got to college.”
• “Every coach that I ever played for, or coached with so far has been in the Hall of Fame.”
• How his older sister inspired him to want to play in college
• Choosing to play his college basketball at Baldwin-Wallace University
• Playing for Coach Steve Bankson at Baldwin-Wallace
• “I can’t believe that these guys are getting paid to do this every day, they’re in a gym, they’re competing, they’re working with kids, and they’re getting paid.”
• Coaching an AAU Team while he was still in college
• Learning as a player from all the great coaches in the Ohio Athletic Conference
• Learning from Joe Mackey in his early years as a coach at Brunswick High School
• “You have to hire people that you trust and if you’re not going to trust somebody, don’t hire them.”
• “If you’re a really good player, you want to be coached hard and it’s the same thing with coaches, they’re trying to make themselves better.”
• “Try to get people and put them in the right seat on the bus and if you do that, it just takes a little bit of time and a little bit of patience and it’ll start to come together and you’ll start to do special things.”
• The connection that helped him get the job at Buckeye
• Leaving his previous head coaching job at Highland High School because he could not get a teaching job in the district
• “There’s things that I wish all my players could do, but we kind of look at our kids, whoever walks through the door and whatever we think we’re best at, that’s what we’re going to do.”
• Adapting your system to your players
• Advice on elevating the brand of your program
• Building a curriculum for the youth program
• “It’s no different than science class. If you’re just walking in every day on the fly, it’s not going to work.”
• “Your youth coaches have to be unselfish and understand that their role is to make the kids better and to make sure they want to play again next year.”
• Getting to know players and families when they are part of the youth program
• “You earn people’s trust by doing all those things you said you were going to do.”
• “We have ball handling, passing, and shooting in every practice.”
• Practice planning
• The lesson he learned from his college coach about paying it forward

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THANKS, TOM HARRINGTON

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TRANSCRIPT FOR TOM HARRINGTON – BUCKEYE (OH) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 732

[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 Tom Harrington, the head boys varsity basketball coach at Buckeye High School here in Cleveland. Tom, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:13] Tom Harrington: Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.

[00:00:15] Mike Klinzing: Excited to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all the things that you’ve been able to do in your career. I want to 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.

[00:00:26] Tom Harrington: So grew up in a family that loves sports.  My mom and dad are really into sports and played sports. Growing up my older sister played soccer, softball, and basketball. And so it was kind of a no-brainer that I would as well. And I would say that for me, probably my first memories with basketball was when my dad added on to our patio, we had one of those little patios behind our house and he basically just doubled the size of it and then put a hoop at the end and we had a hoop in our backyard probably when I was about five or six years old.

And that was it. I was just kind of hooked from there. Were you

[00:01:15] Mike Klinzing: Were you all basketball when you were a kid or were you doing everything?

[00:01:16] Tom Harrington: No, I did everything. I played baseball. I never played competitive football, but always played football, like with my neighbors. But I played baseball, soccer and basketball all through eighth grade.

And then when I got to high school I was strictly basketball from there on out. Was that an easy choice? For me it was.  I was really devoted to the game. It was what I love the most. I think and I don’t know if we’re going to talk about this later or not, but every kid’s a little bit different.

I think there’s kids who should play more than one sport. And then I think if there’s kids that are just really passionate about one I’m all for that as well. So for me it was just basketball was what I love. So that’s what I did.

[00:02:04] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, let’s dive into that for a second, then we can get back into you as you go on along as a player.

Because I think it’s an interesting topic, talking about specialization. And as you know, it’s much more difficult, I think, to play multiple sports than it was 15, 20, 30 years ago where you didn’t have all the kids training year round. And again, whatever sport it is doesn’t necessarily have to be basketball.

But just talk a little bit about how you approach that with the athletes that you deal with in terms of their ability to play multiple sports. Because for people who don’t know, Tom’s at a smaller high school and a lot of his athletes do play multiple sports. So just share with people a little bit of your experience as a head varsity coach.

Obviously you’d like to have your guys playing basketball as much as possible, but there’s also trying to counterbalance that with giving them the opportunity to play multiple sports. So just talk a little bit about your perspective on that.

[00:02:55] Tom Harrington: Yeah, so like I said, in general, if a kid wants to play more than one sport, I’m all for that.

If a kid doesn’t want to play more than one sport, that’s okay too. I think it’s good regardless how big your school is. But it’s really important at a s at a school like Buckeye where we kind of hover between 800 and 850 kids or so. And, and most of our kids play more than one sport, so I think it’s really important for our coaches to all be on the same page.

And I think our school does a pretty good job of that, where we promote each other’s sports and playing more than one sport. But I’ll say it was the same way when I coached at Brunswick for about 10 years before I went to Buckeye. And most of our kids who were our starters or kids off the bench were, they were multi-sport athletes there as well.

We had a lot of kids that played football and baseball. And I like it from the standpoint when a kid plays more than one sport, I like that they have other competitive experiences besides basketball. And fortunately for me as a coach, both at Brunswick and at Buckeye, our other teams won a lot and I think that that adds value to your program and basketball.

And it gives those kids an opportunity that even though they may not be in the sport all year long, they’re still in competitive situations. And I really think that that carries over positively to basketball.

[00:04:32] Mike Klinzing: I do think that you’re a hundred percent right when you talk about developing a kid’s competitive nature.

And then I also think if you’re putting kids into multiple winning environments, that that winning gene, for lack of a better way of saying it, I think does translate that kids get used to winning and then they’re able to transfer that from one sport to another. And I think one of the things that you mentioned, and we talked about it a little bit in our pre-pod call, was just the relationship that you have to have with the other varsity coaches of those other sports to be able to coordinate and work out and reach an understanding where you don’t have that one coach who’s trying to hoard all the athletes or is talking bad about this program or that program, which.

Unfortunately we know that happens out there. So just talk a little bit about how Buckeye, how do you guys go about making sure that as an athletic department all of your coaches are on the same page because I think that’s an important piece of it.

[00:05:30] Tom Harrington: So that’s a great question. I would say, I would start it off with this when I got into coaching, I was 22 years old and I had an opportunity to learn from two of the best one was Joe Mackey at Brunswick, obviously coaching the boys.

And then at that time, Rich Nowak was the football coach. And I would just watch how they would interact with each other and how they would share their athletes and the way that they would set up their schedules in the summertime and in the off season. So that what and this is something that’s really carried over at Buckeye when we hire a new coach, they have to understand that.

It’s the coach’s responsibility to not put the kid in the position where they have to choose. So we’re very, very intentional about setting up our schedules so that kids don’t have to make a decision between one sport or the other. And I think also another key to that is being really respectful during a season.

You know having kids show up to say, like an open gym of mine and they’re in the middle of football season. I don’t ask them to do that. If they ever got hurt, I would feel terrible that like they would let their football team down or soccer or golf or whatever they happen to be doing in the fall.

And then by the same token, you know when it’s baseball or basketball season or something like that, none of us coaches are ever trying to pull another kid away. So between the end season and then out of season. You know, like I said, when we’re setting up a calendar, we always sit down first as coaches, and I was fortunate to see that role model to me by Coach Nowak and Coach Mackey.

