Foreign Head Start Basketball I tell people whether you go to the fastest paced team in the country or the slowest pace team in the country, all the skills that we teach you, you're going to have to know anyways.

We just like to do it at a bit of a faster pace.

Ben Vesci is the Basketball Operations Director and Head boys post grad coach at Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Virginia.

Before taking on the title of Operations Director, Ben coached the boys high school varsity team at Hargrave, leading the team to four straight Visa Elite Eight appearances and setting a modern school record for wins with 26 in a season in 2016.

17 Prior to joining Hargrave, Ben held the position of assistant boys and girls varsity basketball coach at Mariannopoulos Preparatory School and one year later was the assistant men's basketball coach at Catawba College where he had been a four year letter winner in men's basketball Coaches Are you looking to get a shooting machine for your team but don't have a lot of budget left?

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Have a notebook handy as you listen to this episode with Ben Vesci, basketball operations director and head boys postgrad coach at Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Virginia.

Hello and welcome to the Hoopets podcast.

It's Mike Cleansing here without my co host Jason Sunkel tonight.

But I am pleased to be joined by Ben Veschy, the head basketball coach of the post grad program at Hargrave Military Academy.

Ben, welcome to the Hoopets pod.

Mike, thanks for having me.

Glad to be here.

Absolutely excited to have you on.

Looking forward to diving into all the things that you've been able to do in your career.

Let's start by going back in time to when you were a kid.

Tell me about your first experiences with the game of basketball.

How'd you get introduced to it?

How'd you fall in love with it?

Yeah, it's a, it's a great question.

Great one to start off with.

You know, I'm from Massachusetts originally, so, you know, I grew up basically, if you're looking at the tri state area where Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode island all intersect, I was just on the Massachusetts side of that border and, and you know, for as long as I can remember, a ball has been in my hands.

You know, my dad was actually a hockey guy growing up, but, but he could, he couldn't really get me on skates.

But my grandfather, he paved a little, you know, a little patch in the, the, the backyard.

He put a hoop up for me, you know, and he kind of, he's the one that kind of put the ball in my hands and, and you know, I just enjoyed playing in the backyard.

And the first time I was ever able to try out for a team was fourth grade.

I went to a Catholic elementary school and, and you know, I could try out for the JV team and I was one of four fourth graders to make the team.

Standing at about four foot six.

I mean, I had to stand at the top of the key to shoot my free throws.

That's how far forward I had to jump.

But that team went 29 and 0.

We won the New England CYO.

And ever since then, I was hooked.

I was like, I have to be part of a team.

I have to, you know, again, have a ball in my hands and be part of something bigger than myself.

So it was really cool.

Did you ever play any other sports besides basketball?

Did your dad ever get you to play at least a little floor hockey or anything?

Yeah, so I, I did a little, I did a little roller hockey in the basement.

I mean, I just checked myself into the wall and, but but no, I.

I pretty much did anything you could think of besides football.

I mean, I was.

I was actually a better baseball player than I was a basketball player.

But just, you know, the love I had for the game at a young age, I was just drawn to basketball, and it's something I knew I wanted to do.

As you got a little bit older, starting to get into middle school, high school, how'd you get better as a player?

What was your process for improving and trying to make your game better?

You know, and all this.

Mike, it might sound like revisionist history, right?

You know, now.

Now that I can look back on my.

My career as a player, but, you know, I spent a lot of time in the backyard, right?

A lot of time in the driveway, just.

Just getting shots up.

You know, I had a.

I have a younger sister, and she started playing basketball, so eventually she became just a rebounder for me.

So I really appreciate all that time, but, you know, it was a lot of.

A lot of time in the driveway.

And, you know, it's funny, one of my best friends growing up, still one of my best friends to this day.

You know, even back then, he was always about a foot taller than me.

And.

And we would, you know, we would play one on one in the driveway games up to 55 by twos and threes, just.

Just to, you know, pick a random arbitrary number.

And.

And, you know, I.

It really taught me a lot about.

About how to, you know, use my small stature versus a bigger player to my advantage.

It taught me to be a little bit tougher, right?

You know, having to box out someone that's a foot taller than you at a young age.

So that was.

That was really cool.

And.

And, you know, that friend and I, we.

We talked about, all right, you're going to go to Carolina, I'm going to go to Duke.

And, you know, growing up, I was like, okay, cool, right?

Then I get to high school, I realized I couldn't jump over a piece of paper, and I was like, I got to.

I got to find a different way to be in this game, right?

Because playing it might not be the thing that'll take me to the heights I want to achieve, but, you know, it was a lot of time in the driveway, and then again, just.

Just back.

Back in the day, you just needed a friend, a ball in a basket, right?

And you could get better.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, different than it is today, for sure.

You don't see the same methodology that you or I probably use to become good players.

Players today.

Well, one they don't have access to it because if they want to go play a pickup game, it's almost impossible to find a pickup game if you're a young kid.

So you got to get on to a team and be organized and all those things that go along with that.

But it certainly is a different era, without question.

As you moved into high school, what was your favorite memory of being a high school player?

There were a lot of them.

You know, I was.

I was really fortunate.

I played at a great school, Marianapolis Prep in Thompson, Connecticut.

I played for a legend in Dave Vitale.

We went, in my four years there, we went to four straight knapsack championships.

We won the first year, so that was probably the most memorable.

Unfortunately, we fell short the next three years.

But.

But it was pretty cool to, you know, play against guys in New England.

Like, I remember my senior year, I had the opportunity to guard a sophomore, Michael Carter Williams.

Didn't go well for me then.

It wouldn't go well for me now either.

But, well, you know, it was.

It was pretty cool to.

To be able to play for.

For that program, you know, being able to go on those road trips with the guys all the way up to Maine to play Bridgeton, things like that.

But.

But, you know, I would.

I would say probably winning that knapsack championship freshman year is the highlight.

Do you have dreams of playing college basketball right from the start?

I mean, I know you talked about the.

The Duke, North Carolina dream, but as.

As reality set in there that maybe that wasn't in the cards.

How did you shift your mentality in terms of still wanting to have that college basketball experience?

And then what did that process look like for you?

It's.

It's actually pretty funny.

You know, my.

I.

I was really fortunate growing up.

My.

My mom is now the.

She's now the vice president of Nichols College, which is a Division 3 school up in Dudley, Massachusetts.

And I used to be able to go and use the gym, right.

On days off of school.

Mom would have to take me to work.

I would get to go in the gym.

And, you know, I got to start, you know, rubbing elbows with college coaches at a young age.

Right?

And, you know, doing all the.

The skills camps, things like that.

And.

And, you know, I.

I knew I wanted to be around the game.

Right.

You know, I think that if.

If it were up to my mom, I would have gone to Nichols, right?

And I would.

I would have been a part of that team.

But.

But, you know, I knew, again, having a sense that I wanted to get into coaching.

I knew that for me, I wanted to go to the highest level I could possibly go to and be involved with the basketball program, whether that was having the opportunity to walk on or be a student manager or whatever.

Whatever the case was.

And it just so happened that my junior year of high school, you know, I'm starting to look at colleges a little bit more, and because of my mom's employment at Nichols, there was tuition exchange involved, and there was a giant list of schools.

And, you know, I'm looking at the AP top 25, and I'm like, all right, you know, I want to get into broadcasting, so I'm going to apply to Syracuse.

And.

And, you know, Gonzaga seems like a cool place, right?

Well, come to find out that I couldn't apply to those schools through tuition exchange, because that list, the school wasn't sending enough people out.

So that year, my mom, she got a new boss.

His name is Bill Pazinski.

He's now the president, Nichols.

But he played at a small Division 2 school in North Carolina, Catawba College, and then he went on to work in their advancement office.

He actually was on staff at Memphis when Tick Price was the head coach there.

And.

And, you know, he's the one that kind of introduced me to Catawba in general.

And he set up a meeting with.

With Jim Baker, who was the head coach there at the time.

And.

And we were on a family vacation to Williamsburg, Virginia.

We drove five hours to see Catawba, and then five hours back to Williamsburg.

