June 20, 2023 • 42 mins
He went into the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 2002. That was during his 20-year stint as the head coach of Princeton men’s lacrosse team. Bill Tierney could have just sailed away with his HOF status and several other accolades, but he wanted another adventure. Seven years after his induction, Bill left the east coast and began to lead the men’s lacrosse team at the University of Denver. During his 14 seasons with the Pioneers, his teams amassed a record of 167-59 (69-8 in the conference), 5 Championship Weekend appearances and his 7th career National Championship. He also helped produce countless student athletes with impressive accolades like All-American, Scholar Americans, Players of the Year and All-Conference selections. Bill Tierney put lacrosse on the map west of the Mississippi.
Growing up Bill was an athlete and lacrosse came after football and several other sports. He eventually picked up a stick to help a friend hone his skills. After college, he got into coaching and quickly reached his only goal: to be his high school’s head football coach. From there new goals were set and Bill moved to the college ranks. He mostly coached lacrosse, however at Johns Hopkins, he also coached soccer (a sport he admittedly knew nothing about) and that team won. He started a family with Helen and two of their four children played for Bill at Princeton. He figured out how to coach anyone and everyone and be successful.
Bill retired from coaching in 2023. He has already done some media work and will undoubtedly do more. He plans to stay around Denver for now… until Helen picks the next adventure. It’s her turn.
Hosted by Susie Wargin
Growing up Bill was an athlete and lacrosse came after football and several other sports. He eventually picked up a stick to help a friend hone his skills. After college, he got into coaching and quickly reached his only goal: to be his high school’s head football coach. From there new goals were set and Bill moved to the college ranks. He mostly coached lacrosse, however at Johns Hopkins, he also coached soccer (a sport he admittedly knew nothing about) and that team won. He started a family with Helen and two of their four children played for Bill at Princeton. He figured out how to coach anyone and everyone and be successful.
Bill retired from coaching in 2023. He has already done some media work and will undoubtedly do more. He plans to stay around Denver for now… until Helen picks the next adventure. It’s her turn.
Hosted by Susie Wargin
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I walk in this room and PatBoland is sitting here. Forty five trustees
are sitting around this table. NowI don't know who these people are.
Pegs are sitting there with earth cheshireCat's smile, she said, sitting next
to mister Bolan. So I sittingnext to Pat, and he loved Du.
And you know, we started talkingfootball and one thing led to another.
(00:22):
So now I realize it took mea while to realize that this was
an impromptu trustees meeting to try andtalk me into coming too. DU Welcome
to Cut, Traded, Fired,Retired a weekly podcast featuring conversations with professional
athletes and coaches in a variety ofsports. The reason I started this podcast
and share these conversations is because I'mhoping you hear a strategy, some motivation,
(00:44):
or maybe even a saying that youcan apply to your own life.
And I also hope you enjoy simplylistening to some great stories. I'm your
host, Susie Wargen. This week'sepisode is with a retired coach from the
summer of twenty twenty three, whenthe University of Denver hired Bill Tierney from
Princeton to take over their men's lacrosseprogram in two thousand and nine. It
caught the attention of many. Whywould a successful coach who had been at
(01:06):
Princeton for two decades leave the EastCoast, a hotbed for lacrosse, and
come west to Denver. The answerwas fairly simple. Bill was ready for
a new adventure. His adventure broughthim another national championship, adding to his
previous six, and he became thefirst D one lacrosse coach to win a
title west of the Mississippi. Hisstories as an athlete and coach or fabulous,
and he also offers some great adviceabout coaching your own kids, something
(01:30):
he did with both of his sonswhile he was at Princeton. And to
think his early dream in life wassimply to be the head football coach of
his high school. He went waybeyond ladies and gentlemen. Bill Tierney Trading
Fired retired podcast with Susie Wargin BillTierney, How are you. I'm good.
(01:51):
Thanks, It's so good to seeyou. I haven't seen you in
a long time since I was atnine News. I'd go out and see
all the time at lacrosse practice,and I know that's when we were doing
a little better too, so Imight have something to do with it.
Well there was that. Yeah,First of all, congratulations on a phenomenal
career. You are retired now andofficially done with your duties at DU,
and we're going to go through it. But the years that you have put
(02:15):
into that sport and the athletes andthe young men you've affected, it's pretty
incredible. I was so blessed tobe able to come here to Denver and
you know, just take this programand go with it. You know,
when I took the job, PegBradley Doppus, who hired me, wanted
me to a help the sport growout west and be get our program going.