And that’s just kind of how I’ve always approached it. And I’ve been really lucky that I’ve never had to really deal with a coach that didn’t believe in that. So

[00:07:26] Mike Klinzing: I think the big thing that I always say, and we’ve talked about it on the podcast before, is that when the decision to either specialize or play multiple sports comes from the kid, or if you’re talking about a younger player, the parent, I think that’s where the situation ends up being a positive one.

I think a lot of times unfortunately, we get into situations where adults, and in some cases it could be a parent, but in often ca in many cases it can be a coach or. A, an organization director who puts pressure on a kid at an early age, or again, even at the high school level, to only play that one sport.

And I think that’s where you get into that danger zone where it’s not kid driven, but it’s being driven by the adult who has a, for lack of a better way of saying an exterior motive.

[00:08:21] Tom Harrington: Sure. Yeah. And I wish that more adults had the opportunity to listen to some college coaches, because every time we’ve ever had a kid recruited for basketball and the coach says, do they play any other sports?

And when I say, oh yeah, they play soccer or football or baseball or something like that they’re happy about that. Their response is always, oh, good, good.  Do you have their schedule for that? Cause I’d like to see them compete in another arena as well so I think the thing that’s hard for a parent today, and it’s exponential on the girl’s side.

I don’t think it’s really hit the boys as much as it’s hit girls, but the club sport whatever you want to call it the club sport group of people that exist out there who are really putting a ton of pressure on kids to quit their school sports, that’s probably the biggest pressure to high school sports.

And the reality of the matter is you only have so long to play a sport. And like I said, for some kids it’s the right choice to just play one. For most it’s not. And as long as the kid is the one who’s driving that decision making and they’re doing it for what they really want to do, then I’m all for it.

And we try at Buckeye to be proactive with those conversations with adults and, and give them feedback on kind of what coaches are looking for at the next level and which experiences are beneficial for kids.

[00:09:58] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, and I think that club piece of it that you brought up is interesting and it goes to a point that we’ve talked about before, which is that when you start looking at what decisions that parents, kids, families end up making about a sport, I feel like so often that kids are.

Looking ahead. And parents probably even more so than the kids are looking ahead to what’s next. So if I’m playing fifth grade travel basketball, I’m already thinking and trying to position myself for middle school basketball. And then I’m trying to be a varsity player when I’m in ninth or 10th grade.

And then when I’m on the varsity, I’m trying to think about where am I going to go play in college, or, I’m trying to think about this from an AAU standpoint. And obviously it’s the same thing when you look at it and you talk about soccer or volleyball, whatever it might be, that I feel like so many kids and families and parents that they don’t enjoy the moment.

And as you said, it goes by so fast. The time that you have as a high school athlete is here and it’s gone before you even turn around. And I think so often people are just looking at, okay, what’s next? What’s next? What’s next? And they don’t stop and be like, Hey, this part of it. should be fun. And I, I think that goes back to your own high school experiences, right?

Or I can think about my high school experiences. There was no better time in my basketball life than as a high school basketball player. Like, those moments as a high school player are ones that like, I never remember one moment, one second of high school basketball where I thought that it was work or it was hard, or mm-hmm.

man, this is something that you know, I really have to push myself through, which is different from when I got to college where it wasn’t all just, Hey, every, every single moment is fun. I’d be completely lying if I said it every single moment of my college basketball career was fun. But from the high school perspective, I think so many people are just trying to rush through and they forget to just kind of stop.

And so I think that’s a great point that you make, that you have to, you have to look at what it is that you’re doing right now and not worry so much about what’s going to come next.

[00:12:11] Tom Harrington: Yeah, no doubt. And that’s something that we have to remind ourselves of as coaches as well. You know, you’re always worried about the next practice, the next game, your next opponent.

Yep. Sometimes it’s you just have to enjoy the moment and be thankful for what you have.

[00:12:29] Mike Klinzing: When you think back to your own high school experiences, what’s one of your favorite memories from playing high school basketball?

[00:12:36] Tom Harrington: You know, I had great memories. I went to Holy Name for four years, grades nine through 12.

And I think I had some of the best coaches that, that anybody could ever ask for. I was a kid that, I was a late bloomer, so I played freshman basketball. As a freshman, JV as a sophomore, and then I started my junior and senior year. So I got to experience three different coaches in my career.

And each of them, I still do things every day that I took away from each of those guys. So I would say just generally, I was grateful for my entire experience. One of them is Larry Arthur. He was the varsity head coach through my junior year, and then his parents got sick and he had to step down.

And then Frank O’Brien took over and he’s currently an assistant. He’s been an assistant now at John Carroll for almost 20 years. And then coach Mike Seaman was my freshman coach. And each of those guys just contributed so much to my development. One of my favorite memories there’s so many of them, I would say from my junior year we played Chanel and they were really good that year.

That was when they had Brian Swift was their point guard and Bam Childress was their off guard. And we finished in second place in the league to those guys. But when we played them at home we were just so outmatched physically. They had other good players on that team too. But we were just so outmatched physically, but we went right down to the wire with them.

And I just thought our coaches did a great job of getting the most out of us. I and our team that year. And then I have a pretty cool memory my senior year of high school. We beat St. Joe’s at St. Joe’s, so I always joke with people because we beat them my junior year too. And ironically we had to play them the Tuesday after we lost that tough game to Chanel.

And I remember we were all thinking like, how are we going to get up and play this game on a Tuesday night after we just gave it everything we had. And back then Chanel was in our league. So we played St. Joe’s at home and we beat them. And then, like I said, we beat them my senior year at their place.

And those two games, two or three games were some of the best memories. And then just obviously being with my teammates and just having those relationships for the rest of your life. That’s, that’s just something that I really treasure.

[00:15:16] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, no question. What’s something that when you think back to that time, how’d you go about getting better?

How’d you improve your game? What were you doing to work on your skills to develop yourself? How much were you playing pickup? How much were you working in the gym by yourself? Obviously times are a lot different now in terms of guys with trainers and that kind of stuff, but just talk a little bit about what your process was for getting better.

[00:15:38] Tom Harrington: So we, it was, you’re right, it was a lot different. And that was one of the things that I would tie into our club sport conversation from earlier. Everything now that kids do almost exclusively is adult driven. It’s coach driven, and then we complain about leadership and kids leadership when they have no opportunities to lead and solve their own problems.

Whereas I look back to answer your question. Most of what we did was not with any adults around. So we would go to the Omni. I had a pass to the Omni from ninth grade through my senior year at BW. And I went up there almost every day that I wasn’t in season and in practice. I mean, we just lived up there.

We played constantly. In high school we would go and in college in the summertime we would go up to Kurtz Park right over there and play. And it’s funny, I drove I think it was last year or the year before. We were out that way and I had my son in the car with me and I was like, I drove him over there.

I’m like, this is where we used to play. And there was nobody there. And he said, he goes, wait, what would you do? I said, we would go there and you had to wait. And then when you got on the court, you had to win. And if you didn’t win, then you had to go and sit down and wait for your turn again and sometimes you didn’t get another turn and that teaches you how to compete.