But I had the opportunity to sit down with Coach Baker, and he said, you know, you can come in and.

And we'll.

We'll.

We'll let you be a manager as a freshman, right?

And then see what happens.

And, you know, I end up going to Catawba.

And I think the second day of school, the guys were getting ready to play pickup, and I was just shooting around with them, and I made 20 straight threes.

And, you know, Coach Baker happened to be looking through the gym window, and he pulled me in the office and he said, I think we can find a jersey for you.

You know, it might not be easy, but we can find a jersey for you.

And I'm incredibly grateful for that.

You know, the 17 minutes I played in my college career, I remember every single second of it.

But, you know, with that, right, it helped me grow exponentially as.

As a.

As a potential coach.

Right.

You know, you know, that scouter report front and back, and your teammates are coming down the end of the bench saying, hey, Vesh.

What's this guy doing?

Right?

You know, how do I have to close out to this guy?

And.

And, you know, it was really.

It was really cool to.

To experience that, you know, And.

And I'm thankful that everything worked out the way it did.

Absolutely.

So you've mentioned a couple times that you kind of knew that you wanted to become a coach.

What was it about your experience in the game as a young player that made you realize that, hey, coaching is where I want to end up?

Because obviously, again, we all love the game of basketball.

Clearly, if you had been given the opportunity to continue playing, you certainly would have been focused on that.

But it's always interesting to me because I feel like, Ben, there's always.

There's two paths, right?

There's the path that kind of.

You're describing where you knew from a young age that, hey, I want to get into coaching.

I'm going to play it maybe as long as I can, but eventually I want to become a coach.

And then there's other people who.

They play, they play, they play.

They're just focused on being a player.

And then all of a sudden, their career's over, and they look around, they're like, all right, now what do I do with.

What do I do with basketball?

I want to stay.

I want to stay involved in it.

Maybe now I pivot to coaching.

So what was it about coaching?

Was there a singular moment?

Was there a mentor?

Was there somebody that you look to?

How.

How did you realize early on that you knew that was the direction you wanted to go?

I.

I think that it stemmed from just being.

Being part of something bigger than myself, you know, always being part of a team, whether it was basketball, baseball, soccer, you know, even the golf team.

You know, you might be an individual, but you're part of a team.

And, and, you know, through that, right, by playing that many sports as a kid, you.

You are around so many different coaches, right?

And.

And, you know, I truly feel like I was incredibly lucky to have some of the coaches I had in an early age.

You know, they.

They never necessarily were like, hey, Ben, you should get into coaching.

Because I was 12 years old, it was more like, you know, the way that they instilled confidence in everybody, right?

You know, the, The.

The.

The amount of time that they put in that we could see, right?

And that just paled in comparison to how much they were doing on their own, on their own time, right?

Spending all those extra hours as a.

As a little league coach, you know, and that's their hobby, not Even getting paid for that.

And, and you know, I, I think that that the more I was, the more I realized that that my 5 foot 9 frame was, it wasn't probably going to make it to the NBA.

You know, I started watching things a little differently.

Right.

You know, I actually watched the coaches on the sideline, you know, and, and you get older, you start listening to more interviews, things like that.

But you just, you watch the way that they coach you, you watch, you watch the game a little bit differently.

So I don't know if it was necessarily one specific moment that I was like, light bulb, this is what I want to do.

But, but I think it was, it was always in the back of my mind that, that, you know, I've played for some great coaches and if I had that kind of opportunity, I would love to do it.

You point to one or two things that those youth coaches or the coaches that you had when you were younger, something that you feel like is still a part of you as a coach today, like something you picked up from somebody that coached you.

And maybe it was basketball, maybe it was a different sport, but just something that touched you at that time that you still feel like you carry with you today in your coaching.

It sounds really funny, but, you know, my dad, he had the opportunity to be an assistant my eighth grade year on the basketball team.

He ended up being an assistant my eighth grade year playing little league baseball too.

And you know, it wasn't necessarily anything that he did coaching wise that stuck with me, but it was that sense of accountability that he instilled in me at a young age.

Right.

You know, again, I, I laugh at some of the stuff now that, that I'm doing with my daughter, you know, that my dad did with me that I kind of rolled my eyes at as a kid.

Right.

I mean, I like everything being in its place, everything being in a certain order.

But you know, looking back on it, it was just that, that sense of accountability.

And I think that that's something that, as the game has evolved, right.

As, as basketball changes, you know, holding players accountable is one thing that I don't think will ever change.

Right.

I think that the, the methodology might change, but, but being able to hold, in my case, you know, young men accountable on and off the court, that's something that stuck with me for a young age and something that will continue within my coaching career.

Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense.

I mean, when you think about what it takes to put together a cohesive team.

Right.

That accountability is something that is never going to go away.

To your point, the methodology, methodology may change.

The way you get to that may change.

But ultimately, as coaches, as a leader, you have to be able to hold your people accountable to whatever standard it is that you want them to live up to, or really, you really don't have any.

There's not, there's nothing left beyond that.

So that makes, makes a lot of sense to me.

All right, let's jump back to Catawba.

While you're there.

What's the conversation like with Coach Baker, the coaching staff, in terms of, are you letting them know, like, hey, when I'm done with this, I'd really love to get into coaching.

So as much as you can sort of bring me into the fold with the coaching staff, that would be much appreciated.

Or was that something that you were just kind of doing on your own without necessarily letting them know, just how did that relationship work out in terms of you sort of learning to become a coach?

Right.

So it was, it was actually a little column A, column B.

Right.

You know, Division 2 schools still to this day.

Right.

Like, there are coaches that are volunteers.

Right.

You know, there are staff members that have other full time jobs.

And, and when I was at Catawba, you know, Coach Baker was the, the head coach full time.

And then we had an assistant named Bill Hagerty who's, who's since passed away, unfortunately.

But, but Coach Hagerty was an assistant basketball coach and he was also the head cross country coach for boys and girls or men's and women's cross country.

And I used to just go sit in Coach Hag's office and, you know, I'd sit on the couch and we talk and talk and talk.

And, you know, every once in a while he'd be like, hey, you know, what do you think about this kid?

And he'd show me a recruitment.

You know, he's.

He'd walk me through, you know, some of his philosophy.

He used to coach the women's basketball team at Catawba.

So, you know, he kind of just talked to me about coaching in general, and it wasn't ever like, you know, hey, Coach Hag, I think I want to get into coaching.

It was just being in his office, you know, having those conversations, right.

Grabbing a bite to eat with him in the cafeteria.

And, and, you know, that was one way, right.

And the other way, which, which I think brings my story full circle.

At Catawba, my roommate, or I was his roommate, he was the big man on campus.

I was just lucky to Be in his presence.

Lee Martin was my roommate.

Lee is currently an assistant at Ohio University on the men's basketball side, but believe went to Hargrave as a postgrad.

You know, we graduated college on a Saturday, started working at Hargrave that next Monday as an assistant.

But we would sit up in the, we would sit up in the room when I, we had free time and we would just talk about, you know, what we were doing as a team, right.

You know, what things we liked, what we didn't like, you know, because I think that we both had a sense of wanting to stay in the game, right.

You know, Lee was a really talented player and, you know, he could have had a future playing overseas, but he really wanted to get into coaching.

And I think that, that the two of us pushed each other with that, right?

Like, we, we examined things a little differently.

I remember our senior year, we were both captains and, you know, we brought some ideas to Coach Baker and the rest of the coaching staff about how to improve the culture.

We were coming off of a bad year and, you know, we wanted to do some things to, to kind of change things, use player leadership.

And, and you know, because of those relationships with, with Coach Hagerty, with Coach Baker, and then with, with Lee, you know, it just kind of cemented my thought about wanting to really be in coaching.

Were you focused on becoming a coach at the college level?

Obviously you have now being at Hargrave, you're sort of in a.

I don't know if it's a.

It's sort of an in between, right?

With the, with high school versus college, where you're thinking about being a teacher and a high school coach.

Where was your mindset in terms of when you graduated, what direction you were thinking?