(02:35):
And I've always said when I leavejobs, I want to leave them
better than I found them. SoI think you definitely definitely did that at
DU. Yeah. All right,Well, so Bill, let's kind of
go back to your beginnings where youwere born, where you grew up.
You're an East Coast guy, EastCoast guy, you know, Long Island,
New York. Baby Boomer grew upin a town called Levittown, New
York, which was really the firstplanned community in our country. It was
(03:00):
for all the gis coming back fromWorld War Two who had lived grown up
in New York City or Brooklyn,and so they wanted to live in a
suburb. So they cleared this land, built seventeen thousand homes. In three
years, seventy thousand people moved inand it was Highland's Ranch before it was
Highlands Ranch exactly. That's exactly whatit was. And every area had had
(03:23):
a pool, and five high schoolsand twelve elementary schools. So the best
part it was such a great placeto grow up. My block had twenty
houses and forty two kids within tenyears of each. How fun. It
was great. It was a greatplace to grow up and go to school
and have older siblings and younger siblingsand friends. And it was really the
(03:46):
introduction of sports for me because everyday you were out doing something different.
What sports did you love growing up? Baseball? Football, basketball, like
everywhere else. And stuck with thatpretty much until finth grade basketball tryouts.
Looking at the cut list and toldthe coach there's a mistake here. My
name's not on it. He saidhe had as a reason for that.
(04:10):
Within seconds, the wrestling coach grabbedmy shoulder and said, you're now on
the wrestling teams. Back then itwas you know, this was nineteen mid
sixties or so, you played threesports. You did everything, and so
then it went to football, wrestlingand baseball. When I got to college.
I went to Courtland State State Universityin New York and played freshman football,
(04:33):
and as one reporter later wrote it, I was a sore armed third
baseman. So switched from baseball tolacrosse because my roommate was at lacrosse goalie
and he needs somebody to shoot onhim. And that's how you got introduced
to lacrosse. So you didn't playedat all in high school. Not in
high school back then, thankfully therewere freshman teams. There were only twenty
(04:54):
of us, so you had toplay. You had to be on the
team. But then sophomore year madethe varsity and made our way through.
That is crazy. But I meanobviously you were athletics, so you had
that athletic ability. But where didthe I mean, all of a sudden,
You're like, you just kind ofblossomed in lacrosse and then it,
I mean sent you on a career. That is where you are now.
(05:14):
Yeah, it really is. AndI go back to an exact moment.
Back then, football wasn't like itis now, where you come in a
month or a month and a halfearly for varsity football. After that freshman
year, probably a few days early, maybe a week or early in school
started. There's a line of guyswaiting to go in to the meeting,
and I look up ahead. Isee the head coach up there, and
(05:35):
Roger Robinson. He had hands twicethe size of most normal human beings.
And I get to the front ofthe line and this big hand hits me
on the chest and says, you'redone. Wait a minute, what do
you mean I'm done. I've beenplaying football since I'm eight years old.
I want to coach football, andnow you're too small. You're out of
(05:56):
here. So Hans walked away,probably had a few tiers, but then
volunteered to coach at Courtland High Schooland then at Ethica High School. But
that's when the lacrosse really took off. My best friend and I decided,
if we didn't have football, wewere going to dive into this lacrosse thing
full of war. Luckily, bothof us made the varsity and sophomores,
(06:17):
and neither one of us was great. But I got us into this thing.
My goal in life was to bemy high school's head football coach.
I became that eventually, but thatled to the college coaching career. Isn't
that crazy? Yeah? When Iinterviewed Sonny Lubick, his whole goal was
just to be a high school teacherand a high school coach and never had
(06:39):
any thoughts about going any farther thanthat. So I find that really interesting
that that was the initial goal.So that was what you did do after
you were done at Courtland State?Which is now correct me if I'm wrong?
Is it now State University of NewYork Cortland right at Courtland? Okay,
so you do become a high schoolcoach after you get out of college?