And he’s like, well, who is your coach? I was like, we didn’t have a coach. You just go up there and you just play. And that’s really such a foreign concept. It is. Yeah. And that’s why like when, as a coach, when I do open gyms and stuff there’s coaches who are coaching their teams and making them run their plays and trying to dodge all the rules.

I sit in there and I watch and I really don’t say anything. The only thing I’ll say is, you guys need to play harder. But other than that, it’s an opportunity for those guys, call your own fouls, figure out the score, figure it out, and give them those opportunities to lead each other and problem solve.

And for me, I was lucky that I was around a bunch of kids that also wanted to play a lot. So when I was in high school that that’s what we did. If I looked back and I said that I wish I would’ve done something better, I wish I would’ve drilled more on my own. I think I played a decent amount probably more than most kids.

But I didn’t really understand working as hard as I needed to until I got to college. And I sat at the bench my entire freshman year. And then I really started to work hard individually to what should is like you hear a coach say, well, your hard has to equal my hard. I thought I was working hard, but I wasn’t.

I was playing a lot, but I wasn’t being really intentional necessarily about getting better. I just enjoyed playing and I didn’t figure that out until I got older. So I, but I was fortunate that I was good enough to play. But when I look back, I wish that I would’ve had somebody, or someone maybe like be a little bit harder on me about what I was doing with my downtime, or not even necessarily be harder on me, but just, you know, coach me a little bit better and lead me and that that wasn’t our high school coach’s fault. Because like you said, it was different back then. It wasn’t as intense as it is now. We did stuff in the summertime, but it’s not like it is now. So you know, I got better by playing, not so much by drilling at that point in time in my life.

[00:19:20] Mike Klinzing: And it’s funny because obviously that was a way that a lot of people in that era, in my era, which is a little bit before yours grew up, right? You grew up just playing and finding pick up games and I laugh when you’re driving your son go to the courts and outdoors and there’s nobody there. And yeah, you can drive by lots of courts and see that those courts are all sitting empty and kids just don’t play.

They just don’t play outside anymore. No, anywhere. I mean, maybe on the driveway with kids in the neighborhood when they’re young. But once you start talking about high school kids, like I, I don’t, I don’t know any high school kids who, who are at again, who are good high school varsity players that are playing anywhere outside.

Even if you wanted to, I don’t know where you’d possibly go to even find a game that would be worth your time to go and, and play in. And I think about the amount of time that I spent doing that, just driving around the city trying to find a game, either on an outdoor quarter in this gym or, Hey, it’s Tuesday night.

So I know that there’s a game at such and such a gym and it’s weird, like, why are good players showing up at this gym on this particular day? But you just kind of got to know the rhythm of the schedule and you’d know where to show up. And kids today, as you said, most everything is adult driven and it, it goes to what I’m sure we’re going to get into as we talk about you as a high school coach.

You think about the baseline amount of time that you have to put in. just in order to compete at all. I mean, we’re not even talking about to excel, we’re just talking about to be even in the game. The amount of time that you have to put in is tenfold from what it used to be, and then you think about what your high school coaches did and what the expectations of them were, and it was com.

It’s just completely different. And it’s not to say that one system’s better or worse, but it’s certainly different from the way that it used to be. I’m always, I always say I’m thankful that I grew up in the era that I did, because if somebody asks me, Hey, what are, what are your best memories of basketball?

Obviously I have a ton from playing in high school and playing in college, but I also have a ton from just playing pickup games and the people that I met and the friendships that I made, and just hanging out at the courts and getting to know people who were different races than me, different ages than me, and just all that stuff.

And trying to figure out how to navigate it, as you said, like you have to win games and you have to be competitive and you have to stand up for yourself if you even want to get into a game in the first place. And there’s so much, I think that I learned from that stuff that kids today, as you said, we have to give them more opportunities to be able to lead themselves.

Because what we used to do, I think just naturally, because that was the way it was today, kids don’t have that same chance because we’re always putting them in a gym with an adult coach and referees and mom and dad in the stands watching them. And so when do they have a chance to work on weird, funky stuff that they can’t do in a game because there’s a scoreboard there and somebody’s watching them.

And so it’s, it’s just a different, it’s a different era than what it was when you and I grew up. That’s for sure. No doubt. No doubt. All right. Let’s talk a little bit about your recruitment. When did you have an idea that you were going to have an opportunity to play college basketball? Was that something that was always on your radar that you thought, Hey, this is a goal that I have?

Or when did you start to realize that it, it could become a reality?

[00:22:47] Tom Harrington: That’s a great question. My story’s probably a little bit different than, I don’t know who some of maybe your other guests that were had big time recruitments. I’ll say this, besides my high school coaches, obviously helping me learn the game of basketball, there is no way that I could, could have played college basketball without them.

They were great coaches. I always tell people, every coach that I ever played for, or coached with so far has been in the Hall of Fame or some type of hall of fame, whether it’s a county, state, whatever. I’m really lucky, but my mom and dad were pro, like, if I could, I wish I could bring them in and talk.

Have them talk to like the parents now. Yeah. Because one thing I’ll say is I never felt any pressure from them at all to perform at a high level. The only pre pressure that I ever felt from them was, you better play hard and you better be a good teammate and you better listen to your coaches.  I never got in the car and dreaded a conversation on the way home.

I never had to worry about so many of the things that kids have to worry about. And because of that, I really think I became very coachable and, and I just was a kid who and then my older sister, she’s a hall of famer in high school and college. She played at Mount Union and they were really good.

They were in the Final four when she was there. And she’s in the Hall of Fame at Holy Name and Mount Union. And just watching her, she’s four and a half years older, but she was like five grades ahead in school. So like, when she was a freshman in college, I was still in eighth grade.

So just going to all of her games and watching her get that experience really motivated me. I don’t think I’m as good of an athlete as she was relatively speaking. I think that she was really talented and I was more of the one who had to develop my skill. And I always wanted to play in college, like I said, because of what she did.

I want to do that. So I was again, lucky that my coaches knew a lot of people. I’m a traditional point guard. I passed the ball. I’m running offense. I try to play really good defense and make an open shot.

[00:25:32] Mike Klinzing: You’re a dinosaur then, is what you’re telling me.

[00:25:32] Tom Harrington: I am a dinosaur. Absolutely. And so just by the nature of that, I wasn’t highly recruited as a lot of people are. And but I’m lucky my high school coaches knew enough coaches to give me some interest. And I had a really hard time. It was all division three local, you know I went on some visits at like, Case Western and Hiram and John Carroll.

And I don’t think Mount Union was even interested in me, even though my sister told them that they should recruit me, but. So I didn’t know what to do until May of my senior year of high school. I just knew I wanted to play, but I, I’m a feel guy. If I don’t feel the right vibe, I don’t do something.

And I didn’t really feel the vibe at any of those campuses. And growing up in North Royalton I guess we could say now that we’re a little bit older, most, a lot of the AAU and Ohio games was at Baldwin Wallace.  So I had played there so many times. I’m like, I’m not going to BW

And then my high school coach, Coach O’Brien was like, well, why don’t we call BW and just see if they want to take you? So he gave them a call. I went, when I went on the visit, I told my mom and dad, they’re like, I’m like, don’t even go with me because I’m not going to go here. So I said, and you guys have been here a million times.