Obviously we have coaches on all the time that they think they're going to go one path and then an opportunity opens up somewhere else and all of a sudden they're going down a different direction than maybe they originally planned.

So where were you at when you graduated?

Right?

And again, it's funny because freshman year of college, right, we had a, we had a freshman seminar course and one of the assignments was to write your own obituary, you know, and just again, what your vision for your life is.

And, and I wrote in that that I was the all time winningest coach at Marianapolis Prep, you know, that, that I wanted to go back home and, and be a high school coach and coach there for 40 years.

And you know, it's funny that that's how it started out.

And, and then you know, you keep thinking about it more and more, and, and, you know, I, I think that the draw to get to college was always front of mind for me.

You know, again, that.

That's why having those relationships with the, with the coaching staff was really important.

You know, Coach Baker played at Catawba, but before he played at Catawba, he was at UNC Charlotte.

He'd been on staff at VMI and Virginia Tech before getting the head job at Catawba.

So, you know, he still had some connections there.

And, and I think that when, when graduation rolled around, still really didn't know what I could do.

Right.

You know, I had applied to a couple grad schools.

Florida State got in there, and then Nichols College.

You know, I, I had, I had an inside track there, but, but, but no, I, you know, I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

And was March of senior year, our season was done, and, and I reached out to the head coach at Nichols at the time, and I said, hey, I just got accepted into the grad school.

You know, thinking about going to grad school there.

Is there any way that I could hop on your staff as a volunteer?

You know, again, I don't need anything.

I just want to.

I want a chance to learn.

And, you know, he said yes, right.

Offered me the job and, and, you know, got home in May and met with him.

A few days later, I was all on board to be an assistant at Nichols.

I was going to do grad school volunteer.

And then, and then about three days later, I got a call from Andrew Vitale, who is Dave Vitale's son, who was an assistant coach when I was in high school.

And he said, hey, I've got an assistant opening on staff.

You want it?

I can, I can pay you $8,000.

And I said, oh, sure, I'm all in.

And, and what he didn't tell me is that the, you know, the $8,000 was also dorm duty, subbing driving the bus, and you have to ref some soccer matches to, to make those ends meet.

But, but, you know, I, I said it was really something that I couldn't pass up.

Right?

I was living at home.

I got to go back to my alma mater, and, you know, then I take that assistant job, and I'm thinking, okay, I'm.

I'm going to do this high school thing for a while, and, and, you know, then I end up being the, the assistant varsity girls coach while I'm there, too.

I just became a practice player for them.

But that was a really Cool experience, right?

To.

To.

To coach females for the first time.

Cause I never thought that I would be in the women's game.

I thought I would just stay in the men's game.

And, you know, then as luck would have it, the season ends that year.

And I was.

I was the.

I was.

I was the guy that senior year.

I started dating a freshman in the second semester, and.

And, you know, she's now my wife.

But, you know, I ended up moving back down to North Carolina without a job, you know, just to try to figure it out.

You know, applied for a couple jobs at, like, Greensboro Day and.

And other prestigious programs in the area.

And.

And, you know, didn't really know if.

If coaching was going to happen, right.

I was still doing the grad school thing.

I was thinking, okay, I'll just get my master's and then we'll figure something out.

Because again, the.

The goal was always to get to college.

So I was told, you know, you need a master's degree.

So I was getting the master's degree, but didn't have a job.

And, you know, Coach Baker had been let go that spring after three consecutive losing seasons.

It was.

It was tough to see him go just because of the opportunity that he gave me, and they gave so many other young men over the years.

But fortunately, the guy who got hired, Rob Perrin, who's still the head coach there now at Catawba, he was looking to add someone to the staff.

And I'll never.

I'll never forget how stressed I was that June trying to put together a brochure for Rowan county basketball summer league.

And I was doing it on, like, Microsoft Paint.

And, you know, because I was part of my interview to.

To be on his staff, and, you know, I handed it into him, and I don't even think he ever looked at it, right?

He told me.

He told me after I left, he's like, yeah, I was going to hire you anyways.

I just wanted to see if you would work.

But.

But, you know, I was.

I was there, right?

I had made.

I had made it to the college ranks.

I was an.

I was a true volunteer, right?

I was.

I was training kids to make enough money just to put gas in the car to.

To make the commute back and forth to work.

But.

But, you know, I had made it, right?

And I loved showing up to work every single day.

And.

And, you know, it was.

It was a.

It was a perfect storm.

What was it like in both of those situations?

You're coaching at your alma mater.

So what's it like to step back into the gym, into the locker room, into the coach's office of a place where you were a player and now suddenly you're on the other side of the wall, the other side of the door?

What was that like in each one of those places?

And I always feel like coaches who get an opportunity to coach at your alma mater, there's just as, as much as you put into every job that you have, I gotta feel like there's like, Even if it's just.0001%, whatever it is, of pride in coming back to your alma mater.

So just maybe describe what that was like at both of those places.

You're right.

There's an immense level of pride.

You know, it.

You just.

You find yourself looking up at the wall every once in a while, right?

And you know, you remember your teammates and you think about the championships you won, the success you had, you know, the great memories, and know, you.

You do work a little bit harder, right?

It.

It might be just a small percentage point harder, but, but you do.

You have an extra sense of pride because you don't want to let your alma mater down, right?

You know, and, and one of the things I learned very quickly, however, you know, being at your alma mater, the, the kids don't necessarily care what you did back then, right?

Like, they don't want to hear about the times you took a charge to win the game.

They don't care for any of that stuff, right?

But, but you know, once that, right, Once I realized that, you know, my, my story is my story and, and you know, I need to coach these kids every single day because it's their first time being there.

You know, it really.

It really helped just again, you know, where everything is, right?

You know, the administration, you know, which teachers, you know, that you have, you had a great relationship with when you were there, right?

That, you know, you can go and talk to them and, and the familiarity was.

Was great, right?

But then again, you, you, you know, your wardrobe doesn't have to change much.

You just put.

Put on your old clothes and that.

That works.

But.

But no, it was.

It was really.

It was incredibly special to be able to do that, you know, and, and to stay connected to those two places.

Even though, you know, I'd gone away from Marianapolis for four years and then I was only gone from Catawba for a year, but it was a new head coach, right?

You know, luckily the administration stayed the same around and you know, there was.

There was a lot of film familiarity, but like you said, you know, the.

Just.

Just sitting there thinking about it, right?

All the.

The feelings of pride come rushing back to, you know, I got the Catawba jersey hanging on my.

My office wall behind us, you know, and every single day I walk in, it's one of the first things I see, you know, and it just.

It reminds me of.

Of the opportunity that I had to.

To be able to wear that jersey for four years.

So during those first two experiences, what aspect of coaching?

Because obviously, prior to getting those two jobs, you're imagining yourself as a coach.

You're thinking of yourself as a coach despite the fact that you're still in the midst of your playing career.

What part of coaching did you really love right from the very beginning?

Was there one aspect that you're like, man, this is.

This is it.

I know a lot of people say, I just like player development.

Or maybe you liked the X's and O piece of it.

But just for you, what was it that right away, initially out of the gate, that you're like, yeah, I'm in the right place, right?

It.

It.

It's funny.

It.

It was probably the X's and O's initially, right?

Like, I'm.

I'm an X and O junkie.

My.

My.

One of my assistants now, I think he has me blocked on X or Twitter or whatever it is, because I'll just.

I'll be scrolling at midnight and I'll just DM him set plays that I like just so I can storm for later.

We may never do anything with them, but I'm like, oh, man, this is a great play.

I gotta save this just in case.

But.

But, you know, that was.

That was what drew me to it, you know, especially the experience at Marianapolis, right?

We had.

On the boys side, we had a team that, you know, had to play a certain way because we couldn't really shoot the way we wanted to, right?

We had two really good bigs, you know, both Division 1 level bigs.

But our guard play was.

Was young, right?

We had young guards, so we had to tweak how we wanted to play.

But then on the girls side, right, you know, they had six Division 1 players, and, like, I was just a practice player for them, you know, And.