Are you also teaching at the sametime? My dad was real he's
(07:00):
sick at that point, so Iwent home. My three older siblings were
out of the house. My youngersister was away at college, so I
got eight or nine months to spendwhat mom and dad and he eventually passed
away that next January. But Ihad a great time there, but I
was teaching in a little Catholic elementaryschool. Teaching fizzed for six thousand a
year, and then the coaching footballat north Shore High School for five hundred,
(07:27):
junior high basketball for four hundred,and then I was assistant lacrosse coach
at another high school for nothing.So dat Bill, Yeah, but it
was a good old days. Youlook back now and you say, wow,
that was pretty cool. And thenand then moved on to a couple
of different high schools, and eventuallyyou got that break to go back to
my high school and be the headlacrosse coach assistant football coach from my high
(07:49):
school coach, and then he retiredand I moved into the head coaching ranks
there. So how long did youdo high school coaching in all between all
the sports? Seven years? Okay, seven years? And then the break
come to go to college. Thebreak came my same best friend who he
and I got cut from varsity footballand sophomore year was the head lacrosse coach
(08:09):
at R Rochester and student technology calledme up and said, hey, I
just got it. Was August ofnineteen eighty one, and he said,
I just got the head soccer andhead lacrosse job at Ithaca College. It
pays me five thousand dollars more,so I'm moving on, do you want
this job at r T. Ihad just finished my first season of my
(08:30):
lifetime dream, which was to bethe head football coach, but by then
the lacrosse bug had hit. SoI got a chance to be a college
coach starting the next January. Andhe's moved on into his job. Moved
on. They took you as ahigh school coach. Yep. That was
one of my many times of goingto my wife Helen and saying, well,
we have three kids right now,and in four years, we're making
(08:52):
nineteen thousand a year and I've gotthis college job that I really want to
take. And she looked at mefunny in a funny way, and said,
how much of a pay cut?Three thousand? So we went from
nineteen to sixteen with oh my gosh, a seventy seven Volkswagen Beetle. And
so that was it, and youmoved to Rochester? Did you have to
(09:13):
move? We had to move?Okay, we were from Long Island.
Moved up to Rochester run January twentyeighth and in a snowstorm, and my
first day on the job was Februaryfirst. Wow. And then how different
was college from the high school ranks? Because there's recruiting, there's everything.
There's so much more than high school. It was different. What was fortunate
for me it was that high schoollacrosse coaching on Long Island there's a lot
(09:37):
of great coaches, very innovative,epicenter of high school lacrosse, you know,
Long Island and Baltimore and Upstate NewYork and so had been tested by
a lot of great coaches on LongIsland. Thankfully, when I went to
Division three college lacrosse and Upstate NewYork, there was a little less of
that. So funny funny was myfirst recruiting trip, which was a little
(10:01):
while later. I went back tomy hometown because there was still four high
schools there and so that was fun. And you know, the rat thing
was Division three. My friend Rayross Dan had started to build the program
and we did well. So wewent to the tournament in eighty three and
eighty four, and you were theDivision three coach of the Year in nineteen
(10:22):
eighty three, so I think hedid pretty darn well. We did.
Okay. From there, you getthe chance to go be an assistant coach
at Johns Hopkins. Correct. Howdid that come about? So a young
man named Larry Quinn lived around thecorner from me growing up. My parents
and his parents were best of friends. The volunteer fired apartment and all that
(10:43):
stuff, And Larry was an altthe boy in my wedding, and he
was my goalie at my high school. So Larry gets recruited by Johns Hopkins,
goes there, end up being aDivision one All American and just a
great, great player. So hecalls me in the spring of nineteen eighty
four and says, hey, theassistant coach is moving up to the head
(11:05):
coach, gig Bob Scott. Thead met you last year at that dinner
where you were named coach of theYear in Division three, and they want
to interview you. So I said, well, I'd be great. I
mean going to Johns Hopkins. That'sridiculous. Yeah, he said, the
only caveat is you got to bethe soccer coach too, Like, let's
give it a try, we'll say. So I ended up getting the job.
(11:26):
I don't know why, but thegood news of Hopkins soccer was that
they had only one winning year infifty years of soccer, so no pressure,
no pressure. So I got thereand I learned a lot Hopkins is
a unique place. They are Divisionone in lacrosse, but Division three in
all their other sports interest Division threesoccer. So I grabbed the kids,
(11:48):
all premed engineering, you know,majors, really smart kids, much smarter
than this phizzed major from Courtless State, and said to them, listen,
I've never been as honest with myplayers before, but I'm going to tell
you something. I know nothing aboutsoccer, so you're going to have to
help me. What I will dois recruit and get you in shape and
(12:11):
give great halftime speeches. So wedid that, and somehow we went seven
and nine the first year, andthen fourteen three and one the next two
years, and a d NCAA tournamentmy third year. So people tell me
that's why Princeton hired me later,which we'll get into. I'm sure right.