What are they going to show us? Well, I was so naive because I had never been north of Bagley. And so they walked me around campus and showed me everything beyond what I knew in the gym. And I met the guys on the team and I met my coach. and I was like, it was like immediate. I was like, this is it. And I went there and then when I got there I was just so happy to be on the team that, and I was just happy that they took me.

I went on the visit and Coach Bankson was like, Tom, we need a point guard. And your high school coach says you’re a good point guard. And at that time, Duane Sheldon was an assistant coach before he took the Heidelberg job. And he, I think he advocated for me behind the scenes with our head coach.

And that kind of got me in the room. And then once I got in the room, I remember going to my first open gym and there was like 25 guys there. And I was like, what did I get myself into  Just those feelings as a freshman of like, wow, this is a lot different than high school. And it just worked out.

I mean, I, like I said, I didn’t play a lot my freshman year, but I learned a lot. And I’m probably jumping ahead of your next question, but to answer your recruiting question, I was not highly recruited and I’m thankful every day that BW even gave me a chance.

[00:28:42] Mike Klinzing: So once you’re there, what’s so special about Coach Bankson?

[00:28:44] Tom Harrington: The thing that’s special about him is he’s just a good man. And he’s a straight shooter. You know exactly where you stand with him a hundred percent of the time. He never lied to me. And he always had my back and he really, really, really wanted to win so badly. And I just related really well to him and to the guys on the team, and to the other coaches.

And like I said, it was, it was one of those things where when I got there, I just knew it was the right fit and I just needed to wait for, for my turn to play. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

[00:29:37] Mike Klinzing: So when did you start thinking about being a coach?

Was that something that was on your mind before college? Was that something that as you were playing, as you got exposed to, obviously you, as you’ve talked about being around Coach O’Brien and Coach Arthur, and Coach Banks and Coach Sheldon, all guys, as you said, that are just tremendous coaches and people.

When did coaching start? When did you start thinking about it?

[00:30:01] Tom Harrington: Very early and I had a really good my dad helped coach some of our grade school teams, and he’s just a really good leader. He’s not necessarily a basketball encyclopedia, but he is really smart and a really good leader. So I learned a lot from him.

And then my AAU coach actually just started a group out of his house. He lives on Abbey Road. I’m sure you know where that’s at in Royalton. And we had a group called AC and we had a pretty good little team, and he played at Cleveland State, I believe, and he’s another one that he really set me up for success.

He taught me so much about, especially like defensively, how to be in the right spots that carried over to high school. And I would just say I kind of knew like my whole life that I wanted to coach, that that’s what I wanted to do, because I’m like, I can’t believe that these guys are getting paid to do this every day, they’re in a gym, they’re competing, they’re working with kids, and they’re getting paid. It’s, it’s not an easy job and at times it’s gut wrenching and really, really hard. But I really don’t know what else I would do in my life. I knew pretty much right away. And then when I got to college, I knew I wanted to teach, didn’t necessarily know what I was going to teach until after my freshman year.

But I always knew that I wanted to coach.

[00:31:26] Mike Klinzing: Did you start as a college player? Did you start sort of looking at what your coaches were doing and start thinking about, Hey, how would I do this? Or how would I handle that? And obviously as a point guard, you kind of got that think the game mentality, but were you making that conscious of an effort to write things down or make note of what was going on?

Or was it still sort of just more a nebulous idea in your head?

[00:31:50] Tom Harrington: You know, I actually got my first, I guess my first coaching job was…I coached with one of my teammates at B W. We coached an AAU team while I was in college. So I remember our assistant coach at that time was Jim Timmer and he’s now the AD at Calvin College.

And I remember he was also my advisor and one of my professors and it was the day before our first practice for AAU. And I remember going into his classroom in the spring and I’m like, coach, what am I going to do at practice? And how am I going to figure these kids out? And he’s like, you know what?

He’s like, put them at a hoop. Put like three or four kids at a hoop and make them play one-on-one and it’ll take you about 10 minutes to figure out who the best player is in the gym. Cause he’ll just keep scoring and just something so simple like that. So that’s what I did and then I did a lot of the stuff that we did at BW and I thought, you know what, if it works there, it’ll probably probably work elsewhere as well.

And we just. Like I said, the coaches that I had just taught the fundamentals of the game so well. And, and I had an opportunity to practice that by coaching an AAU team while I was in college. And then when I got to high school, high school coaching, it wasn’t my first time. And, and like I said back then too in the OAC it’s different now.

Everybody just sets a ball screen and plays Correct. And we, you look back, there were so many good coaches. You had Joe Campo at Ohio Northern, and they were running all this horn’s action Flex and John Carroll was pressing, that was when they started the five guys at a time. And Muskingham was running the Princeton and Capital’s coach, who’s still, he’s the most tenured guy now.

They were running a lot of like Utah’s action where they were. You know, cross screening and all sorts of stuff. And so like I had the opportunity to, like, it was like every coach in that league had a style. And actually my freshman year we ran the triangle, so and then, and then my sophomore through senior year, we ran that the same offense that Ohio State ran with Scoonie Penn and Michael Redd.

And so I had the opportunity to do and see a lot of different things. And my freshman year when I didn’t play and I was on the scout team, I had the chance to do what the other teams did, and I learned so much that. And then I got to, when I started coaching, I always tell people I thought I knew a lot about basketball, and then I started coaching with Joe Mackey and I realized how much I didn’t know about everything that goes into it, and then just all the other basketball that’s out there.

So I was lucky, like I said, that I had such a big I guess, smorgasboard of things to learn and all the coaches in that league were legends. Dick Reynolds at Otterbein won multiple national championships and they were just running UCLA action the whole time. I mean, it was just every coach had his niche and they were really good at it.

And our coaches at BW really did a great job of breaking down what the other teams were trying to do against us. And I was just a sponge and I loved every minute of it.

[00:35:17] Mike Klinzing: It’s kind of amazing when you think about sort of where you are in terms of your basketball knowledge. I think when you’re young, you tend to think, especially when you’re still playing or coming off a playing career, I think the tendency is to think that you know a lot and that you know a lot more than a lot of other people.

And I know I was guilty of that. And then when you get exposed to. Coaches, when you get exposed to other ways of thinking, you start going, man, I really don’t know a whole lot. I feel like I know less today at age 52 than I did when I was 22, getting my very first coaching job. It’s just you realize that there’s so much out there that you can still learn and so many people that you can learn from.

And as you said, once you get into an environment where you get that exposure, because a lot of times as, especially as someone who’s an ex-player, you really come at it from the perspective of, Hey, what did my high school coaches run? What did my college coaches run? And that’s kind of what you do. Cause you do what you know.

Right? And then when you get an opportunity to get outside of that bubble and start to see some of the other things that coaches do and that there’s so much more nuance and different ways of playing the game, and we can play this style or that style, or we can switch up and play multiple defenses and there, and there’s just so many things out there that.