And.

And being my size, I had to be a post.

And I told.

I told those girls, I said, I don't know how you do this.

I don't know how you can run rim to rim, might not touch the ball.

You have to get every rebound.

You got to set great screens.

I want to go back to being a guard so I can run three point, three point line, but you know, that, that was really the, the X's and O's was, was a, was a first, right?

Being able to, to have that clipboard for the first time, right?

You know, and, and Coach Vitali hand me that clipboard during practice, said, okay, draw something up.

And I'm like, man, I, I, I've diagrammed things before, but I don't know what, I don't know what you want me to do here.

Um, and, you know, I, I thought that I, I diagrammed this great play, right?

There was, there was a cross screen, there was a down screen, and, you know, I felt great about it.

And then Coach Vitali said, you know, that's the flex, right?

I said I, I'd run it before, but, you know, I never really, I never really drew it up.

But, but, but no, that, that was really cool.

And, and you know, on the flip side, right, the, the biggest challenge that you experience right away is recruiting.

You know, at the prep school level, you're able to recruit and, and you know, again, it's a, it's a, it's a different, it's different being on that side of things.

You know, you, you really, for most guys that they get into coaching that have gone on, that have played first and gone, like they had some level of a recruiting process, right?

Mine was a meeting in the Catawba parking lot with Coach Baker.

Hey, you want to do this?

Yes.

Okay.

You know, there wasn't, there wasn't the whole big process that you see with guys today.

So, you know, luckily I had enough know how of Marianopolis and then Catawba to be able to speak confidently about it.

But public speaking wasn't always one of my strong suits.

So, you know, I, I was able to recruit some, but I knew I needed to back it up with my knowledge, with, you know, how hard I worked in practice every single day.

But, but, you know, I think that those were some of the, the early years, right?

Those experiences of holding a clipboard for the first time was, was great.

And then losing a recruit for the first time was not great.

Easier to talk to the parents or easier to talk to the players when.

You were recruiting the players for sure.

And it's, it's still that way today, you know, and, and again, I, it kind of bleeds into to what we do here, but, you know, be being at a, at a prestigious boarding school like Hargrave, you know, our guys are all away from home for the first time, for the most part, right.

And I tell parents in the recruiting process, we're going to be in communication, right, because you're trusting us with your baby.

But I'm, I'm going to coach your young man, right?

I'm going to pour into him every single day.

And you know, you're going to hear from me good, bad, ugly, right?

The only time that you won't hear from me, only when bad things are happening.

Right.

But, you know, I've just learned that it's been a lot easier to talk to the players throughout the recruiting process.

All right, tell me how your one season at Catawba leads you to Hargrave.

How does that opportunity come to you and what do you remember about process of, of getting there?

So again, it's just crazy how this, this thing has evolved.

You know, like I mentioned before, Lee Martin had gone on to work at Hargrave.

He, he worked for AW Hamilton, who's now the head coach at Eastern Kentucky University.

And, and I had been wrapping up the season at Catawba again.

I was willing to come back and volunteer for another year.

There was, there was conversation about adding a developmental team at Catawba, that I would ended up being the head coach.

And that could have gotten me some, a full time salary, but, but it was taking a little bit too long to, for that to come to fruition.

And Lee reached out to me that March and said, hey, you know, our varsity head coaching job is going to come open.

Would you have any interest in it?

And I was like, you know, I never really thought about being a head coach.

I, I did, you know, when I was 18, but then when I'm 20, 25, I wasn't really thinking about it.

You know, I was, I was settled into being an assistant.

I enjoyed being an assistant.

And he's like, well, it'll, it'll pay you $10,000 and you can, you can live on, you can live on the dorms, right?

You can eat your meals in the cafeteria.

And I was like, well, I'm, I'll be, I'll be up there tomorrow to interview.

And, and you know, I was able to interview with Coach Hamilton and the rest was history, right?

I ended up taking the job and, and that $10,000, I felt like I was a king.

You know, I had, I had a place to live, didn't have any real expenses, right?

And I just had, you know, I had an opportunity to, to coach at a place like Hargrave that, you know, I'd heard about for years from Lee and his experience as a player, right.

They.

They lost in the National Prep championship to Tilton, who beat us in the New England championship my senior year.

And, and, you know, it's just.

It was always something I wanted to get up here and see what it was like.

You know, we recruited a couple guys at Catawba from here at Hargrave.

So I'd been to the gym before I'd met Coach Hamilton, but it was never anything more than pleasantries.

So the fact that I was kind of sought out to.

To be hired here was really humbling, to say the least.

So, obviously, again, this is a unique situation, right?

It's.

It's a boarding school, it's all male.

You have, as you said, guys who are away from home, from, for the very first time, some of them pretty young to be away from home, and you're sort of having to manage all that piece of it on top of coaching a basketball team.

So what was the biggest adjustment for you in terms of.

Let's focus on sort of the relationship piece and how you tried to build a connection with players who are coming from all different areas, bringing all different kinds of backgrounds, and then you have to bring them together and mold them into a team.

What did that look like?

What was your perspective on how to go about doing that when you talk to maybe people who had tried to do it before?

But just what was that experience like for you?

Yeah.

And you know, the one thing that's even more unique about our experience here at Hargrave, right, Is that we have the military component to it.

And, you know, I think that that is, that is the biggest challenge, and it will forever be the biggest challenge of getting people to understand that the perception around military school is not that of the reform schools, you know, 40, 50 years ago, right.

It's, it's truly.

We're a college prep school and, and we use the military structure to execute our mission.

So once, once you can put young men and their parents at ease about that, right.

And, and helping them understand that that what we do here, right.

It's.

It's to give guys reps with three basic life skills.

Be on time, be respectful, and look sharp, you know, on those three life skills, whether you make it to the NBA or whatever you want to do in life, right?

Wherever, you know, life takes you, if you can do those three things, you know, and you have a little bit of skill, you're going to be just fine.

So that, that's part of it, right, is.

Is getting them to understand that what we do here.

It's, it's very much a prep school.

You know, our guys just wear military uniforms instead of a shirt and tie like you would find at a traditional prep school.

So, you know, I, I, I give my assistants a lot of credit.

While, while I've been the head coach here now for, for two years on the postgrad side.

My staff does a great job at, at those initial conversations, right.

You know, they're, they are, they're so sharp with what they do recruiting wise that, you know, we'll hop on a Google Meet or a zoom call with a kid and they'll hand me a little note card that, you know, this is the kid's likes, dislikes, you know, this is what he's really looking for at Hargrave.

And you know, because I have the institutional knowledge now, I'm able to, you know, help with that in the recruiting process.

You know, I'm very much a closer at this point of my career at Hargrave, but it wasn't always that way.

Right.

You know, I remember I, I was really fortunate.

I came in to Hargrave in May of 2016.

We had just won a national prep championship a few months earlier.

Right.

You know, Coach Hamilton got, got him to the top of the mountain.

So I was coming into Hargrove at a great time.

Right.

But I also remember that entire summer my head was spinning because I would go on every single tour so I could learn where the camp, what the campus looked like.

Right.

You know, I had to understand some, some military terminology.

Right.

I had to, you know, again, get, get my feet wet with things like that while also, you know, still continuing to improve recruiting wise.

All right.

And I was really fortunate my first year coming in as the high school coach, the previous high school coach left me a few good players, right.

And help, help bring in a couple other really good ones.

Right.

And we had an opportunity to, you know, we ended up winning 26 games that year, which is still the modern record for, for most wins in a season on the high school side of things.

And after that, right.

I was able to piggyback on that success along with the success of the post grad program to, to really break down most of those apprehensions on the military side.

And then once you, once you kind of establish that connection, for me it's about just continual reps, right.

Every single, you know, every single day or two, you reach out to them, you reach out to the family, you know, whoever is, is helping them make that decision so that, you know, when they do decide to come to Hargrave, right?

And they're here.

It feels like we've known each other for years.

Even though it might only be the second or third time we're actually seeing each other face to face.

Makes a lot of sense.

What is the similarities and differences in recruiting for the high school program and the post grad program?

