Bill Tierney, Then and Now: Method to His Madness
by Matt DaSilva | Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff
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Bill Tierney, Then and Now: A Q&A Series Part One: His Roots
(Tuesday) © Trevor Brown |
Bill Tierney, a Hall of Fame head coach whose decision to leave Princeton and reengage the sport's westward evolution at Denver stunned the lacrosse world, has been named Lacrosse Magazine's 2009 Person of the Year.
LM sent Matt DaSilva to Denver for an in-depth interview with Tierney, portions of which will be revealed here on laxmagazine.com in a five-part Q&A series. A full-length cover feature appears in the December issue of LM, which mails to US Lacrosse members this week.
In part two, Tierney talks the madman we see on Saturdays and
perhaps a deeper meaning to his sport-altering move west.
Don't get the mag? Join USL and its 300,000-plus members today to start your subscription.
You came up coaching in the high school ranks. John
Danowski, when he was named LM Person of the Year in 2007, lamented
that a lot of young coaches today don’t follow that same path
as many pioneers of the profession did. What do you make of
that?
John and I talk every couple of weeks. We’re good friends. I
was talking to him late last night. I think there’s a lot of
truth to it. I think it comes from the teaching aspect. What
happens now, guys that were great players become great coaches. I
think that’s hard. That’s why I admire so much what
Dave Pietramala has done at Hopkins. He never had that kind of
educational background. It’s very hard for a great player to
become a great coach, because he hasn’t been on the bench. It
was easy for those guys to play. So to then step back and teach
kids that aren’t as talented is difficult.
I agree with John. When you go through the education courses, you learn a lot about part-to-whole methods, whole-to-part methods, repeating a question when somebody asks it as opposed to turning and looking at that person, visual learning versus active learning, the art of review, repetition of skill -- all these kinds of things that had nothing to do with lacrosse, but had to do with teaching. Once you combine a good teacher with a good coach -- a guy like John Wooden, who could have coached anything -- you’ve got a good mix there.
A lot of these guys try to be head coaches, but it’s a
tough way to the top. Dave Cottle, Tony Seaman, John Danowski, Dave
Urick -- they’re all teachers first. Although you do see guys
like Dom Starsia and Dave Pietramala -- they’ve found the
right spot conducive to their style of coaching. But it is hard for
some of these young guys. It’s a tough profession out there.
That’s why I hope to be a mentor to all the guys I’ve
coached over the years.
Speaking of style, what is your style? We see the guy
yelling at refs. There’s got to be more to you than
that.
You hope so. If you talk to the people who know me best -- Dave
Metzbower, my son Trevor, Kevin Lowe, guys who played for me --
they would tell you that that’s the anomaly, what the public
sees.
I go back to my childhood. My dad was a yeller and a screamer.
He’d be the one to tell you you’re in your room for a
month. And then my mom within two hours would come up and tell you,
“OK, you’re punishment’s over.”
That’s how I am. I can see a direct relationship to that. I
see the hardness, sometimes cruelty to players. Some of the things
my ex-players tell me I said to them, I’ll tell them I never
said that, and they’ll say, “Oh yeah, you did.”
And yet, I think each one would tell you I always talked about
loving them. I was always personal with them. I was always there
for them. That’s what you see. Not sure they would say
softness, but certainly kindness and love is an integral part of
that.
David Morrow, I remember in a story in Lacrosse Magazine,
started out by saying “I hated Bill Tierney when I got to
Princeton.” It was bold. But if you read on, it was all true.
Everything he said was exactly true.
What you see isn’t what you get. I’m a stickler.
I’m Type A. I can’t go to bed on a Friday night if I
don’t think my team is prepared. What happens on Saturday,
the reason there’s that madness, so to speak, is that I feel
like if we’re prepared, there’s almost nothing else to
do. You don’t have to coach them on Saturday if you prepare
them.
This quote I’ve had for a couple of years now from an
article on Coach [Bill] Parcells in Sports Illustrated a
couple years ago, it tells it all about guys like me with coaching.
I’ve sent this to some young coaches.
[Reading the quote] “You wake up each morning knowing the
next game is all that matters. If you fail in it, nothing
you’ve done with your life counts. By your very nature, you
always have to start over again fresh. It’s an uncomfortable
feeling, but nonetheless addictive. Even if everyone around you
tells you you’re a success, you seek out that uncomfortable
place and if you don’t, you’re automatically on the
wrong side of the thin curve that separates winners from
losers.”
That really tells what a lot of successful coaches are about. It
certainly tells my story. Stuff like this, honors and accolades,
Hall of Fames, makes me somewhat uncomfortable. And I think you
should be that. The other quote I have up here I’ve used in
my speech when I got inducted in 2002 to the US Lacrosse Hall of
Fame. My associate AD at Princeton had this quote: “Judge
your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.”
I twisted that a little bit around. “Judge your success by
what others had to give up in order for you to get it.” I was
thanking my wife, my kids, my family, my brothers and sisters, my
parents. I’ve always had this crazy passion about sports. I
know bringing up four kids could not have been easy, because I
wasn’t there very much. And for the kids to have me helping
raise other people’s kids -- while I was ignoring them, so to
speak -- it’s kind of weird. Those are the kinds of things
that have driven me in this whole coaching thing.
It’s rare you can find the exact words, but those are the
ones that put it together the best for me.
It’s funny, the Parcells article quote about others
calling you a success, and that you’re not comfortable unless
you’re uncomfortable -- Did you think you were getting too
comfortable at Princeton? Is this your uncomfortable place,
Denver?
It might be. I hadn’t thought about it that way. Now that
you ask, it might be. Funny, before I went to Princeton, I had
never been anywhere more than three years. Not one job for more
than three years. I was at RIT for three years and at Hopkins for
three years. I kind of thought I was going to Princeton for three
years. Uncomfortable at Princeton? That could never be true. I
could go back there this second, live my life there –-- the
people, the experience, the place, it was incredible.
But as you mention it, maybe I am seeking out that
uncomfortable-ness of a new team. I’ve never been afraid of
high expectations at all. One of my personal things over the years
was to transform fear of failure to fear of success. In athletics,
it’s OK to fear failure, because a lot of people fail in
athletics. It’s when you’re successful that you then
set the bar higher, and then your expectations are higher, and then
you have to work a lot harder. I think a lot of kids that play the
game, deep down they might not want to be that successful, because
it means the next day, they’re called to a higher level.
I don’t look at the six championships other than with a
great deal of pride and thanks to all those people that made them
possible.
Maybe that’s a part of this thing. There were two things I
always said if I was ever to leave Princeton: I would leave it
better than I found it -- I think that’s true. And I would
leave the cupboard full -- I think that’s true. I have no
regrets about that, and I feel good about that. But maybe part of
this thing -- other than what you’ve read out there with me
and Trevor and the Colorado thing and the idea of giving it one
more time around with a different program, all of which is true --
but maybe deep down, that’s a little deeper. Maybe I have
that need to do this. Twenty-two years is a long time to be with
one program. Fifty-eight years is a long time to be healthy and
happy and thankful. So why not give it a final shot?