I think a lot of times young coaches, especially young coaches who are coming off playing careers, I think we, we sometimes get allowed that, that ego to get in the way that, hey, I, I know everything and I don’t really necessarily always have to go out and, and learn things. And it sounds like you realize that pretty quickly that hey, there’s a lot out here for me to be able to learn and know and understand.

When you think back to that first experience with, with Joe there at Brunswick, what did you take to right away? Like what part of coaching that first year of coaching at the high school level, what did you love about it? Right from the very beginning?  

[00:37:14] Tom Harrington: Somy first four years of coaching, I was the JV coach there.  And the thing that I took from it with Joe was that. He’s so competitive and he, again, very similar to coach Bankson, and he just wanted to win so badly. And I was like, I love this guy. Like, that’s, that’s how I feel. You know, like, we’re here. We may as well try to win the game. So I took that and then also the way that Joe deals with everybody and the way he treats everybody well, and people watch him coach, and they mistake his competitive fire that he’s a certain way and it couldn’t be further from the truth.

And just watching how he handled every aspect of his program, from his youth to administration. To other coaches, to our players. And like I said, I’m like, this guy’s coaching a lot more than just the action that we’re running on the floor. You know, how he deals with kids in school. And he’s just the master at all of it.

And, and not only him and just the other guys that were on our staff that, like, like I said, I’ve just been around so many good coaches. There was, there was Joe, Kevin Braaten was with us for a while. Learned a ton from him. Brian Schmidt, who’s now the associate head coach at BW, was with us for a while.

Chris Cebula, who’s not coaching anymore, he is in the business world, but he was, he would handle all of our scouting. He was just like, so intelligent and knew everything about every team that we were playing. And I like, when I went in there, I thought I was coaching high school, and then I realized, I’m like, these guys do it just like how our college coaches did.

And it was just, like I said, I just kind of sat back and, and watched them and, and try to replicate and take from them and make it my own and try to be good and look at the things that they value. And Joe really valued teaching defense and letting that be your foundation.

And as time went on and we were allowed to start working with kids more and they started implementing the four player workouts and things like that and right when I started coaching was when this big travel youth boom happened where we didn’t even have a travel program when I got to Brunswick.

Because that just wasn’t a thing at that point in time, because everybody still played CYO And so once that got going and we had the chance to work with these kids from grades K through eight before they got to us and doing all that stuff, that was, that was really such a blessing to have that opportunity because like I said, a lot of it is what I still do today with our program at Buckeye.

But having Joe. Coach Bankson made that happen for, for me. So like you said, what one of the things that I love about him, all the stuff I mentioned before, but then he basically got me my first job and he introduced me to Joe. And you know, I couldn’t be more grateful for that.

[00:40:52] Mike Klinzing: What’s something that you learned in your time as an assistant with Joe that has made you a better head coach?  Specifically in how you work with your assistant coaches?

[00:41:04] Tom Harrington: You have to hire people that you trust and if you’re not going to trust somebody, don’t hire them. Like I think Joe would rather, and I’m the same way. He’d rather have a smaller staff with people that he trusts than a bunch of people that aren’t necessarily going to going to help him.

And if you look. He always gets good assistants because he is a good coach, but also I think he develops them, he gives them the opportunity to as time went on, he gave me more and more responsibility. And I try to do that with our assistant coaches. As time goes on, you let them speak a little bit more at practice and you just say, Hey, you’re in charge of this now.

And then sometimes that involves letting someone fail a little bit and then coaching him through that. And I thought Joe did a really good job of that with me. And also if he says that this is he’s really good at setting the direction, like this is the direction we’re going. And like I said, I try to do that with our staff at Buckeye.

I just learned so many things from him.

[00:42:21] Mike Klinzing: How hard is that delegation piece? Because I know we’ve talked to other coaches that have said, look, early on in my career as a head coach, I kind of wanted to have my hand in everything and micromanage everything because again, there’s a reason why people who are successful, the reason why they’re successful is because they trust in their abilities.

They’re confident, they’re skilled. And so I think most coaches go into it thinking that, Hey, the best person for the job is me. Right? That’s, that’s kind of how you go with it. And then so many coaches though have said to me that, Hey, it was 10, 12, 15 years into my head coaching career that I finally realized that the more I let go to people again that I trust, the more I let go to those people and let them be empowered to do the things that they do well.

That’s really when our program took it to another level. And yet I know that that’s something that coaches sometimes. Struggle with, because ultimately as the head coach, your name is the one that’s associated with your team’s record. Your name is the one that goes in the article in the newspaper or online.

It’s, it’s not your assistant coaches. So how have you handled that ability to delegate, whether you’ve gone through what your process is, kind of internally, mentally, what you’re thinking about, and then just how you’ve actually put it into practice?

[00:43:44] Tom Harrington: So, like I said, I think it’s all about people. And the one person, this is my eighth year at Buckeye, the one person that’s been with me through the entire way through is he’s our JV coach.

His name’s Jeremy Salinsky, and Jeremy actually played for us at Brunswick. So I’ve known him since he’s been in eighth grade. And we’re on the same page. So it’s easy to give him responsibility. And then our freshman coach he’s been with me also from the beginning, not necessarily in that capacity, but he helped me establish our travel program at Buckeye for grades three through six.

He’s now our freshman coach and he actually has a football background, but he’s picking up on the basketball side of it. But he’s got the leadership and the organization and all the people skills that you need to be a good coach. So you just try to help them and tell them what they need to do to get better.

And if you’re hiring the right people, they crave that. It’s just like a player. Like if you’re a really good player, you want to be coached hard and it’s the same thing with coaches, they’re trying to make themselves better. And those two guys have been outstanding.

And then coach Soy Keith Sooy, who’s been all over as a head coach, probably most known for his time at Medina. He was with me for six years and he’s actually coaching his grandson now at Highland. And I’m very happy for him for that because that’s special. So he’s over there now, but he was with me and he was so good and so humble and he would talk to the players and he knew after being a head coach for almost 30 years, what I didn’t want to have to worry about.

And he did that for me. And he would have the relationships with the guys and be the buffer. when sometimes you need that nice guy approach. And I would always joke with our players, you’re so lucky that you’re playing for Coach Sooy as an assistant, because I’ve heard all the stories about him as a head coach when he was a little bit more stern.

But I joke about that. But he was tremendous for the morale of our program. And kids just naturally, instinctively flock to him because they know that he wants to see them succeed. So you just try to get people and put them in the right seat on the bus and if you do that, it just takes a little bit of time and a little bit of patience and it’ll start to come together and you’ll start to do special things.

[00:46:29] Mike Klinzing: All right. Go back to the beginning of your tenure at Buckeye and talk a little bit about why this job at the time that you took it, what made you attracted to the Buckeye job? Why did you think it would be one that would be a good fit for you?

[00:46:44] Tom Harrington:? So it’s funny because at that time I was living in Medina and growing up in North Royalton, I always joke with people that I really was never west of Pearl Road

And so very rarely did I go that way. And I didn’t realize how close Buckeye was to my house, because I would always drive to Brunswick every day and I knew having a family that I didn’t want to move all over the place and really was happy in Medina County. And the guy that was our freshman coach knew I wanted to be a head coach, but I wasn’t just going to jump at any job.