And then typically where are you guys looking for players?

Who's the, who's the avatar for a player that makes sense for Hargrave?

When you go out and you're looking, you're looking to bring guys into the program, right?

So it's a, it's.

I'll start with the high school side first, right?

On the, on the varsity side, you know, we're, we're looking for guys that, that want to be here for, you know, two, three years, right.

You know, guys that can really grow within the program.

Um, and, and we found some success with that in my four years as the varsity head coach of, of being able to have those multi year guys.

And, and you know, you could really establish a culture that way.

And you know, again, it's, it's, it's finding the right fits for the school first, right?

It's, it's not necessarily how many points you can score a game, you know, how many wins you can help contribute to if you're not willing to buy into what Hargrave is all about in terms of developing the whole person.

So, you know, it's a little more challenging on the high school side of things because the kids are younger, you know, so it's, it's tough for them to really fully grasp what we're doing here.

But, but on the post grad side, right?

And, and you know, it's, it's funny the way the game is now.

It's, it's really shifting to more of a prep model, right?

To where we're gonna not just bring in 13th graders, but, you know, some, some true seniors, some true juniors.

And, and you know, the challenge in that is that, that team even this year, right?

You know, we have a 13 man roster right now and 11 of them are gone at the end of the year, right.

Normally it's every single person, but we've been fortunate to have a couple 20, 26 guys on our roster this year.

So, so the challenge there is that you have to find 15 individuals every single year and you have no idea who they really are until they get here, right?

You have no idea how they're really going to fit together.

Not just from a playing standpoint.

But from, you know, we, I mean, our guys wake up at 6:15 and they go to bed at 10:00 and everywhere in between, they do everything together, right?

We, we work out twice a day, they go to classes, they're in lunch together, they're doing activities together, you know, so, so you really need to make sure that you have the right mix of guys and you do your best in the recruiting process to find the right fits.

And what that ends up becoming is it's, it's guys that you really want to be around, right?

Because it's guys that we spend more time as a staff with our guys than we do with our own families, you know, so want to make sure that we have kids that are about the right things, you know, that, that are willing to roll their sleeves up and go to work, you know, be everyday guys.

And it also helps when they have some talent too.

But, but, but no, I mean the, the guys that we have, the guys that we look for, you know, they just show up every day, right?

And they choose Hargrave every single day.

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How do you balance as a coach?

I'm assuming that every player there has aspirations of playing beyond Hargrave, which means that I'm sure in their mind that they want to be able to showcase what they're able to do as an individual to advance their career.

And yet at the same time, you're trying to put together a cohesive team that plays together, that shares the ball, that's unselfish.

And so how do you put those two things together out on the floor?

And then obviously if you have a 13 player roster, all those players want to play.

They've all made the commitment to come to Hargrave.

How do you make all that work and balance it so that you have, you're able to meet the needs of each one of the players and yet still put a cohesive team out on the floor?

It's, it's, it's the, the joy of the job every single day, to be honest with you, right?

You know, putting together a cohesive unit, you know, so that we have an opportunity to be successful on the court, you know, because I think that, that at the end of the day, college coaches that are looking to recruit high school kids, right, they want to find winners, you know, they don't want empty stack guys on, on, you know, losing programs.

So we do have an emphasis on winning, right?

And one of the things that I think that we do really well here is that we're going to take, you know, anywhere from 13 to 15 individuals on a given year.

And, you know, we start working out the first night they get here, right?

And you know, we spend time in the off season really working on individual development.

You know, we have, we have within our schedule, you know, our guys go to six classes every single day.

Two of those classes are basketball conditioning, right?

And during that time, we're going to do our individual skill work, our weightlifting, any kind of film stuff we do individually.

But we tell everyone in the recruiting process that is your only time you can be selfish, right.

Within our program, I want you to be selfish with your reps on the court, your reps in the weight room.

You know, if we do a pool workout, I want you to be selfish with your time in there.

Because at the end of the day, these guys are only going to play for us for one, maybe two years.

So we want to make sure that when they do have the opportunity to get to that college stage, they are the best version of themselves at that point.

So we do put a big emphasis on player development, you know, off preseason, off season and also in season.

Right.

Very rarely will we take that class time away from them to do team specific stuff, right?

We might do some, some team specific skill work.

Right.

You know, things in our system that we think that we can improve on, but that's also going to help them improve as individuals.

So the thought process is, right, that through osmosis, you know, if all 15 players get better individually, if we're doing our job as a, as a coaching staff, our team should be better as the season goes on.

But it is, it is a, it, it is a fun dichotomy, right?

You know, to, to build up individuals without sacrificing the team, but also, you know, not sacrificing the individuals to build up the team here.

So it's a, again, it's, it's a, it's a fun challenge every single day.

How does that work in terms of playing time again with the roster of 13.

So if guy 13 on the roster maybe isn't playing as much as he would like because obviously everybody, basketball players ever lived, wants to play, wants to play more.

Unless they're playing every single minute of the game, then they're probably not getting enough shots as it is.

So, so how do you, how do you balance that?

How do you have conversations with your guys about playing time and how those minutes are doled out?

It's, it's, we do a couple things here, right?

The first thing is that we're scheduled right now.

We're, we're 24 and 5.

As we head into February, we have at least 12 more games, not including postseason play or, and then postseason play after that.

So, you know, we're playing over 40 games in exhibitions, you know, anywhere up to 50, depending on how we do postseason wise.

So that's a lot of, that's a lot of games, right?

That's a lot of opportunities for guys to, to break in.

You know, we play a lot of back to backs and a lot of back to back to backs.

And, and at our level at the prep school side, we're able to play with all college rules.

So we're playing 20 minute halves just like the big boys do.

And that's a lot of minutes out there to be had, especially for guys transitioning from the high school side of things.

So, you know, by nature of our schedule, most everybody is going to play in, in at least half of those games, right?

You know how many minutes you get in those games.

They're all earned, right?

Everything, everything is earned here.

You know, we don't have any preconceived starting lineup.

We don't have any preconceived rotation.

And you know, you look at our, our box score for the season right now, our lowest minute guy, right?

And he's had some, some off and on injuries, right?

So he's played in 14 games so far.

He's playing eight minutes a game, right?

Nobody else is under 10 minutes a game.

And they're all playing, you know, at least 75% of the games we've played so far.

So I, I don't know how many places in the country that don't strategically go five in, five out are playing that many guys that many minutes, right?

We're, we're playing 12 guys double digit minutes including, you know, a few guys over 20.

But, but you know, it's, it's, it's, it's also part of the way we recruit too, right?

You Know, we know that, that we're gonna have a team full of guys that, that are hungry to get on the court, right.

That are gonna earn those minutes every single day.

So, you know, some nights it might not be your night, you know, you, you might just come in and, and you know, yeah, you earn that first half rotation, but, you know, you might not produce that game, you know, you might just not have it, whatever, whatever it is, you know, and the beauty is that we have somebody that's worked just as hard as you sitting right there and they have an opportunity to take advantage of that.

So, you know those things.

Right?

The way we schedule, the way we recruit and then also the way we play.

Right.

You know, we do play a fast paced style.

You know, we don't press as much as we used to.

Right.

But it's something that we really adopted here at Hargrave under coach Kevin Keats, who's now the head coach at NC State.

You know, he knew that, that having a team full of that many Division 1 caliber players, he had to get them seen by coaches.

So we press, we play fast pace on offense, right?

And what that does is guys naturally get tired after four or five minute stints, you know, so we've got five guys ready to come in, you know, and we're able to rotate through guys that way.

And if we do what we're supposed to do, there's a lot of second halves where we find ourselves, you know, up 20 with 10 minutes to go.

And that gives us an opportunity to play most everybody on the roster every game when we can.

So talk about the development of that philosophy of how your team wants to play.

So is that a vision that as you evolved as a coach and thought about, hey, this is what I want to try to do offensively, defensively, how much that is, how much of that is based on the theoretical inside Ben's mind of this is what I'd like my team to look like versus how much of it is the personnel, the type of players that you have at Hargrave.

