Thursday, May 10, 2007 7:38 PM CDT
Let Mattoon's next basketball coaching trial begin
BY RICK DAWSON Staff Writer
rdawson@jg-tc.com
Brooks Inman has been in the coaching fold long enough to wade into the shallow part of the pool, let the water swirl around his ankles and step out into the sunshine refreshed.
He hasn’t looked down the barrel of the gun that is basketball in a Class AA town – now Class 3A, presumably — that doesn’t revere the sport, where expectations are perennially low and coaches are swallowed for breakfast because they can be.
This may help to explain his selection by the Mattoon School Board over a group of more seasoned mentors. When one has no track record that can stick, it can be an advantage, can’t it?
Of course that’s one of the obvious benefits of this hiring. The school is getting a young opportunist who appears to relate to today’s players. His enthusiasm is no doubt hard to dampen, his idealism hard to quash. These are good, often infectious, traits. They could inevitably carry over to the classroom, where he’s apparently already a hit with kids.
School Board President Michelle Skinlo told Inman, “You are a teacher first, and you are ranked very high as a teacher.”
What the 23-year-old Inman has to lose isn’t so visible, either. Should he succeed, he’ll do what some seem to think is virtually impossible in this town. Should he find it to be tough going, he may simply find himself in the annals of forgotten Green Wave coaches, perhaps able to land firmly on his feet and start afresh.
Inman may be Mattoon’s basketball savior for all we know, and all we know is that he’s coached 28 varsity games at the Class A level and won 20 of them with a veteran team. In other words, he has about 1/28th the experience of outgoing coach Bob Lockart, who also attended Millikin University and started at a small school (Argenta-Oreana).
Mattoon superintendent Larry Lilly said Inman was chosen because of his comprehensive design for revitalizing the basketball program.
“We were interested in someone who could bring us a plan to build a program,” Lilly told Journal Gazette reporter Nathaniel West at Tuesday’s board meeting. “That was the criteria.”
The one thing that Inman did on his own initiative without being prompted, though, according to Mattoon athletics director Gerald Temples, was outline in detail the contents of that plan. Players would be supervised beginning in the third grade and cooperative efforts with the elementary, middle school and summer leagues would be undertaken.
“I think the young man through the interview process and with the administration did very well as far as the teaching position went,” Temples said. “With the coaching position he came in with a plan that was laid out with a lot of thought given as far as what direction he would wish to take. Without question he has a tremendous amount of enthusiasm as far as basketball is concerned, a tremendous amount of passion for it.”
Passion will certainly be needed, but it’s not the only thing. Patience will be just as important. Fifteen years have passed since Mattoon has had a winning season. Even then, it finished a somewhat innocuous 16-11.
Inman says he wants a challenge. A challenge is what he’ll get. Mattoon’s basketball talent base has been almost as bare as a monk’s head in a Tibetan monastery.
But he also appears to have a maturity beyond his years, which would certainly help the adjustment. Todd Vilardo, the principal at Mattoon Middle School where Inman is to teach physical education, said he was unaware of the new coach’s age when he was being interviewed.
“I saw him as the best teaching candidate for this position at the time,” Vilardo said. “I look for a candidate with character and competence. I would characterize Brooks as someone who has a humble confidence.
“I have confidence in Brooks as an educator. Coaches, after all, are teachers.”
So what to make of this decision? When Temples was asked whether hiring someone so young might be risky, he pointed out that thinking about it in such terms could be misleading.
“Personally I don’t think it’s a risky move because the young man has been around the sport,” he said. “He’s gained a tremendous amount of experience at Millikin and tremendous experience coaching at Arcola. Sometimes you can make too much of age on one end from a youth standpoint or being too old from the opposite end.”
Fair enough. If Inman is given a reasonable chance and succeeds, Mattoon could find itself with a coach whose potential longevity could cement his reputation for years. If not, he should have plenty of opportunities to do so in the future.
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