So the guy that was our freshman coach for a few seasons, who was also the girls coach at Brunswick for a while he got an assistant principal job. And I joked with him when he got the job because he got the job over the summer. I said, Hey, now that you’re a big administrator, keep me in the loop , and if anything ever opens up, he goes, you got it.

And he called me back a week later, he goes, you’re not going to believe this. Our boys job just opened up and there’s a teaching position. So I applied for the job and got it. And kind of like they say the rest is history. It was a really good fit. Just doing my research on the job, people were like, you’re going to love the kids there.

They’re going to work really hard for you. And I was lucky too, that they had had a little bit of success right before I had gotten there. So it wasn’t like it was a complete like rebuild or anything like that. And when I got there, I was actually very pleasantly surprised at the caliber beause I really didn’t know anything about Buckeye.

I had to put it in my gps. Truly I had never been there before and I couldn’t believe how close it was to us. So when I got there the kids were just like, everybody described. The people were really nice and they were better athletes than I thought that they were going to be. And I thought, you know what?

We’re going to be okay here. We just have to kind of put our stamp on it and, and go. So it worked out really well.

[00:49:05] Mike Klinzing: Did you feel like right from the get-go that you kind of had a pretty good handle on what your philosophy was going to be in terms of being a head coach? Or did it take a season or two for you to kind of get your feet wet and figure things out?

[00:49:20] Tom Harrington: So, yeah, so actually that was my second stint as a head coach. I was the head coach at Highland for one year. So I coached at Brunswick for four years.  I went to Highland because I wanted to be a head coach at the age of 26. And, but I never got a teaching job there and I thought I was going to get one and it didn’t work out.

And at that time their levy failed really, really badly. And our JV coach at the time, who’s now also a varsity head coach down in the Columbus area he had lost a teaching job and he was only 22. And he lost it because they had to cut so many jobs. And then when I found out that it was going to be really hard to get in there and I was just, I really think it’s important that you’re in the building and in the district, or at least in the district with your kids. And so that was a really hard decision because it’s like you accomplished this goal oof getting a head coaching job. And I learned a lot during that time because we inherited a program that the year before we were there, they were two and 19 at the varsity one and 19 on the jv and one and 19 as the freshman.

And our first year there, we went eight and 14 with the varsity and it was our banquet. You would’ve. Like we won the Super Bowl, everybody was just so happy that we were competitive, you know? And I’m like, this is the worst season that I’ve ever been a part of for me, right. From a winning standpoint.

But I look back on it and I learned a lot about myself how I deal with adversity. And everything happens for a reason. I understand now why it happened the way it happened. But you know, Highland was a great place as well and they’ve had obviously a lot of success in a lot of sports especially recently.

And but I went back to Brunswick because like I said, I just knew I wasn’t going to be able to get in there teaching wise. And that’s not their fault. That was just the dynamic of the situation and went back with Joe. So then, when I’m like, okay, when I go for another job, it has to be the right thing like it has to have all the ingredients.

And when I found out that I could be in the building at Buckeye I knew that. I’m like, okay, I have to do this. So when I had gotten there between being a head coach and then as I matured as a coach and Joe giving me more responsibility I was ready. And I knew what I wanted to do.

And my philosophy similar to his in that, this sounds bad, but like, I don’t have an offensive philosophy. There’s things that I wish all my players could do, but we kind of look at our kids, whoever walks through the door and whatever we think we’re best at, that’s what we’re going to do.

And offensively and defensively, I don’t know how you could do it any other way, unless you have a thousand boys in your building where maybe you can play a certain way. But we kind of look at what we’re best at and then go from there. And that’s never changed. And I guess it’s worked because we’ve had a little bit of success.

So I had a good idea of what I wanted to do. That in and of itself was a philosophy, right? I would love to say I’m a two post coach, or we run high low. We’re five out. I don’t know, I sometimes, I don’t know what we are until everybody gets back from football and soccer and I see who’s not injured because that could dictate it as well.

Coaching at Buckeye is a little bit different. You kind of have to adapt a little bit more, but our kids are super coachable and we’ve been able to do it in a variety of ways over the years.

[00:53:19] Mike Klinzing: What about from a culture standpoint? What did you see? What do you see, what do you want your team, your program to look like from a big picture standpoint, Culture-wise?

[00:53:29] Tom Harrington: So I think when I first got there, we had no coaches gear. And I’m like, we need to get some nice stuff. Our players had no we had no travel gear. Like they just wore khakis and it was nice. Like they looked nice . I mean, they wore khakis and a tie and kids weren’t that excited about the khakis and a tie though.

Yeah, yeah. And I’m like, we have to get some basketball gear. So we kind of changed our look. We got the at that time, Hard to believe, but it was like eight years ago, we got the Nike bags and all the stuff that makes you feel like you’re in a program. And that was the thing was like, we’re running a program K through 12.

And so we did that. The culture standpoint for Buckeye was great. They were just like the, the people were like, tell us what you want. We’ll support you. And I had nobody standing in my way. It was like everybody that I met wanted me to be successful and wanted our program to be successful.

That’s something I tell every coach that we hire. I say whatever you give here, they’ll give it back tenfold. That’s just the nature of the community and that’s kind of how we did. It’s like, we’re going to treat you really well, but we also expect you to work really, really hard. And I want us to walk in the gym and people, we look like we have our act together.

And then we play that way too. We play really, really hard. Like I said, the style may vary a little bit, but we’re always fundamental. When I got there, somebody told me that, oh, you’re not going to have any shooters at Buckeye like you did at Brunswick. And when I got there, their shooting gun was broken and in my opinion, needed to shoot a little bit more.

So we did that and we had two kids in my second year break the school record for threes. And then we had one last year who broke it again. And our team as a team last year we were in the top 10 in free throw percentage and three point field free throw percentage and top 10 in three point field goal percentage.

So it’s just kind of like sometimes people think a certain way and you just have to show them like, no, you actually can do it. There’s a lot more here than what you think is possible. And then you have to just go do the work. And luckily we have a lot of kids that are really competitive and want to be good and want to win.

And when I got there, our league was one that we were starting to outgrow. And as we grew a little bit, we’re now in a new conference. So I think that’s part of the culture change playing a little bit bigger schools and schools that are really, really solid. So there’s been a lot of change in the last eight years and I think that we’ve elevated kind of the entire brand of the entire program.

[00:56:43] Mike Klinzing: One of the things that you talked about earlier was being the coach of the program from K to 12. And so when you think about what you’ve done and your involvement with the youth program, I know that’s something that high school coaches often spend a lot of time thinking about, and I think the good ones spend a lot of time investing in those youth programs.

Talk a little bit about what you’ve done with your youth program and, and maybe some advice that you’d have for other coaches who are trying to get something good rolling with their younger kids.

[00:57:13] Tom Harrington: You have to know what you want your kids to do. You have to have a curriculum for them. It’s no different than science class.

If you’re just walking in every day on the fly, it’s not going to work. You have to know what you want them to do by the time they come up to you. How you have to be present with them because you’re going to have coached them a hundred times before they walk through the door in high school.