It's not always about the game plan. It's about the athletes you have
that everything else that you have becauseyou can work to the strengths of who
(12:33):
you have. You went into itnot even really knowing anything about soccer.
You know lacrosse, which is there'sgot to be some similarities in there.
Well there was when I did alllacrosse warm up drills on a soccer field
they learned they did. Yeah,but that says a lot about your coaching,
you know, ability in thinking outsidethe box. If it's not just
about my scheme. You didn't evenhave a scheme. I didn't have a
(12:54):
scheme, and you still one doingthe things that you knew how to do.
Yeah, it's all about out gettingyoung people to believe that they can
do more than what they think theycan do, getting them to buy in.
I've always been known as a disciplinaryand maybe tough coach to play for
all these years. But you know, if you love them and they know
(13:15):
that, and you get them tobuy into whatever the team culture is and
the team style of play, whichthose soccer guys taught me, you can
go a lot further than people believeyou can. If I've always said if
you set your sights at being fivehundred, you'll be five hundred. It
sets your sights at winning and goingtoo. NCAA tournament said, winning them,
(13:37):
you'll eventually get there. It isamazing the mindset and some players that
I've had and have talked about,how they'll walk into the first meeting and
they'll say the goal this year isto get to the playoffs they're used to.
They came from the Broncos, wherethe goal was to win a championship,
and just that whole mindset of like, okay, yeah, we're in
the playoffs, but we didn't dovery well as opposed to We're going for
a championship every year, no doubt. And it's people who think losing's okay,
(14:03):
will lose. It's real simple,but you got to be driven and
you've got to make people believe inyour vision. I do a can talk
to a bunch of different groups overthe years, and basically you just got
to make them believe in each otherand make them believe in a journey and
set your sights really high. Youbrought up the Princeton job. You go
(14:24):
there in nineteen eighty seven. Doyou think they really just hired you because
of your soccer ability? It's notreally. But the funny part about it
was in eighty seven at Johns Hopkinswe won the national championship and it was
at Rutgers, which is twenty minutesnorth of Princeton. So the ad Bob
Meislik, went to the games.And back then there was no limit on
the number of lacrosse coaches you couldhave, So there's like nine or ten
(14:48):
coaches. All the other ones wentto Hopkins. So I didn't know anything,
and of course in their minds anyway, But we won the championship in
eighty five, lost in eighty sixthe championship game, and then won at
eighty seven, and then this Princetonjob opens. Bob MYI slit. The
ad at Princeton calls me and askedme to come interview, and they interviewed
(15:09):
thirteen people. So I really didn'tthink I was going to get this job.
But anyway, he said, listen, I know you must know lacrosse.
I know you're probably a pretty goodo lacrosse, but I couldn't tell
which one you were down on thefield somebody. There was so many of
them, you know, when wewent down there. So I said,
well, if there was anybody gettingyelled at, I was that guy.
(15:31):
So but we had upset Maryland whowas undefeated. We had upset Cornell who
was undefeated and won the championship.But then going through the interview process,
they kept saying, how did youdo this thing at Hopkins Soccer? Because
at the time Princeton had had along history of really successful lacrosse, but
going back into the fifties, sixties, seventies, and then fell on some
(15:54):
hard times in the eighties and theprior three or four years they had only
one, two or three IVY Leaguegames, which was the big thing,
you know. And so that ideaof now taking another team, which I
had kind of built my reputation,of going from nowhere to somewhere. They
honed in on that Hopkins soccer thing. Yeah, the culture and the culture
(16:17):
and asked me, as you didabout that, and I guess I was
the guy, so you gave theright answer. I get the right answer
when we went two and thirteen thenext year. I'm not sure they thought
I was the right answer, butthat's okay. Well, it's funny.
I asked you before we started.I said, you know, you've never
been fired, Bill, And that'sa coach. You get hired in coaching
to be fired. It's just thatcomes with the territory. But you've never
(16:40):
been fired. Hell, I've sowe stayed one step ahead of the law.