And just how has that evolution for you, Ben, in terms of trying to determine how you want your teams to play, what you want them to look like out on the floor, right?

It's, it's, it's funny, right?

Being in an X and O junkie, you know, I want, I want our guys to run beautiful set plays and, and you know, make the right read and execute properly every time.

And, and you know, then you sit back and you remember that number one, you're coaching, you Know, even though they're high level, they're still high school athletes, right?

They still need to, to grow as basketball players.

And they're also only going to be here for one, maybe two years.

So me sitting there as the head coach and teaching them the Ben Beschy playbook isn't necessarily benefiting them for their, you know, their goals to go to the college level, right?

So what we've done over the years here, and this is not anything that, that's just specific to me, right?

Every coach in my chair has done this.

You teach the guys how to play, not necessarily to run plays.

You know, my team probably thinks we have a lot of plays.

We have, you know, maybe 20 quick hitters when it's all said and done.

But it's about, you know, knowing how to set great screens, knowing how to read those screens, you know, when to cut, how hard to cut, how to finish your cuts.

You know, guys that, that came from high schools where they were put in a box because of their size, right?

You know, teaching them to, to be able to play a more modern style of basketball that is at the college level.

And, you know, if they have the opportunity beyond, you know, because I tell people, right, whether you go to the fastest pace team in the country or the slowest paced team in the country, all the skills that we teach you, right, you're going to have to know anyways, we just like to do it at a bit of a faster pace.

So, you know, once you, once you really understand that that's what the goal is, right?

You know, our, our goal.

We have a, we have a recruiting video that we show guys.

And the, the last little segment is, is labeled the Tradition of Winning.

And, you know, we've, we've won some national prep championships, we've won some conference championships, but the, the first images you see in that section are guys signing scholarships, right?

Because that's why, that's why my staff and I, we wake up every morning and we want to do what's best for our guys as individuals, right, as part of our program, you know, part of that, that Hargrave family.

So we want to make sure that, that, you know, guys aren't just put into a box, right?

That, you know, they're there.

You have to do this because you are a five, right?

Or you are a one, so you shouldn't do this, right?

It's more so, you know, basketball has become arguably as beautiful as it's ever been, Right.

You know, I know that, that some people like to just sell people you know, you shoot threes and layups because that's what the anal says.

But you know, to see five guys moving all in sync and, and you know, whether that's passing game, whether that's the flex, whether that's the, the warriors running, five out stuff, if you do it and you do it exceptionally well, right, it, it's beautiful.

And that's why, you know, again, we, we want to make sure that we teach these guys how to play.

It's, it's ugly at first, right, because it's guys that are coming from high school, some of them never played with a shot clock before outside of aau, you know, most everybody was the best player or one of the best players wherever they're coming from, very similar to a college.

And they've never played together before, you know, so you don't really have that, that kind of connection with a guy to know when they're going to cut back door, you know, when they want to come for a handoff versus, you know, they want to stick in the corner, whatever it is.

So, so we get a lot of reps with that and you just, you know, now it's January 30th and we're just starting to figure it out offensive, right.

With a month and a half to go in the season.

So, so knowing that the way that we play, we put a premium on defense.

Right.

You know, we really want to teach these guys how to guard at a college level because again, most high school kids are not doing that.

Right.

You know, they don't really want to defend.

But if you don't defend, you're not going to be on the court here.

Right?

So, so we really, we dive into things half court defensively.

You know, we, like I said, we pressed a lot more back in the day.

You know, I think that we're, we're hopefully going to be back there, but right now it's just a curveball for us.

But, but you know, playing that wide open style, it really allows us to, to, you know, help the guys learn how to play because not everything's scripted.

How does that translate into your practice design and the way you put together, whether you want to call it drills, whether you want to call it small sided games, however you want to talk about it in terms of your practice design, to teach the guys, as you said, how to play.

What does that look like on a day to day basis in practice, as you're trying to get guys to see some of those concepts that you just talked about, of, okay, when am I going to cut?

When do I come off that dho?

When am I going to cut back door?

What am I doing defensively on help side?

How do you get all those things incorporated into practice?

And what does that look like?

Yeah, it's, it's, it's a great question because I think that that practice, you know, is kind of a bit of a moving target.

You know, like I mentioned with the, with the basketball class, right, we put that emphasis on player development.

And within our structured daily schedule, we have a two hour block for practice.

But I want to make sure that I give our guys, you know, maybe an extra 15, 20 minutes to get on the gun or to work with an assistant so that they have more time for that individual development.

So with that, our practices have to be incredibly efficient, right?

And one way that we're able to do that is we compete in virtually everything that we do, right?

So, you know, for example, we'll, we'll come in and I don't, I don't know if it's just this, this generation of kids, but we spend more time warming up than, than any team I've ever been a part of.

And it's, it's, it's important, right?

You know, we get the guys, they come in, they, they have their individual warm up, right?

They get their body moving, whatever they need to do, and then we'll do some kind of a, you know, either teaching or active warmup, right?

Like we do a, we do a dummy box out shell that, you know, one of my buddies told me that they do at the college level.

And it's something that has really helped our guys because it's not necessarily a physical sweat, but mentally they have to know how we're rotating, they have to know how we're guarding things in the half court, right.

You know, I get to do it, so I get to throw up shots every once in a while.

But you know, that kind of gets us really locked in for practice.

Then we'll do our dynamic stretching and up until this past week, we would do a competitive full court drill, right?

You know, whether that's just put eight minutes on the clock and we're going to play it out like a scrimmage, right?

And that's how we're going to get practice started.

You know, I've seen a drill before that we've done a few times, the race car drill or, you know, you've got six seconds to have the paint touch and then you'll get your full, your full 20 seconds.

You know, we'll do Like a Buckeye transition, you know, guy shoots a free throw to a two on one, back to a three on two.

I say we did it up until last week because on Sunday we actually had a guy shatter a backboard during halftime trying to dunk it.

So that was.

He made, he made the dunk, which is, which is pretty cool for him, right?

But you know, we, we've had, we've had to be in the half court all week in practice, so it, you know, it took out the full court element of practice.

But, but what we do is, is we have a series of drills that, that will correspond with our principles, you know, that we, we go through.

You know, they pick one of two every day.

And we just really, we get continual reps at that kind of stuff, right?

Like we do, we do a four on four slide show, right?

So we can teach the guys a slide dribble, handoffs, switch guard to guard, screens.

And earlier in the year, you know, we would do it for, let's say we put 10 minutes on the clock and the black, black team would go five minutes and then they'd flip it five and the white team would go, and you tally up the number of stops they get, right?

And as you get accustomed to that drill, it becomes just a drill, right?

It becomes you checking the box.

So now we do it to one perfect rep.

So if you can do it perfectly that first time, that first 32nd rep, we can move on to the next thing, right?

But if you don't, you got to stay in the drill, right?

And it's just like golf.

You want to have the lowest score and then you don't have to run at the end of that drill, you know, then we'll do, you know, a lot of what we do in the half court is, is out of shell based type stuff, you know, we do, we do a passing cut shell to ice, right?

Which works our offense a little bit, right?

So the guys on the perimeter know we're going to pass perimeter, we're going to rim cut, we're going to fill opposite, you know, and then at a certain point on the shot clock, our five will come up and set a ball screen.

And because we ice ball screens, we want to get reps of that every single day, right?

And now we're at the point of the season where it's like you get a stop, you stay on defense, it's a defensive drill.

You don't want, you want to win, you got to get stops, right?

And you get into a game, you got to get Stops if you want to win.

And then one of the things we adopted recently, right, in the second semester is we call, we call it 50 game, right?

Our five out is called 50.

And you know, we'll have the offense start just behind half court defense starts at the coach's box and we'll sprint into it and there's no, there's no rules, right?

There's no script to it.

We're just playing half court offense.

And because the way that our motion is set up, you know, with five guys on the perimeter, you know, it's how, it's how to really again, teach them how to play, right?

