Player Intro
Jake Delaney played basketball at Covenant College, and has coached at both Covenant College and Gardner-Webb University. Throughout his playing and coaching, his desire to connect with others was just as obvious as his desire to improve individually. Today, he shares how he began to see his identity differently after playing competitive ball was no longer an option, and how he prioritizes ministering to the players he now coaches.
Gameplan
0:00 - Welcome/Background
pD: Jake, thanks so much for joining me today. Appreciate you taking time during your offseason workouts to spend this time with me, share a little bit about what's been going on with your life, and your involvement with sports. For our listeners, if you could please give a bit of your sports background, and what you're currently doing.
JD: Well, thanks for having me, man, it's awesome what you're doing, interviewing these different coaches and people, so I'm excited to be on. So my background, I grew up playing basketball, had the chance to go to Covenant College in Georgia; that's where we met, obviously. I played three years of college basketball there, and my senior year, I was actually a student assistant due to some injuries.
I finished out my time there, spent two years as a graduate assistant at Gardner-Webb, then actually had a chance to come back to Covenant as a full time assistant and worked for Neal Young for two years, then had a chance to come back to Gardner-Webb, after those two years, as an assistant here. So I just finished my second year as an assistant at Gardner-Webb under Coach Craft, who is the same coach as when I was a graduate assistant. So I've kind of been bouncing back and forth between those two schools, and it's been great, I've learned a lot along the way, and Coach Craft, he's big time, and I learn a ton from him every day, so I'm really thankful to be here.
1:50 - Why Coaching?
pD: Awesome, man. This isn't one of the questions I prepped you for, but knowing that you sat out your senior year because of injury, and maybe the student assistant position was kind of a natural outlet, what helped you decide to keep going with coaching?
JD: Yeah, so I think when I was in college, I just knew there was one thing I was really passionate about; I loved sports, and I really loved basketball, and I loved people, and I kind of like dealing with people, so I knew that coaching was always a possibility. In a lot of ways, I think that was the Lord working in the background to just start me off early, so I got a small taste as a student assistant working for Coach Taylor. After that, I just knew that's what I wanted to do. Like I said, I already had thought that there was a chance I wanted to coach long-term, but I did know that I wanted to at least be a graduate assistant somewhere, and kind of get my full taste of what it's like to be a college basketball coach. Just because as an assistant, it was a little different: all those guys I was helping out, I was living with, and those were my teammates the year before, so it was just a unique situation. So when I was a GA, that kind of really helped me realize this is what I want to do.
3:49 - Habits from sport
pD: Alright. Let me transition to your time as an athlete and a coach now; what are some of the habits or traits that you've developed through all of that time?
JD: I think my time as a player in college, and then as a graduate assistant, were really vital for developing certain things in my life that are really helpful for me now. I think the first thing that I learned, especially as an athlete, was discipline from training. When I was going into my sophomore year, that was probably my first summer and offseason where I really invested all in on my game in all areas: in the weight room, getting in the gym, basically every day. People say that all the time, "Oh I get in the gym every day," but it really was, that was the summer for me. I was in there every morning usually playing pick-up, I would go lift in the afternoon, and then I would, at some point later that day, get shots up, and get more of a skill workout in with someone in town.
What I saw was results
That was just an everyday process, and from that, what I saw was results. So I got to see what happens when you really commit to the process and make it a daily discipline to get better in whatever area it is. So that just translates to every area of your life; you get what you put in, and I think from that, I just learned what it takes. So in my job now, when I'm not doing enough, I know; you just know, there's this inner conscience, this guilty conscience, that you're not doing enough. You know what it takes because you've done it before. So I think for me, that helps set a standard in my life; this is how hard you're going to work, and this is what it takes to be really good as a player, now as a coach.
So learning from that as a player was really helpful; then as a graduate assistant, I think what helped me there was: as my first experience on the other side of things as a coach in terms of the amount of hours that go into this whole thing. As a player, you just have no idea; you show up for practice, you worry about yourself outside of practice, and what you got to do, you show up, you get told what to do, and that's just how the season goes. As a coach, it's everything else: you got to tell them what to do at all times, you're always preparing, preparing for games, for opponents, you're recruiting; there's just so much that goes on behind the scenes. So I think as a GA, I really got thrown into that fire, and had to adjust right away.
The last thing I'll say, as a player, like I mentioned, I didn't play my senior year of college; that was really hard for me. I love basketball, I love playing, I had put everything I had into that whole deal. I had a hip injury after my junior year; I had surgery, and as I recovered, a bad back injury developed, and I couldn't really bend over. If you can't do that, you're not going to be able to play, so I was forced into this early retirement, I guess you could say, and that was a lot of adversity for me. I think it was just the hardest thing I had to deal with in my life up to that point. I was at the point of: "What are you going to do? What are you going to do about it?" So for me, two things came from that; one was, I learned I love coaching.
Two, and I think the most important part was, God really flipped my life upside down in that year, and was like "Hey man, your identity is completely wrapped up in you as a basketball player," which is hilarious, because it's not like I was playing at Duke, but that's just how my mind was. That's what I put everything into; I wanted to get recognition from it; I wanted to be good at it, and that's kinda where my identity was. It wasn't until basketball got taken from me that He showed me that. So I really think after that year, that was when my faith started to grow, and it became my own, and I really started to understand what it looks like to put your identity in Jesus Christ. So that was a challenge that I went through, but dealing with that adversity for me has made me stronger, and it's helped me since with the different challenges I've had to face in my life.
10:08 - Habits carry over
pD: I think you touched on this a little bit, but if you add a little more, build on how some of these habits, the discipline, grounding your identity in Christ, how did that carry over into other parts of your life outside of sports?
