My Three Meetings with Don Meyer

Last week, former Lipscomb basketball coach Don Meyer was given the Jim Valvano Courage Award by ESPN. Coach Meyer recovered from a pre-season car crash and cancer diagnosis to lead the Northern State Wolves to an 18-win season. Win #11 was Coach Meyer's 903rd, one more than Bob Knight's all-time men's college basketball record of 902.

MomofTwins went to school with two of the Meyer daughters, Brooke & Brittney, so she knows the family better than I do. I only met Coach Meyer three times during my time at Lipscomb. If he remembers any of them I'd be surprised, but then again the capacity of Lipscomb Nation to remember its own never ceases to amaze me.

The first time I met Coach Meyer I was a new kid on campus. I had just transferred from Harding (long story), and had some ideas about how some of what Harding did with its intramurals could be used at Lipscomb. They had just hired a new Intramural director, Scott Grissom, so I dropped by his office to talk. Before long, Scott introduced me to his boss, Andy Lane (another great guy with a prodigous memory for names and faces. My first time on campus in five years was a basketball game this February. Andy Lane saw me, said hello, and asked about my kids by name. Dude.) Anyway, we talked in Andy's office for a few minutes and before long he's taking me around the athletic department introducing me to the folks who work there. Sherry Phillips I knew from church, but everybody else was new to me. On top of that, they were in the middle of their work days.

That's just the way Lipscomb people are.

One of the stops on our tour was the basketball office. Coach Bennett was out, but that afternoon I met Sherri Eubanks, Mike Roller, and Don Meyer. Coach Meyer was courteous, but he was not chatty. The coaches were going over some of the finer points of a defensive scheme I vaguely recognized as a form of match-up zone, and since I had nothing to add to the conversation, I sat and listened for a while, then Andy and I resumed the tour. My first impression (later confirmed when I would be walking through the upstairs of the gym during basketball practice) was that Coach Meyer was very focused, very determined, and very good at what he did.

That, and the only thing harder than beating Coach Meyer is distracting him.

The following season a friend of mine asked me to ride along to Lady Bisons road games to make game film. One night on our way to Martin Methodist, we stopped for he pregame meal at a nearby restaurant. This trip was a little bit unusual because the men's and women's teams travelled together. Coach Meyer drove his own car, but since the teams were on the same bus we all ate at the same place. I sat down with one of the womens' team student-assistants. Coach Meyer was at a different table, but nearby. Now ordinarily I'm a wallflower anyway, so it takes one to know one. That said, I have never seen anyone in my life try harder to blend into the background of a social situation than Coach Meyer on gameday.

Understand, these are not the observations of a long-term acquaintence, just someone who crossed his path on two random days -- one in mid-September, one in early February. Also understand, this is not criticism. As a preacher, I face "gameday" every Sunday, and I'm often just as focused, just as hard to distract. When I'm "on the clock," I'm giving everything I have -- so much so that if something happens on a Sunday I probrbaly won't remember it unless I write it down.

That said, there was one more occasion where Coach Meyer's path crossed mine. I had just graduated from Lipscomb maybe six weeks earlier. My sister, a starter on what would be a state-runner-up basketball team, was coming to Coach Meyer's Bison Basketbal Camp. She, my mom, and one of her teammates were driving from Florence, SC to Nashville, and were coming over Monteagle Mountain in the rain when something caused her car to begin to slide. Another car hit hers on the drivers side. The resulting injuries weren't serious, but they were enough to keep my sister and her friend from playing that week.

My sister spent the week recuperating at a friend's house in Nashville. This friend's dad worked at Lipscomb, and eventually word got back to Coach Meyer about what had happened. So Sunday afternoon we're sitting in this friend's parents living room, and Coach Meyer's car appears in the driveway. He and one of his coaching colleagues came to see my sister. The visit lasted about 45 minutes, Coach Meyer and me wall-flowering while the other coach and my mom had a nice chat.

My mom is one of those people. If she ever ran across that coach again, she'd probably ask about his kids by name.

What was impressive about the visit was not what Coach Meyer said, or more to the point what he didn't say, but the fact that he was there. This was camp registration day, likely the busiest day of the year from a paperwork and people-coordination standpoint. If there were ever a day when there were details to look after, this was it. But the one detail Coach Meyer wasn't going to let slip was coming to see a camper who wasn't going to get to play.

He put people before paperwork.

Even more impressive was that during the visit even Mr. Socially Inept Me could see how uncomfortable Coach Meyer was. Those close to him say Coach Meyer is the type who loves to do what he is good at, but making conversation with peple he doesn't know well is not one of his strongsuits. Yet in spite of his discomfort, in spite of everything else that had to be done that day, he knew that he could do some good just by showing up.

So he did.

In the last year, people who have spent a lot of time around Coach Meyer have expressed how much they love him. I can see why. Coach Meyer himself has also talked about how his injuries and illness have given him an opportunity to express to those same folks how much he loves them. For his sake, I'm glad he has found his voice enough to say these things out loud.

But if my three, random encounters with Coach Meyer are indicitave of the way he has lived the rest of his life, my suspicion is that deep down in their hearts, the folks hearing these words from Coach Meyer for the first time aren't hearing anything they didn't already know.