Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Influential Coaches #12: Marv Dunphy

Previous entries: Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal (basketball)
February: Tara Gallagher (basketball/softball)
March: Robert Joseph Ahola (rugby)
April: Rickey Perkins (swimming)
May: Bob Smith & Mike Craig (baseball)
June: Michael Minthorne (strength & conditioning)
July: Steve Radotich (football)
August: Tessa Paganini (volleyball)
September: Lynn Seitz (swimming)
October: Micah Hartman (volleyball)
November: Steve Chronister (basketball/baseball)

One could make a case, by looking at my dozen years in coaching, that I have been at my best when coaching volleyball. What's funny about that is that if you count my baseball experience towards softball (and apart from the action between the mound and the plate, they are practically the same), I have significantly less experience with volleyball than with any other sport that I have coached save for football (and I was never a head football coach). My playing experience can be boiled down to a camp or two in southern California when I was in middle school and PE in ninth grade, but I didn't really learn the game until my freshman year at Pepperdine, for which I can thank my friend Alex Moore.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Influential Coaches #11: Steve Chronister

Previous entries: Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal (basketball)
February: Tara Gallagher (basketball/softball)
March: Robert Joseph Ahola (rugby)
April: Rickey Perkins (swimming)
May: Bob Smith & Mike Craig (baseball)
June: Michael Minthorne (strength & conditioning)
July: Steve Radotich (football)
August: Tessa Paganini (volleyball)
September: Lynn Seitz (swimming)
October: Micah Hartman (volleyball)

I will begin with a statement that hopefully this piece will provide all of the necessary supporting evidence for; outside of my immediate family, Steve Chronister has been the single most influential person in my life to date. Not only was Steve my basketball coach for four of the first five years of my career, but he was also a neighbor (our houses were roughly one hundred yards apart), and his sons were two of my more constant companions growing up. He was a more or less constant presence in my life for the entirety of our seven and a half years in Anchorage.