So they already know you. They already know what your expectations are. I think that in every community, there’s some people who are very capable of coaching and we’ve had some really good youth coaches at Buckeye who teach exactly what we want to teach. They were basketball players themselves and they understand what we’re trying to accomplish.

So I think it’s important the people who you have involved, that they don’t have their own agenda or this is my program. No, it’s our program, it’s our schools program, and this is what we’re going to do. And your coaches have to be unselfish and make them understand that their role is to make the kids better and to make sure they want to play again next year.

Because whatever we want to say is coaches. And we could all talk about our offense and our strategy and how good a coach is. Everybody thinks they are, but when you have better players, you win more games. and when you don’t have as good a players, it’s really, really, really hard. And it’s hard even when you have good players.

So there’s so many good coaches in northeast Ohio and you see it like when we’ve gone to other states to play between my time at Brunswick and at Buckeye. There’s good coaches everywhere, but northeast Ohio is, I think one of the best in the country. And you have to make sure that everybody’s working in the same direction because otherwise, you might have been able to play catch up in the past if you got kids going into seventh grade that can’t do certain things, like they’re never going to catch up.

The youth programs now, it’s so important and it has to be a priority for any coach.

[00:59:44] Mike Klinzing: How do you get involved with the coaches to make sure that the curriculum that you’ve created, that those things that you need your players to be able to do by the time they get to you on the varsity level, how do you make sure that those fundamental skills are being taught at the lower levels?

[01:00:02] Tom Harrington: So, at Buckeye and Brunswick, we were lucky because at Brunswick, there was nothing. That was when the boom started. So Joe was like, we’re just going to do this and hire the people and that’s going to be it. And he had the clout and the success in the community that people just naturally followed him.

When I got the job at Buckeye, there were people that were doing travel stuff and doing youth stuff, but it was fractured. It was like this dad has his crew. That dad has his crew. Yep. And there was really no guiding central figure. And when I got hired , I just basically called all of them and had a meeting and was like, listen, and this is going to sound, I don’t know how it’s going to sound, but it is what it is.

So I just said, listen, I’m the one who gets interviewed by the Gazette, so I get to make all the decisions with basketball. So we’re going to do, this is what we’re doing. If you don’t want to do it. Then I don’t know what to tell you, but just give me a chance to coach your kid and give me a chance to take control of this and buy into what we’re doing.

I’m not just somebody that’s going to dictate what you’re going to do. I’m going to help you. I said, I’m a basketball coach, I said, if I was a football coach, if I had a son who wanted to play football, I wouldn’t try to do my own thing. The first thing I would do is call the high school coach and say, what do you want me to do?

And so what I’m asking you guys is to just have that attitude. And I couldn’t have been more lucky. And one of them was a former head coach, so I’m making this speech to these guys and not knowing that I had a former head coach in the audience and his son actually just graduated, ended up becoming our all-time leading scorer and.

He was in sixth grade when I got to Buckeye. So you just have to kind of take control and you have to form relationships with people and you have to, in what you’re, I don’t want to say selling, but what you’re trying to get people to believe in, it’s have to be, it’s have to be on point. And if you do it the right way and you that people know that you have their best interest at heart and their kid’s best interest, I think people will naturally jump on.  It’s just that time that you have to spend with people and form relationships with them and get to know them. And if people know that you’re trying to help them, I think they’re going to want to jump on board.

[01:02:53] Mike Klinzing: How important has that been in building relationships, not just with those youth coaches and the youth players, but also getting to know some of those families so that by the time a kid gets to the high school program, , you already know, or at least have some relationship with the family, which I’m sure helps you as a coach to be able to create that kind of positive environment that you want around your team.

[01:03:18] Tom Harrington: Absolutely. You know, like I said, the first time that they walk through the door for high school, they already know your name, they already know what you’re about. They already know what you expect in your program. And you know their parents you know what they do for a living, you know their siblings and they know you as well.

So that’s everything. And especially that’s really the foundation of, I guess, any community. But that’s what Buckeye is like. Buckeye is just a people place and the people there naturally want to do well. And if you look across the board, all of our sports, we’ve done pretty well.

Especially in the last 10 years. And those relationships with all those families, it doesn’t happen without that. So that’s have to be even if it’s just, hello, you’re just saying hello to people. I always tell our people, I’ll talk to you about anything, anytime, anywhere. And all you’re going to get is a straight up conversation about what your kid needs to do to get better.

And if that’s what you want to talk about, then let’s talk about it. We’re not going to talk about another kid, we’re not going to talk about our strategy or anything like that. And then the other thing that we always do is, and I learned this from Joe, is we’re going to make sure your kid is there because that’s who the conversation is about.

And if we’re trying to do something without them there, then one of us is being deceptive or is trying to have their own agenda. We’re just not going to do that. So as you go through over time you, you earn people’s trust by doing all those things which you said you were going to do.

And over time people begin to trust you and the kids trust you. I think too, when you have the success, the younger kids, like they saw like our team last year, we made it to the district final for the first time in the history of the school. And unfortunately we had to play Saint V . But you know, that was a huge thing.

So we took our whole program, we took two buses. We took every single kid in our travel program. Grades three through six. We took our junior high and we took our high school kids, and I’m like, we’re going on the bus to the district championship. And that’s, you just, you make people feel like they’re, everybody’s a part of it because they are.

And when those little kids see the older guys having success, kind of, I guess to go back to the beginning of our conversation, like when I saw my sister having success, I was like, I want that. And it motivates kids. And if they’re a competitor, they’ll do what it takes. And we’re really lucky because I’m really lucky because we’ve had a nice little run, but I think in the next three or four years we can have a run that’s really, really good.

And kind of these kids that have been they were in first grade well, Let’s see, our ninth graders were second graders when I got to Buckeye. So once you start to see these kids come all the way through and they’re naturally talented to begin with, and then you have the program aspect of it, it’s just a really good opportunity for success.

[01:06:54] Mike Klinzing: I think that aspirational piece is something that to me, always feels like it’s a really important part of having a successful public school, high school program that kids who are in elementary school, and now obviously they’re part of your travel program, but that those kids see your players, see your team on Friday night or Tuesday night, and they sit in the stands and they think, I want to become a part of that.

I want to play for Coach Harrington, or I want to be like this kid or that kid, or I want to run out and go through warmups, whatever it might be. To me, that’s just a huge part of developing a complete program where you have to make it enticing. You have to make it exciting for kids to want to be a part of it.

You have to give them, as we talked about a minute ago, they have to have the travel suit and the gear as opposed to only the khakis and the tie. There’s things that are exciting to kids that sometimes as adults we overlook. And that gear piece of it. Just the ability to, as you said, load a bunch of kids on a bus and go to a district final and, and experience that excitement.

If you experience that when you’re a fifth or sixth grader sitting in the stands, I’m sure you can only think in your head, man, someday that could be me. I’d, I’d love to be out there someday. And then as you said, they kind of start to figure out what it’s going to take for them to be able to, to get to that point, because, They’ve gotten exposure to you, to your coaching staff, to your players, and as a result, they’re striving to try to get to that level.

