More Than the Ring: What 30 Years of Coaching Taught Me About Success

I coached for 30 years. I coached boys and girls. I coached really skilled basketball teams, and I coached teams that were really good at things other than basketball. The one common thread every season was this: I expected to win every game, and I wanted to win the whole thing — the championship. I wanted it so badly that it shaped how I viewed our accomplishments, how I thought other people viewed me, and how I measured my own value as a coach.

Even in years we went deep into the playoffs, falling short of a championship made me feel like a semi-failure walking through the halls of our school or down the aisle at the local supermarket. And I know what you’re thinking: “Dang! How many championships has this guy won?!” One. In 30 years, one. So I’ll join you in marveling at why not winning it all each year bothered me so much.

It wasn’t arrogance. I never believed I was smart enough or good enough to win it every year. It was just a too-narrow definition of what success looked like. And don’t think for a minute that I blamed the kids. I never felt like they let me down or should have performed better. I didn’t feel like they owed me. In reality, it was me feeling like I had let them down. I needed to be better, do better, get better, so they could win it all. I was getting paid to coach them to win.

The truth is, we overachieved most years to get the wins we did. Some nights my staff and I would just sit dumbfounded at how we’d beaten a much better team, as we rolled home in a big yellow dog with a jubilant team dancing, yelling, and violating several transportation safety rules. But later in the season, when it was all over, I still felt like I had let them down. We didn’t win it all.

Even recently — in 2024, when our team somehow pulled out a one-point Regional Championship win over the defending and favored State Champion (the current #1 team in the state) — the celebration couldn’t fully satiate my appetite for the ring. We made it to the State Championship game, and were it not for our leading scorer fouling out late in the fourth quarter, we probably would have won. Instead, we lost by five in overtime. And I felt like I’d let our kids down. How could I not give them just one thing to get over that hump?

In 30 years, I coached in four Final Fours. Of those four, I have one ring. One ring in 30 years. Is that failure? Is that underachieving? Many coaches have told me they’d give anything to coach in one Final Four, let alone four.

Now that I’m not coaching — and not in the heat of scratching for another win every three days — my vision is much clearer. As I watch games now, I just see teams and coaches getting after it. Both are usually well-coached and competitive, and yet only one wins. What surprises me is that I watch the losing coach and feel respect and appreciation for what he or she is doing. I see real value in them. I don’t attach the labels failure or disappointment to them. In a strange twist, I see them as successful and intelligent. They just came up short in that game. After all, it’s just a game. Someone wins, someone loses.

It’s in visiting with great coaches now that I’ve realized very few win it all. In fact, the vast majority never win it even once. They pour themselves into their teams year after year and ultimately come up a game or two short. But they aren’t failures. They didn’t let their teams down. They led them as far as they were capable of going. They did their best, and they are proud of their accomplishments. That’s a perspective that took 32 years for me to understand. (Okay — maybe 55, if we go by my age.)

The other day, one of my former athletes texted me: “The greatest coach ever!” And it hit me — that’s all we have to be. Just be the greatest coach ever to that kid, on that day, in that season. Love them as well as anyone has ever loved them. Build those relationships and cherish those memories. The wins fade, but the record of growth — the work, the progress, the small breakthroughs captured along the way — that’s what lasts. It’s one of the reasons I appreciate what tools like Ballogy do for coaches today: they preserve the journey, not just the scoreboard.

When I coached, the state of Texas had six classifications with an average of about 225 teams in each. That meant 224 of them were going to come up short of a championship. Even with the new split classifications averaging 115 teams, 114 still end the season on a loss. You get the idea. Perspective is everything.

Marv Levy led the Buffalo Bills to four consecutive Super Bowls from 1991 to 1994. They didn’t win any of them. Is he a loser coach? Was his program a failure? Hardly. His achievement of sustained excellence may never be matched. It’s all in perspective — and nobody is harder on a coach than the coach himself.

Winning it all isn’t the most important thing. It’s nice, and it feels good for a long time. But the relationships and memories of each season go much further and do much more for the soul. Don’t get lost in a micro-focus of wins and losses. Look at the lives you’re changing and the kids you’re shaping into successful adults. Look at the games you weren’t supposed to win. Look at your career as a whole — and you’ll see you already have won it all.