You know, we guard things a specific way so they might get really good at knowing how to curl that downstream because we like to trail, you know, but, but being able to, to, you know, pass move, right?

You learn how to play with those guys more, you know.

And what that does is, is it helps the units that play together the most, right?

They, they gain that confidence together so that when you do get into a game, right, it's just brief eye contact and it's like you've been playing with someone for three years, four years now, but really you've only been playing together for six months.

So we just continually rep things out and then every day is part of that competition model.

We like to end with pressure free throws.

You know, admittedly we, we could improve from the line as a team, but one of the things that we do now, you know that those pressure free throws, let's say that you shoot for your team, Mike, and, and you make your first free throw, your team gets one point, you miss your second free throw, my team gets three, right?

So you put that, that extra little pressure so that when you do get into a late second half, you know, we got to make both free throws.

We've been there before, right?

We see kind of what happens.

The alternative of not making it, right, the other team could go on a run.

It could be the difference in winning and losing.

But you know, we do all that in about an hour and a half, hour and 40 minute practice, including that, that warm up time, you know, so we're really efficient, we're really competitive.

And I think that for as long as I've been here, right, this is, this is year nine for me in total.

You know that, that daily competition is truly the biggest separator, right?

You know, I, I actually I mentioned it to a young man the other day who was, who was visiting campus, looking at heart rate for next year and, and I said, you Know what, it's really true, but without friction, there's no movement, right?

So you know, you need that iron to sharpen iron.

You need that, that daily competitiveness because with a, with a 15 man roster, right, you know, it's not easy for us to make decisions on who can play.

So we kind of put the onus on the players.

Hey, you're going to compete every single day.

You beat out the dude that's in front of you.

Three straight days, you're going to get some minutes, right?

You know, and like, hey, I might beat you today, but that means you're going to work even harder tomorrow.

Which means I have to work just as hard, if not harder, to maintain the status quo.

So that, that, that daily competition is really help benefit our guys on and off the floor.

Yeah, absolutely.

When you can get guys going at each other and really trying to push, right?

And that's what makes everybody better.

And so when you, I'm sure you're having those conversations of like, look, by you working hard, you're not only helping yourself, but you're helping the guy across from you.

And then conversely, you're also helping the entire team to improve and get better.

And so if you can stoke that competitive fire by building that into the practice design, I mean obviously that's a no brainer to be able to try to get your guys to play to the level that you want them to play.

Question just in terms of again, going back to the teaching guys how to play.

Cause I think one thing that especially young coaches sometimes struggle with is how do I know when to stop play and correct something versus interrupting the flow of practice with a constant whistle of like, hey, I'm seeing this, that, and I've got to make all these different coaching points.

How do you balance that in terms of.

All right, we're scrimmaging, we're doing the 5 on 5 drill that you talked about.

And there's a read that you see from the sideline that you're like, oh, that's, that's a read that I'd like the guy to go the other way.

I'd like him to make a different decision.

How do you balance out when to stop it, when to let it go?

Are you talking to guys on the sideline when they come out of the drill?

What's that process look like for you in terms of the coaching on the floor and how you go about getting the guys the information that they need or that you want to share with them?

Right.

It's a mix of everything.

Right.

You know, pretty much anything you mentioned one of the things we do do, we.

We film our practices every day.

So, you know, I'm.

Unless something is really egregious, right, like, you know, you went left when clear, you should have gone right.

I'm not necessarily going to make those spot corrections until I just look again and see if there are any patterns or trends or anything with the design of our practices.

What, what really helps is that outside of that full court segment that's really about eight minutes, everything is, is based on a shot clock, right?

It's based on a 30 second shot clock.

So, you know, we, we try to like that slide shell, right?

We'll let the guys rep everything out.

But you know, if you, hey, you made a mistake, you.

You double slid when you're only supposed to slide one, right?

We're going to correct that after the rep, right?

You know, so that we can get the guys in the mindset of playing 30 seconds of defense, you know, without waiting.

You know, you hear the whistle, then you stop.

But we do a pretty good job as a staff of making sure that we're not interrupting live play as often as possible.

Because again, in a game you can't just stop, right?

You might be able to call a timeout, but at our level, you only get six of those a game, you know, so you, you have to kind of again, h.

Have a, Have a little spot in your brain, right, that, that you have that memory bank that, you know, you might be able to hold a memory for, you know, three or four plays and be like, hey, Mike, you remember, you know, few plays ago, right?

Guy drove baseline, help went, you have to drop, right?

And it's something that they've already done before, right?

So it's, it's one thing that, that I've really tried to improve on as a coach, you know, since I got to Hargrave is, is coaching and sound.

Sound bites, right?

You know, 10, 15 seconds, boom, we're going to the next thing.

And, and you know, it's, it's.

It's kind of hard for me because I do like to talk.

But you know, when you, when you have the opportunity to do those kind of things, right, that, you know, it's like, hey, good, boom, next rep.

Hey, we got to do better on this, right?

If it's a, if it's a continual mistake, right, then we'll really just put a full stop.

And you know, this, the.

My assistants and I will get out there and we'll really walk through like what is Happening what we're seeing.

But, but for the most part, it's really just quick sound bites.

You know, try not to take too much of that practice time because again, we do have the constraints of our own daily schedule.

So, you know, being able to, to again let maybe, maybe small things go.

Right?

You know, not necessarily being too nitpicky about the angle of the screen.

Right.

More so like, hey, did we get the stop?

Yes, okay, we got the stop.

But this is what we're striving for.

So, you know, as long as you have that reminder in the back of their heads after each rep, we're able to just continue on with practices as efficiently as possible.

Yeah, those sound bites I think are key, I think especially for young coaches.

I know I was guilty of this and probably still have at times, right of you have something that you want to say and you get out there and you're talking and you're talking, you're talking.

And after that, 10 or 15 seconds when you should have been done, the player's attention span is gone and you're probably not getting across any of the points that you want to get across to them anyway.

So.

So being able to develop that skill of coaching and using concise language and being direct I think is something that any coach, when you start looking at evaluating yourself, I think that's an area that, not that it's easy to be able to do that, but I think that's an easy one to identify when, hey, I'm over talking during practice and kind of interrupting the flow of what's, you know, of what's happening.

So tell me a little bit about the administrative role as sort of the director of basketball operations there.

What are your some, what are some of your responsibilities in that particular area of your job?

Yeah, it's a lot of scheduling.

Right.

I think that that's the, that's the biggest thing.

You know, we've got our, our national prep team and then we have a varsity team, a JV team and a middle school team.

Right.

So I work in conjunction with our school's athletic director on things like that, especially with transportation and, you know, facilities.

I was the athletic director before I became the head prep coach.

And you know, the ads in our conference were always like, no, the coaches can't schedule games.

We have to do it 80 to AD, right.

So I let our AD handle all the conference scheduling for those three teams.

And then anything non conference I do scheduling wise, a lot of game day operations.

Right.

If we're not playing, you know, I'M I'm working the scoreboard or the clock or I'm taking gate or whatever, I'm, whatever is needed of me in that moment, you know, that, that kind of falls on me.

And, and whenever I'm able to, you know, I like to get to the middle school or JV or varsity practices and just kind of see what the coaches are doing, you know, if they ask for anything advice wise, you know, I, again, unless it's kind of like with our team, right, Unless I see something egregious that I think that, you know, my voice needs to be heard with that coach, you know, I'm, I'm more than happy to offer advice, but I don't want him to feel like I'm looking over their shoulder at all times, you know.

And what that's done is it's got us a really cohesive basketball program.

Right.

You know, we all played last night again, not, not having our own gym.

We were able to, to find a local college to play our middle school game and then we played right after them and our JV and varsity were on the road and it was really cool.

All four teams won last night.

So, you know, I was something really nice around to have around coffee this morning, you know, to talk about how the games went, you know, to, to again we, we look at film, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll talk through things.

And, and I'm just there as a, as a support system for, for the lower levels, you know, so any kind of, we run a couple basketball events here, you know, for the varsity team and then for our team.

So all that kind of falls under my purview, you know.