And to me, I just think that’s a huge part of making sure that your program has that aspirational piece of it so that kids want to be a part of it someday. To me that’s just, it’s super, super important and I think that a lot of coaches sometimes overlooked at as they’re thinking about building, building their program.

When you’re working with your current players and you’re going into a season, and we’re obviously early in the season at this point here in early December right now, but as you’re going down and you’re looking at planning out a practice, what’s your process for. Figuring out what you’re going to do on a day-to-day basis in practice.

Do you sit down and plan the practice yourself? Are you consulting with your staff? Are you watching the films? You do it right after the practice from the previous day. Do you do it the next day? Just tell me a little bit about your process for putting together a practice plan.

[01:09:17] Tom Harrington: So thanks to technology I have every practice plan saved from since I’ve been at Buckeye.

And I think your planning is so important. And as time goes on it just like everything, what used to take you a long time, you get faster at it because you’ve done it before. So what I do is it depends on the time of the year. If it’s early in the year you’re installing your stuff and once you get into the games, you get into the rhythm of what that day looks like.

If it’s a light day with lifting and game plan or is it a film day? Is it a little bit longer on the court? Whatever it might be. But one of the things that I try to do for every practice is no matter what time of the year it is, we have ball handling, passing, and shooting in every practice.

Cause if you can’t do that, you don’t keep those things sharp. It’s really, really hard to score. So we do that at every practice. And then depending on the opponent you’re working on different drills, different things for the opponent that you’re about to play. Film is a lot easier than when I first started coaching.

When I first started coaching, we were still watching tape on VHS , and now we’re watching obviously you could get 20 films on somebody in five minutes. So I plan it with our staff every day. We have conversations about what we need to do, and like I said, with technology on Google we can write notes to each other and be on the same document so that’s made things more efficient.

Early in the year, we’re going two, two and a half hours that gets trimmed down. Like right now we’re going about hour 45 to two hours on the court maximum. We try to watch film. Kids always have access to the film. You have to find the balance for your team of what they can handle.

We’ll watch film. We usually watch film on Monday, if we play on a Tuesday, we’ll watch it on Monday. If we play on a Friday, we’ll watch it on Thursday and then we’ll watch, we’ll lift on Sunday and Wednesday. So you try to get a rhythm so kids know what to expect? And then, sometimes it’s a little more, a little less.

Maybe it’s an extra day of lifting. Maybe it’s an extra day of film depending on what your team needs. But that’s kind of our rhythm. And then by the end of the year you’re on the court for an hour, hour and 15 minutes and you’re just trying to stay sharp and be ready to play.

[01:12:14] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s interesting how over the course of the season that. There, there’s sort of a rhythm, right? To what a preseason practice looks like. And then as you get into game prep and then at the end of the season you’re trying to keep guys fresh and make sure you’re peaking, when you get to those most important games down at the end of February and hopefully into the early part of March, there’s, there’s definitely that flow to the season.

We’re getting up close here to an hour and a half time. I want to ask you one final two-part question. So part one is when you think about the next year or two looking ahead, what do you see as being the biggest challenge that you have in front of you? And then the second part is when you get out of bed every day and you go into work and you think about what you get to do, what brings you the most joy?

About being the head of varsity basketball coach at Buckeye. So your biggest challenge and your biggest joy.

[01:13:05] Tom Harrington: Okay. So our biggest challenge for this year specifically is we graduated 80% of our scoring and two kids who started for three years. And one is playing at Marietta. The other ones, they’re pretty good basketball players.

So our challenge for this year is, and I told our kids this, I’m like, look, you’re going to make a ton of mistakes. Just keep playing hard and keep having confidence in yourself. And if you do that, we’re going to be fine. Every team’s journey is different. This is our journey this year, and we’re capable.

We just have to put it together. So the, the challenge is going to be learning on the fly and accepting some of the adversity that comes with that. Because like, for example, last year we played 24 games, 18 of them were against schools that were bigger than us or Catholic school, private school. So we don’t play an easy schedule for us.

Now, if it was a Brunswick or a Medina or St. Ed’s, they might look at the schedule and say, that’s not but for us, for Buckeye, we play a very difficult schedule. And getting kids that experience is going to be really, really key in staying positive and making sure that we stay upbeat when adversity hits us because it’s going to.

And then the biggest joy that I get every day I just told somebody this the other day, I’ve never woken up. I’ve woken up and been like, I wish I could go back to sleep cause I’m tired. But I’ve never woken up . I’ve never woken up and been like, I hate my job. I don’t know. I cannot imagine doing that my whole life.

Like some people do. I can’t imagine doing it for one day. I get to go and work with really good people. I get to work with really good kids. And my biggest joy is, is honestly just trying to help kids get better. And I have a couple of quotes that are up on my walls in my office. And the one is pay it forward.

And that sits right behind right next to my desk. And it’s in really big letters. And that was Coach Bankson and Coach Bankson got hired by Lee Tressell at BW in 1980. And that was Lee Tressell’s thing. And and when I graduated from BW, we had just beaten John Carroll in the OAC Championship my senior year, and we got to go to the NCAA tournament.

And when our season was over, I went into Coach Bankson’s office and I said, coach, I don’t know how I’m ever going to pay you back for everything that you did for me. Because he did stuff for me on and off the court that I could never, ever, ever pay him back for. And he looked at me and he’s like, you can’t pay me back.

He’s like, you need to pay it forward. He’s like, and when you go coach with Coach Mackey, you need to take care of your players. So that for me is kind of like my daily when I don’t, when you’re unmotivated, because we all go through that. And when you don’t feel like doing something, it’s like, you know what, I had coaches who always help me.

I have to help our guys in basketball and out of basketball. And when you see a kid, like the other day we had seven alumni come back and play against us for a practice and that’s the best thing about coaching is when you see your guys succeed and you know that you’re doing the stuff right now, that’s going to help them in the future.

So that would be my favorite. My biggest joy.

[01:16:49] Mike Klinzing: I love that. And it’s so true. I think the impact that you can have, not only on the basketball floor, but what you can do for kids off the floor and to be able to get the opportunity to do it with a game that you love, it’s something that. The great, the good coaches.

The great coaches are the ones that they don’t take that responsibility lightly, and they, they really pour into the game and pour into their players. And, and to hear you say that I think speaks very, very highly of what it is that you do and, and the program that you’ve built there at Buckeye. Before we get out, Tom, first of all, thanks for being willing to jump on, and secondly, I want you to share how people can reach out, get in touch with you, whether you want to share email, social media, whatever, how they can find out more about you and your program.

[01:17:35] Tom Harrington: Yeah. So if you want to know more about Buckeye basketball, our school website is buckeyebucks.org. Our athletic department Twitter, we post all the scores for all of our teams is @BHSATHDEP And then my personal Twitter is @HoopsHarrington. So I’m pretty original.

Yeah, and I just basically retweet a bunch of stuff that I think is good stuff. I’m not much of a my own tweet guy. I just kind of try to send the good stuff back out to everybody. So that’s it.

[01:18:18] Mike Klinzing:. Tom, again, thank you so much for taking the time out of your schedule to join us tonight.

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