JD: Yeah, so I talked about discipline, right, just from training. The most important thing from that, I've learned, is discipline in my faith. Not in a legalistic way by any means, but learning how to be disciplined in my actions and getting in the Word. You know, over the last four years, five years, that's become a huge part of my life, is my time in the Word. It's become a discipline, but it's something I want to do, and I look forward to doing. But I do think that learning how to commit to something, in what I learned as an athlete, I think that translated into my faith.
Because I look at my job as a coach as a ministry: that's why I do what I do. So for me, I think that's a big deal: having discipline in that area. It's so important, just like I talked about as a player, and your identity getting wrapped up as a player, the same thing can happen whether you're in coaching or not, but in coaching too. Your identity can get wrapped up there. So for me, staying grounded in that is really important.
Discipline in my job, I mean, it's just like an everyday, coaching never stops. You've got to be disciplined with your time and disciplined in how you work, a lot of times outside your time in the office, on the phone recruiting, all those things. So it's helped me in that way. I kinda hit on it earlier; I know now what it takes, at least as an assistant. So when I'm not giving my best effort, I know, because my experience, and the experiences I've had in the past are gonna trigger, and it's gonna let me know "You're not doing enough." So those are kinda carryovers to other parts of my life, in terms of outside of my job and my faith, but then also my job as a coach.
Coaching never stops
13:07 - Challenge
pD: Absolutely. Thanks for building on that a little bit. So you've already talked about some of the challenge you faced your senior year, with your identity as a basketball player getting taken away from you, like you said; talk about a challenge that you faced, maybe it's that one, or another one that you were thinking of, and how did you face that challenge?
JD: I guess what I prepared was talking about my senior year, but I'll talk about something else, because I already hit that one a good bit. My first year as an assistant coach, so this would be my first year at Covenant after I was a graduate assistant; one of the things that I came to realize really quick was that there was a lot I didn't know. And I felt like, since I was going into that job: I played here, I know Division III basketball, I just came from Division I, yeah I gotta learn how to recruit, and all those things, but I felt comfortable. And coming as a graduate assistant, there wasn't a lot of coaching; it's a lot of grunt work, you'll do some player development here and there, but your staff is so big, you're really handling a lot of the behind-the-scenes work, and you're kinda paying your dues, which is really good. So part of the reason I wanted to go to Covenant was because I was going to be the only assistant, I was gonna have to do a lot; but again, I thought it was going to be easier than I anticipated.
When I got there, I learned quick that there's a lot I didn't know, and I think one of the areas I really struggled in was my voice on the court: how to coach and lead guys and do it in a confident manner, and gain guys' respect on the court, whether that's in a drill or a timeout or in a locker room or whatever. And I think I was dealing with a lot of insecurity, wanting guys to respect me, all those kinds of things, and so I think that was just a challenge that I faced over that year; I had to accept that this is something I'm not good at, and be honest with myself, and after that, I could just go from there.
I had to be honest with myself
And so by my second year, my year one and year two at Covenant, I would say, were night and day in terms of my comfortability as a coach, comfortability in who I was, and what Coach Young was asking me to do, and my role on the staff, and all those things. So I think there was a lot of growth there, but it was definitely a challenge.
16:45 - Significance
pD: That makes a lot of sense: that transition between two very different types of basketball programs and levels. Why was it important for you to have faced that challenge?
JD: I think it's important because, for me, for two reasons: One, practically, as a coach, that's just something that you have to be good at. When you're coaching guys on the court, and you're directing people and directing players, you gotta be able to vocalize things, communicate, be confident in what you're doing, and that's really important.
I think the biggest thing is learning about self-awareness and continually applying that to my life: Being willing to be honest with myself about key areas that I need to get better at, and being able to address those things and then figure out how I can get better at those things. I think that's a constant thing that we're all going for; it's really important as leaders that we are self-aware, that we're willing to be honest, willing to figure out how we can improve in those areas. So that's why I feel like that year for me was really important.
It's really important as leaders that we are self-aware
18:52 - Wrap-up
pD: That makes a lot of sense. Jake, that's all the questions I have for you today. I'll toss it back to you, give you the floor for the final word on anything you might want to add to tie this all up together.
JD: No doubt. I think the one thing I'd say, especially to, really anybody, but what I've learned over the last four years, which really developed while I was working for Coach Young at Covenant, in my two years, was learning what it looks like to make your job and, in particular, my job, as a basketball coach, a ministry.
I think it's a really easy thing to say, and a much harder thing to do. It takes a lot of intentionality, and there's weeks where I'm doing that really well, and there's weeks where I'm really focused on the wrong thing. Usually the wrong things are things like myself, but in my time at Covenant, and here at Gardner-Webb, I've just seen, if you really view it as a ministry, and use your job in that way, and look at it as a way to disciple the players that are playing for you, and even the staff and other guys that work with you, the way that I've seen God move through the different programs that I've worked in has been awesome.
I've seen God move
Again, it's really why I do what I do; I love basketball, I love the competitive side of coaching, but really the ministry side is why I do what I do. So that's the challenge for me, to make it that and keep it that. I guess my challenge for anybody listening, is I really do think, no matter where you work, you can look at your job as a ministry; it's going to look different in different areas, but to be able to do that, it's going to take some intentionality, but I know that God calls us to that. So, again, I'm not perfect at it, but that's my goal, that's what I feel God has convicted me with over the last few years, so that'd be my final thought.
21:49
Execution
Jake has shared a video on post hook drills that help to improve touch and fundamental movements. Build your confidence in the low post with this drill. Be sure to like and subscribe to the Youtube channel for more skillwork and content!