And then again working in conjunction with the AD for like, you know, hiring of coaches, you know, figuring out equipment needs, you know, fundraising, things like that.

So it's a, it's a, it's a unique position to be in, but you know, it's one that's really rewarding because you get to sit back and watch those middle school games and you, you know, you see the coaches grow as the seasons go on and you know, you see the kids grow and you see them enjoying it.

It reminds you how much you enjoyed playing when you were that age, you know, so, so it's really cool to be able to stay connected to those programs as the director of basketball operations.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm sure to be able to see the joy in those kids faces and as you said, to put yourself back in that position, I'm sure is very special.

We talked about the recruiting on your end of it, where you're trying to recruit players to come into Hargrave.

But obviously a big part of your job is helping your players to be able to move on to the next level and play college basketball.

So let's talk a little bit about that side of it and how you go about building relationships with college coaches and kind of what your role is in the recruitment of your players from Hargrave to the college level.

Absolutely.

I think that, you know, the.

The first piece I want to hit on that you mentioned is, is building those relationships with college coaches.

Right.

And again, sitting in this chair, incredibly fortunate that, you know, Kevin Keats, former PG head coach here.

A.W.

hamilton, former PG head coach here, Takeo Siddle, who's the head coach at UNC Wilmington, was an assistant here.

Mark Byington, who's the head coach at Vanderbilt, was an assistant here.

So, you know, you have people that have come through the program that are now head coaches of the Division 1 level.

You know, we've got 28 other guys that have either played and.

Or coached here that are currently in the Division 1 ranks.

So, you know, we kind of have some.

Some natural relationships already there.

Right.

But we also just can't send our kids to those, you know, 10 schools.

Right.

Fifteen schools.

You know, we have to.

We have to expand that relationship with everyone, not just in Division one, but Division two, Division three, NAIA Junior college.

Right.

So one of the things we do every summer is we update our email database of every coach in the country at every level, and we send out weekly communication with those schools on our guys.

Right.

So it's a.

It's.

It's a lot of work on the back end for us, a lot of unseen hours for our staff, but it allows us to.

To make sure that our guys stay relevant in the eyes of college coaches.

Right.

You know, the way that the landscape is changing with the transfer portal, everyone wanting to get older, you know, you.

You bring nil into this, and there's so much uncertainty with everything.

Right.

But, you know, if you recruit the right kind of kids at Hargrave every year like we do.

Right.

And you have the reputation that we have.

Right.

You know, we've had 29 NBA players since 1998.

75% of our alums have gone on to Division 1 schools.

So we have a track record of success, and it's about putting the current guys in the.

The, you know, in the front of mind of these college coaches.

So it's continual communication.

Right.

It's scheduling games and and events that college coaches can.

Can attend, and then it's just following up with them.

Right.

You know, it's.

It's clipping up film, getting highlights ready, you know, being able to.

To have things at our disposal to just reach out.

You know, this past weekend we had an event in here and, and, you know, we had eight different schools come through throughout the weekend, you know, and, and being able to on Monday morning, once I figured out the.

The backboard situation, you know, handwriting those guys a note and then sending one out to them.

You know, I know that that might seem a little old school, but people still like to get that kind of mail, you know, and just thanking them for their time.

Because Chatham, Virginia is not the easiest place to get to.

You know, the closest airport is.

Is still over an hour away.

So.

So, you know, it's really important to us that, that we have that continual communication that, that college coaches at every level understand, you know, what Hargrave has to offer this year from.

From a recruiting standpoint.

And, you know, again, it's.

It's shifted.

Right.

I think the timeline's a little bit longer now.

You know, my first year here, we had 10 guys sign division one early.

That was nine years ago.

You know, now we're getting guys we had to sign early this year, you know, and we'll have, you know, as long as things continue the way they are, you know, we're going to have six to eight more.

It'll sign late, but everything's just kind of drawn out a little bit more.

So making sure that you stay relevant for longer.

Right.

You know, being able to.

To, you know, have our coaches information out everywhere so that if they can't catch me, they can catch one of the assistants.

Especially in the springtime.

Right.

Because, you know, things move at a rapid pace.

It's like, hey, if you don't answer the phone now, your kid might miss out.

So we make sure that the, you know, coaches have everything they need.

Transcripts, full game film highlights, contact information, parent contact information.

And we have it all ready to go.

So that when it is, when that kid's number does get called, right, we're ready to go.

We're able to help with everything we can in the recruiting process.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot that goes into it.

As you said, the landscape certainly is changing fast and the ability to be adaptable at whatever level you're coaching.

I don't care if it's where you're at in a postgrad world or whether you're talking about the colleges, whether you're talking about high school, every.

Everybody's trying to figure out how to make this system work.

And again, I think just by being prepared, you're putting yourself and your kids in the best position to be able to maximize the opportunities that are going to come their way.

I want to ask you a final two part question, Ben.

Part one.

When you think about the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge?

And then the second part of the question.

When you think about what you get to do every single day, what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

Loaded questions there?

No, those are good ones.

And funny, I think that, that the biggest challenges can really be summed up into just the unknown of what's going to happen with our game in the next two years.

You know, not knowing what the eligibility limits are going to be, what the deal with the JUCO thing is.

Right.

And I, I'm all for, you know, players having those opportunities but, but what it does is it's a trickle down effect for us and you know, we're behind the eight ball if they make decisions, you know, too late in the, in the calendar.

Right.

So, you know, that, that is, that's probably, you know, look into the next one to two years.

That, that would probably be the biggest challenge.

Just uncertainty, not just of things that are outside of our four walls.

Right.

But you know, I, I want to take a second to brag on my assistants, right.

You know, Luke Rosinski and John Meb and they're, they're my brothers, right.

I, I am so thankful I get to show up and work with them every single day.

Right.

And I know that both of those guys are well on their way to being division one assistance in the next one to two years.

Right.

So, you know, having to come to work every day and them not be here because they've gone on to, to, you know, bigger and better things, right, that, that I couldn't be prouder of them for.

You know, that's, that's going to create quite a challenge at our level to try to replace those guys because they really are unreplaceable.

But, but you know, I do think that the biggest joy, I would say, you know, outside of the fact that I'm able to walk to work every day and you know, I get to go home and see my, my wife and daughter every night, you know, that that's really rewarding.

But you know, to, to, to be honest with you, one of the biggest joys I get is just walking into my office every single day.

You know, you have to walk up the steps.

My office is on the second floor and, and the hallway leading up to my office has the names of everyone that's played in our program since 1990.

91.

Right.

And you walk by those names every single day and you see yourself just looking at them from time to time.

You'll pick a specific year and you'll go down, you'll look like, wow, that team in 2006 was loaded.

Right.

You know, and, and you, you just, you kind of.

You sit there and, and you have a moment of realization that, that you're exactly where you need to be.

Right.

You're.

You're at an incredible place that, you know, has, has benefited me so much as an individual.

Right.

That, that, you know, my biggest joy is being able to show up every single day and give back to the guys that we have in our program, give back to the guys that have played here before, that have coached here before.

Right.

And then be able to give back to the school.

Right.

Hargrave is an incredibly special place.

So to, to show up to, to work seven days a week and it not feel like a job.

That, that's really.

It brings me incredible joy every single day.

Nothing beats that.

That's well said.

When you can go to your job and it doesn't feel like work, man, you.

You have, you've won the lottery when that is the case because not everybody, as we well know, not everybody gets to experience that.

So that's awesome that that's the way that, that you feel and the way you approach your day to day, your day to day work, as you said.

So before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share.

How can people reach out to you, connect with you, find out more about your program, whether you want to share, social media, email, website, whatever you feel comfortable with.

And then after you do that, I'll jump back in and wrap things up.

Yeah, absolutely.

I, I am on social media.

It might just be a lot of retweets and not a lot of individual posts, but, but you can find me on.

On Twitter at Hargrave Hoops and you can also reach out to me.

Email is probably the best way to get in touch with me.

My email would be Coach Veshi V E S h I@gmail.com.

Ben, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us.

Really appreciate it.

And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.

Thanks.

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