Down through the years, a lot of people have asked me how we built the Ashland University women’s basketball into the nationally recognized program it’s become. It didn’t happen overnight, of course, but I point to two specific stories that explain how that growth happened.
First, I remember going to a women’s leadership summit sponsored by Athletes in Action. I’d been coaching at Ashland for four or five years at that point, and during the conference they asked me if I had a “PDP.” I didn’t know what they meant, so I asked. “A personal development plan,” they explained.
So, I went back to my office and read through my autographed copy of John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, then killed a few trees by making notes on a whole ream of printer paper. Finally, I drew a basketball court and in the center, I wrote “commitment”—because that’s where everything starts for us. The end lines are marked with “integrity” and “trust.” So these were the foundational pieces I put together in recognizing where I wanted our program to go. I had the posters printed and hung in the locker room, my office and around the building in Kates Gymnasium. When I retired and Robin Fralick took over as head coach, she took those same concepts and made them her own.
The second story about why the program has become what it has happened when, at the end of one school year, I gave a booklet about leadership to a member of the team who would be a captain the following year. I told her to read it over the summer and come back with ideas and questions. When the fall semester rolled around, she came to my office and stated that, as a team, we needed to make a change. Her idea was that the freshman would no longer do the grunt work—sweeping the floor, carrying laundry, etc. Instead, she said, it should be a privilege to serve the rest of the team. So, the seniors took over the menial labor jobs. And that servant’s heart really became a core piece of the program.
I remember being asked to volunteer at the 2017 national championships in Columbus. I was in charge of the ball boys and girls for the event. But during one halftime, I noticed no one was sweeping the floor, so I grabbed a broom and did it myself. I got a standing ovation from the Ashland fans in the crowd. Someone asked me about it afterwards, and I kind of laughed. I said, “Jesus washed feet and I got to sweep the floors!”