I guess I always talk about mylast high school coaching experience because,
as I said, we went midyearto r and so my last high school
coaching experience. I was coaching thegirls basketball team. We went to this
Westberry High School was big time basketball, and I had all these nice girls
(17:02):
that would giggle all the time theyplayed basketball if but they were great kids.
Well, we get off the busand this Westberry High School is pressing
us from the moment we're off thebus until they put us back on the
bus. But we go up twoto nothing, and I'm ready to quit.
You know, we're good, We'redone. You know, they scored
the next seventy two points. Wescored the last point because the coach was
(17:25):
a nice guy, and so welost seventy two to four in my last
high school coaching experience. So Ithink at the time my r I t
a d lu SPIATI was kind oflooking at that I hired the right guy
here or not, But I probablywould have been fired from coaching girls basketball
at the time. But back thenand probably still now, if you can
(17:47):
find somebody who's willing to coach anyof these sports, whether it was wrestling,
I coached wrestling for two years.I coached into a track, I
coached, you know, my mainstayswere football and lacrosse. Then I got
thrown at soccer. So I've bouncedaround a little bit. Sometimes the warm
body is all they're looking for,right, exactly? All right, So
at Princeton you had got you havesix NCAA championships there, you turn that
(18:11):
program around. You said they fellon hard times, and I mean,
boy, they came back with thevengeance. What did you do to help
create that culture of winning there?The story goes that the first meeting that
I had, The real truth wasit was the first meeting I had the
next year because I had my firstgroup of recruits in. But the story
goes that in the first meeting,I said, we're going to win an
(18:33):
aational championship by the time you guysgraduate. Of course, guys are,
some are laughing, some are smackingeach other in the heads. You know,
we've won, you know. AndI said, if you don't believe
that, get out, leave theroom. And none of them left.
And so we just set our sightson that and just knew it would take
recruiting and knew it would take time, knew it would take effort, but
(18:56):
Princeton's a unique place. They reallywanted to be good in lacrosse, just
like PEG wanted to be really goodand lacrosse when I came out here,
and so when you have that support, you've got great kids. Obviously,
these kids at Princeton are well drivenin there what they want to do in
their lives with their careers, andthey were good athletes, and they they
kind of had, as I said, fallen on some hard time, so
(19:19):
anything would have been a good changefor them. And we just kind of
went to work and just got bettereach year and then finally did it.
That's amazing. You've got four children, two boys, two girls. I
want to get into what they're doingnow in life because I find that fascinating.
But both your boys, Trevor andBrendan played for you at Princeton,
as you mentioned earlier, and youbecame the first father son combinations to win
(19:41):
a national championship in lacrosse. Whatwas it like to coach your sons?
Number one? Thankfully for them,Trevor was a goalie and Brendan was an
attackment. So those were the twopositions I didn't work with. My associate
head coach, David Metzbauer worked withthem, and so I had another coach
asked me this past week, what'sit like because he was considering coaching his
(20:04):
sons, and the advice I've alwaysgiven people is don't do what everybody says
you should do, which is behotter on your son than everybody else.
Don't do that. Don't be easieron them, but stay as consistent as
you possibly can. Trevor was afirst team All American goalie, he was
a World team goalie. He wasa pro goalie. But Brendan was He
(20:26):
was like his dad. He wasfive nine, one hundred and forty five
pounds, understated, underappreciated. Butthe players knew that Brendan was my favorite.
So as we were getting towards thefourth day of the week of three
hour practices, they would send Brendandown to get some water, and as
he walked by me, he goes, Dad, don't you think that three
(20:48):
hours enough again? Today? Whateverhe said I would do, so it
was. It was amazing. Anddid you have to recruit him? Well?
I did because both of them wererecruited by North Carolina. Both were
recruited by JOHNS. Hopkins, andBrendan, who was better student than Trevor,
was recruited by Penn and they bothwent down to North Carolina for their
(21:10):
visits. Of course, on aSaturday night, a football game, all
sorts of stuff happening in the NorthCarolina. Both of them called me that
night and said, I don't knowthat I think this might be the place
for me, and I said,okay, just wait till tomorrow when you
meet with their coach. Well,thankfully, their meetings with the coach didn't
go real well, so they cameback. Brendon actually had we had the
(21:32):
coach from Penn, great coach namedMark van Arsdale. He's now the assistant
at Loyola, was a Virginia foryears. Mark was the head coach at
Penn and actually had the nerve tocome in my house and your couch,
yes on my couch for Penn.So I did have to recruit them,
but I think having been in thatculture, you know, those guys went
(21:52):
on trips with me all the time, and sometimes those were scary because the
players would bring him to the backof the bus and god knows what lessons
they were learning back then, butit was amazing. I still oftentimes people
will ask me, you've been blessedwith seven national championships as a head coach,
what's your favorite, And of courseIt's hard to say, except in
(22:15):
two thousand and one I won withboth of them on the field, and
so that's an easy one for absolutelyvery special. And the next year,
in two thousand and two, yougo into the National Across Hall of Fame.
