My Thank You to Coach Hofman

Coach Hofman is Interviewed Just After the Dedication

Written on 2-14-16.

    I’d rather write about a special night two nights ago.  My former college basketball coach, Bob Hofman, was honored on Friday night for his excellence as a coach mostly at Fort Lewis, but also at Western State and other places.  They dedicated a court in his name, and I am so glad I went.  He is so very deserving.  Similar to my 30th high school reunion this past summer, I went from conversation to conversation to conversation, picking up with where I had left off with “old” friends and teammates from over 25 years ago.  It was fantastic!  I thoroughly enjoyed visiting with each one, and I was thankful Rich Hillyer sat by Belinda to keep her company while I abandoned her to go be my social self.  She sat in the section reserved for former players and quickly discovered she was the only girl in there. 
    We arrived just before 5:30, the time the reception was supposed to end, but it was still going when we walked over there.  The plan was...
to go to dinner with the Hillyers before the dedication, but I really wanted to say hello to as many of the guys as I could before we went downtown.  I got to see Jeff Norton and his brother Troy, Steve Haas, Darrin Worthington, Jeff Cremers, Tony Sturges, Brice Searles, Scott Sanders, Dan Gallagher, and Coach Sam Antcliffe.  Laura said Coach Antcliffe was repeatedly asking, “Where’s Pat?  Where’s Swope?  He said he would be here.”
    I made sure to greet him before we left for dinner to let him know we had arrived.  Belinda had to work, I explained, but we got there as soon as we could.  We took a picture together to send to John in Tennessee, his son and my college roommate for three fun years.  With every greeting, I felt happy and grateful to get to see these guys again.  We had such great times way back then, during some of the most formative and wonderful years of our lives.
    Here’s why I’m thankful to have had Bob Hofman as my coach.  Thinking back, I was blessed to have had many incredible coaches and they all influenced me in deeply profound and positive ways.  Hofman, however, was special in some different, unique ways.  First, no coach before him cussed less the more frustrated and angry he became.  Second, despite his incredible, strategic mind, he often could not find his way out of a locker room.  Third, I had never seen a coach walk out of a gym during conditioning before.  We would be doing a circular drill where we had to keep two basketballs repeatedly bouncing off both backboards while running in a loop together.  When it was my turn, I had to time it just right to catch the ball and bounce it off the backboard right after the guy in front of me, and make my bounce high enough for the guy behind me to keep it going.  He walked out…but we just kept on going.
    Those were some of the quirky things, but there’s more.  My greatest compliment is that he made me (and probably the rest of the guys) feel like a member of a team.  He emphasized the importance of the individual roles we had to play, and he made us know and understand that we all had something to offer, even the bench-sitters like me. 
    I remember vividly being considered for a starting role my freshman year.  He told me so.  I was pretty flashy with my quickness on fast breaks and high-flying dunks, so I may have impressed him, but it dwindled quickly when others showed better consistency with their defense, rebounding, and shooting ability.           
    However, even as the guy down on the end of the bench who completed workout after workout of repeated standing and sitting in order to cheer great plays game after game, I knew I was valued.  Belinda mentioned on the drive home that night that the “A squad” is only as good as the “B squad,” and that was what Hofman believed and successfully taught.  As a former starter in high school, I gained a newfound respect for those guys at Alameda who didn’t get to play in the games as often as I did, if at all.  They made us better, just like I helped make the Fort Lewis players ahead of me better.
    After the drubbing that Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers received in the Super Bowl, I am reminded that Coach Hofman also knew that defense wins championships.  We worked hard on defense.  We worked hard on proper form, too.  Coach Antcliffe would stand in front of us, and we would get into a defensive stance.  My quads would begin to burn just holding that position, but then he would start pointing in four different directions and we would do our defensive slide.  Right.  Left.  Back.  Forward.  Lungs burning, legs quivering, we would continue for what seemed like the length of a boring lecture in a psychology class.  It paid off, though.  Defense helped us win our championship in 1987. 
    Coach Hofman said we were in the best shape of our lives, so why not push ourselves?  In every practice, I came to a point where I wanted to stop.  I quickly found out about my own character in those moments.  Sometimes I would slow down, not knowing how much longer the torture might continue; I had to save some of my reserves, I thought, just in case.  Would I have enough in my tank for later?  I’m a little ashamed to write that. 
    Sometimes, though, I would push past it, not caring or thinking about what might happen later.  Those were the times I was most proud of myself.  Thankfully, Matt Goebel would sometimes be a lifesaver for us all.  I spoke to him about this as the current Fort Lewis players were sprinting up and down the court taking on Western State after the dedication ceremony.  I thanked him for consistently getting hurt somehow when the conditioning had reached a zenith.  He said it was not an accident, but I knew that already.  In my second year, I figured out that when we all felt like there was no oxygen left in the gym anywhere, Matt would somehow “twist” his ankle or get “bonked” on the head, giving us all a deserved respite.  So, thanks Coach Hofman for pushing us past the limit, and thanks Matt for saving us from certain death.
    I stole something from Coach Hofman when I was a volleyball coach, too.  Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, right?  When I first saw him do the “Hofman graph,” I had no idea what he was doing.  He started on the bottom of a chalkboard and talked us through how our season had gone so far while drawing a zigzag line that went up and sometimes down, but mostly up.  For example, he would say we had a great win against Metro as he dragged the chalk up and to the right.  Then he would snap the chalk down a bit and say something about how maybe we had won, but we certainly could have played much better against Adams State.  The chalk would continue its upward journey until the present moment and then he would mention briefly who our next opponent would be or some upcoming tournament and snap the chalk upward one last time to emphasize his expectations.  The magic of this, in my opinion, is that despite setbacks, the chalk always kept moving upward.  Thinking about it now, it could be a metaphor for life as well.