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>>> Division II and Divsion III News & Notes |
A
UNIQUE DOUBLE-DOUBLE
 It
is not uncommon for basketball coaches at the
small college level to have more responsibilities
than just coaching, but for Randy Lee at the
University of Maine at Machias, coaching was the
only thing he would have time for during the
2004-05 season. Lee was asked to coach both the
men’s and women’s basketball team at this small
NAIA Division II school for a second season, where
he led the two teams to a combined 51-8 record. He
admits to at first “walking on eggshells,” when
coaching women, but he learned quickly that just
like the men, women want a demanding coach.
Lee was hired before the 2003-04 season as the
head coach of the men’s basketball team. Second
year women’s coach Dean Preston was a part-time
employee who also served in the Maine National
Guard. In November of 2003 after coaching four
games, Preston was called to duty as the Captain
of an engineering battalion to serve in Iraq. The
Athletic Director recognized that Lee was familiar
with several of the girls on the team from being
their cross country coach. Once Lee volunteered to
hold the position down until Preston would return,
the athletic director quickly appointed him as the
head coach.
Lee came to Maine Machias after assisting John
Gianini at the University of Maine at Orono. He
had a great deal of college coaching experience
that included an interim stint as the head coach
at Delaware State, but he had no previous
experience coaching women. He has found that
coaching women and men is not as different as some
may think, “There are a lot of similarities to
coaching a men’s team. The women wanted the same
intensity, the same drive, my same personality,
which is fiery, and the hunger.”
After originally being concerned with hard he
coached the women, a few of the players on his
team let him know in their individual meetings
that they did not want to be treated differently
from the men, “They told me that I could get after
them a little bit more. They wanted to have more
demanded from them, so my coaching style was
pretty much the same.”
Obviously, it is hard to imagine how any coach
would have the ability to coach two teams during
the same season. He credits three things for
allowing him to be successful. First, he did not
coach the men or women differently. Lee did not
change much strategically in his first season
coaching the women, as he said it was a difficult
transition for the girls. He was their third coach
in three years, so he stuck with the continuity
motion offense that Coach Preston installed.
However, in his second year, he implemented the
same offense for the women as he ran for the men,
“I found it necessary for me to have all of our
sets be run for both teams. We ended up executing
the same sets, the same motion offense, and the
same defensive philosophy for both teams. On my
part, that was needed to make an easy transition
for both teams. It could have been tough if we
were scouted a little better.”
Second, he credits his men’s players for having
the maturity to handle their coach’s additional
duties. The two teams would usually play
back-to-back games with the women going first. The
men would have to self-prepare with Lee speaking
to the men at halftime of the women’s game. He
knows that without good players, no coach can be
successful, “Great players in a program make the
coach better.”
Third, he was surprised by the “hunger” displayed
by the ladies on his team. He believes that
although Coach Preston was in Iraq, he helped to
motivate his team, “He is a terrific guy and a
terrific coach. Throughout the whole process, it
made everything real, the nightly news, CNN,
people dying in his battalion that he was captain
of. We were on pins and needles for a year and a
half with Coach Preston. Our hearts were always
out there for him. Our ladies had ‘Iraq and back
on their shoes.’ He communicated with not only
myself, but some of the girls. He only wanted to
talk about us and never about him. It was always
about basketball and what we have to do to get
better, which say a lot about him as an
individual.
Lee does not think he worked any harder than he
would have worked if he were just the men’s coach.
That is hard to believe with him having to wake up
for 6AM practice with the women. The men would not
practice until 8:30 PM, but Lee believes that
spreading out the practices helped him to manage
his time better and stay focused on both teams. He
will use the off-season to work hard in
recruiting, but he also knows that it is important
to use this time to recharge, “The big thing is
trying to keep a pulse on you as a person, and
then also using the off-season as a down time to
catch up and get your energy back. The hours would
have been nearly the same if I was coaching the
one sport.”
Lee is also grateful for this opportunity to coach
so many games in a short time, “Anytime you can
coach and get experience it is going to be
beneficial.” He enjoyed coaching the women and
says that women allow you to really coach the
right way, “One thing coaching women has made me
aware of is that everybody can look to be
technically more sound. Often times coaching on
the men’s side, and I think this characterizes
myself as well as other coaches, we allow our
players to make plays not always doing the right
things. We let their athleticism carry them rather
than making sure they are doing everything
properly. Sometimes that is good and sometimes
that is bad.”
Coach Lee won 88 games in two years, and he would
certainly get votes if there were a “small college
coach of the year award.” He is sure to have
opportunities to coach at a school where there is
more than one stoplight in town and a Walmart
closer than 45 minutes away, but for now Lee is
focused on competing for a National Championship,
“I am happy where I am at. I am in a small
environment, a beautiful location, and the people
locally are behind us. I just want to continue to
challenge not only for conference championships,
but to make a push for a National Championship.”
He will turn the women’s team back over next
season to Coach Preston, who returned to the
United States at the end of March. But he will
forever remember coaching the women Clippers and
how they, “will run through the wall repeatedly
for their coach.” He said all he wanted “was to
continue to progress the women’s basketball
program in a direction that would make Coach
Preston happy,” adding that his team always had
Coach Preston in mind, saying, “We would always
talk about if Coach Preston where to walk into
practice, or a game, what would he think?”
Although you cannot compare a basketball coach to
someone who serves his country in war, I am sure
Coach Preston was very proud of Randy Lee and his
women’s basketball team.
David Adelman spent 7 years as a Division I
assistant and two years as a Division III
assistant at the University of Wisconsin Stevens
Point. After two years coaching minor league
professional basketball, he is currently working
as a consultant for the New Jersey Nets.
EMAIL DAVID |
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