November 21, 2011

Diary Series: Marty Richter, Asst. Coach - Florida Gulf Coast ('A beach on campus?')

“There is a beach on campus.  A beach! On campus!”  That is the first thing I told my wife when I took the job at Florida Gulf Coast University.  I talked about the beach for the first month and a half; I sent pictures of it and bragged to other people about it.  How many campuses have their own beach?  

Do you want to know what my wife asked me?  “But, what about the basketball team?”

There is someone with her priorities straight.  She’s always asking the right questions.  I have that with the people around – people who are always asking the right questions, thinking two steps ahead and planning for the next day.  That’s what we are doing now, planning, thinking, preparing.

As a new basketball staff, you have the challenge of taking someone else’s team and making it your own, reshaping it with new recruits and team management practices that allows for forward progression.  At FGCU, we were lucky to have young men who were ready and had the desire to get better. 

Returning upperclassmen, Sherwood Brown, Eddie Murray, Ed Rolax, and Kevin Cantinol, want to leave a proud legacy at our institution and we, as coaches, want to set the tone for an illustrious career at FGCU.  We have the same goals – win and win as big as we can.  Now as we embark on our first official competition as Eagles, there is a shared sense of purpose and desire.  Under Coach Enfield’s leadership our young team has developed a confidence that will allow them to showcase their talent.  With four new scholarship freshmen and transfer sophomore Eric McKnight waiting for the next season of competition, we have a lot of inexperience on the court.  However, what we lack in college game day experience, we make up for in tenacity.  The energy of Brett Comer, Filip Cvjeticanin, Dante Holmes and Bernard Thompson is palpable.  You can taste it; you can feel their sense of urgency.  While the players recently had to shake off their nerves for their first real bouts together against quality foes, we are enjoying an advantage in being unknown and untested as a team.  We have the benefit of mystique.  We have the luxury of not knowing what we are capable of over the long haul this season. 

Our sophomores Christophe Viradel and Chase Fieler get that.  They get being underrated and underexposed, and they have something to prove this year.  We all do.  What I am most impressed by is our willingness to accomplish the goals together.  We have been able to come together, returning players, new staff and new talent and put team first.  We were fortunate to have trust among our players and among our staff come quickly. 

We have trust.  We have energy.  We have confidence.  We have talent.

Coach Enfield has built a team that is more than just five players on a court, 14 men on a bench.  We are creating family at FGCU.  This is how we are changing the culture of our team and recreating the culture of basketball.  Our guys have fun; they play hard, but have fun.  As a coach, you really can’t ask for more than that from a team. 

During this stretch of 17 days, we play seven games and only two are at home.  You can get tired just thinking about it.  This is where mental toughness is paramount and this is when, as coaches, we have to make good decisions about how to spend our time most judiciously.  More rigorous practices for shorter time periods make players feel more productive and less burdened.  Still, there is no easing our men into the season.  We are throwing our squad into the fire.  Asking them to put aside their fear and believe in their abilities.  We are not slowly building their reputation with easy wins against under-matched competitors.  We don’t believe in humble beginnings; we take the bull by the horns.  I’m glad for it; I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I think we will have a great year – not a perfect year, but great.

And, did I mention that we have a beach on campus?  What college has a beach on campus?

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