DRIVING COACH WOODEN


For most the early to mid 1980s seem like a lifetime ago. For Steve Hawkins, twenty-five years ago seems like yesterday. It’s all about the company that you keep.

The Southern California native spends his time now coaching in Kalamazoo, MI making long drives through Mid-American Conference country. But long before he became the head coach at Western Michigan, Hawkins spent his summers in California driving back and forth from Thousand Oaks to Encino. One of his duties, as a head counselor, at basketball camp was to chauffer the camp’s director John Wooden.

“Every morning I would pick him up at his condo and drive him to camp at Cal Lutheran College,” says Hawkins. “Those drives to and from camp were unbelievable, just listening to coach Wooden talk.”

Hawkins, who had attended coach Wooden’s camps as a youngster, spent the better part of five summers listening to those words of wisdom. Often not saying a word during the trek home, instead just listening.

“The rides to camp were normally just me and coach Wooden,” Hawkins says, “but the rides home almost always included a reporter or a coach or both. “I think I heard just about every question imaginable asked of coach Wooden and I had the opportunity to hear all his answers. It was very enlightening to get a feel for what he was thinking and how he approached things.”

Coaches like to say that they are sponges, absorbing bits of information from many different coaching wells. For Hawkins it was more a matter of going to the same well, again and again.

But a spectator at a Western Michigan game won’t see many similarities in style to the brand of basketball that UCLA played for decades. There is no high-post offense. There isn’t any pressing and there is little or no zone defense being played. In fact there is virtually nothing that resembles that famed UCLA style, but the influence is obvious.

“The one thing he would always say is that if your team is not playing up to its potential then go back and look at your practice plan,” Hawkins says. “He was insistent that if they were not reaching their potential it was a result of not spending enough time on fundamentals. I remember the first time I felt my team wasn’t playing well. I went back and looked at my practice plan and sure enough we weren’t focusing on fundamentals enough. Those were the types of things that have been invaluable to me in my coaching career.”

One day it was fundamentals. Another was about the attention to detail or being a strict disciplinarian. Every day was a new lesson learned. It was the ultimate mobile summer school of sorts for Hawkins. But he wasn’t the only one listening.

“Every day he would tell me to pick up Rick or pick up John at this particular corner,” says Hawkins. “I had no idea who these people were, but when I got to the corner I would just stop and let whoever was standing there get into the van. One day he says, ‘Steve pickup Tom on the next block.’ So I pulled around the corner and stopped so that Tom Landry could get in. All I kept thinking was I can’t crash. I can’t be the guy who was responsible for crashing the car with these two coaches.”

Landry’s quarterback with the Dallas Cowboys Roger Staubach and former Cincinnati Reds manager and hall of famer Sparky Anderson were also among those seeking out a little time with the coach. And every time the New York Yankees are in town (to face the Anaheim Angels) Derek Jeter will call coach Wooden.

Everybody wants to spend a little time with coach and what amazed, a then young and impressionable, Steve Hawkins was the fact that coach Wooden always found time for everyone.

“He has never big-timed anyone,” says Hawkins who not surprisingly goes out of his way to accommodate friend and foe alike. “The most valuable things I have learned from him are things you can apply to life. Having great character, great work ethic and being a good person. It goes way beyond the basketball court.”

Hawkins is now entering his seventh season at Western Michigan and his fourth as the head coach (succeeded Robert McCullum). The state of the program is much different then when Hawkins arrived in the spring of 2000. There were just three scholarship players on the roster. Not ideal for a program that had just three postseason appearances in its history.

Seven years later the program is now a perennial favorite in the highly competitive Mid-American Conference, which hasn’t had an overall repeat champion in since 1988. As Hawkins like to say, they are bringing in players now that they couldn’t even have thought about recruiting when he arrived at the start of the decade.

“Character and personality is what we wanted to recruit,” says Hawkins. “Coach Wooden stressed those qualities.”

Kalamazoo probably won’t be transformed into the Westwood of the Midwest anytime soon, but the influence of coach Wooden is very obvious.

Last season five basketball players, in the Mid-American Conference, earned All-Academic status. Three of those players were from Western Michigan. The team finished with a collective GPA over 3.0.

On the court a combination of talent and fundamentally sound basketball have produced great results. The Broncos have averaged 20 wins a season under Hawkins. This season has a lot of promise with newcomers David Kool (Mr. Basketball in Michigan), Donald Lawson (6-9 freshman from Chicago), Martelle McLemore (6-5 freshman from Detroit) and Jon Workman (6-9 freshman who originally committed to Iowa) joining preseason All-MAC performer Joe Reitz (6-7 junior) and others.

“There is no way I would be coaching, let alone enjoying any type of success, had it not been for those summers spent with coach Wooden,” says Hawkins. “I am just thankful I never crashed.”