That's over twenty years ago. You'realready in the Hall of Fame.
And everything that you did since that, it was there weren't very many people
deserving. I guess I'm not true, not true, not true. All
(22:37):
right. Let's fast forward Bill tothen two thousand and nine, and that
is when you make the trek outwest to become the head coach at DU.
And you mentioned earlier Peg she's agood saleswoman and she's the one that
got you here. But what really, I mean, that was a big
move and people are like, wow, that's a big time head coach coming
from the East to come here.DU's getting serious. Yeah, And I
(22:57):
think number one, my son Trevor, after he graduated from Princeton in two
thousand and one, actually moved toDenver. So he was actually the assistant
coach at DU for one year andthen started into other things that he was
doing. So he called me upand said, Dad, you got to
take this job. You need achange in life. Think about how you
could help Western lacrosse. And sohe kind of got me going, and
(23:21):
I said, listen, I don'tneed to move him. I could put
myself on automatic pilot. I thinkI'll survive being at Princeton. But it
had been twenty two years. Andyou know, the one thing my wife
Helen, and I had always said, is because we'd been out here to
ski on some vacations, is thatif we're ever going to move or retire,
we'd like to look at Denver.So one thing led to another,
(23:41):
and you mentioned Peg and she calledme up under the guise of listen,
we're down to three candidates. Canyou come out here. We know your
son's out here. Will pay foryou to have come for the weekend,
just to help us sort through thesethree guys. Oh, you were going
to be a committee member. It'sgoing to be a committee member. Or
she's so smart. Yeah, wellI was born at night, but last
(24:02):
night, so I knew I knewsomething was and I came out here,
and of course you've been over theremany times. You know. She takes
me out on that patio and it'sanother beautiful Denver day like today, and
she starts talking to me and saying, you know, look at this place.
You know all it needs is you, and you know all this great
(24:22):
stuff. And then the next morning, Pam Wedding was PEG's assistant, and
I was supposed to meet with Pegagain at like ten o'clock. Pam calls
me at six thirty in the morning. It says, you got a half
hour. I'm going to pick youup. We gotta go somewhere else,
okay, so we go somewhere else. Was the old Bule mansion. I
walk in this room and Pat Bolandis sitting here. Forty five trustees are
(24:48):
sitting around this table at seven inthe morning on a Sunday. It ended
up being eight o'clock. And itmight have been a Saturday, Okay,
still it's away it was it was, it was, yeah, and so
I walk in. I don't knowwho these people are. PEG's just sitting
there with her cheshire cat's smile,she said, sitting next to mister Bowlin.
So I sitting next to Pat,and he loved du and you know,
(25:10):
we started talking football, and onething led to another. So now
I realized it took me a whileto realize that this was an impromptu trustees
meeting to try and talk me intocoming to DU. Wow, And it
was really cool. The funny partwas after the meeting, we walk out
this a nice little reception area andeach one of them comes up to me
(25:30):
and I see him looking at apiece of paper. Peg had given him
each a lacrosse question because ninety percentof them we didn't know lacrosse from basketball.
And so one of them comes outto me. You know this great
big time business guy says, so, coach, what's the percentage we need
of facing off wins for us towin a few more games? This guy
(25:52):
knew a face off from nothing,right, So now I'm getting this whole
thing. Go back to school,and Peg offers me the job and the
great opportunity to come to DU forthe thirty thousand dollars pay cut, which,
okay, I'm glad you brought thatup because she's told me that beforehand.
So you take a pay cut.So again you're going to Helen say
yea, let's make a move,and instead of now three thousand dollars,
(26:15):
it's thirty thousand dollars. How'd youget that one past her? She's been
the best, you know, obviously, Yeah, she just said, well,
you know, it's another adventure nowobviously at this time, now our
kids are grown up. Yes,so it's glad to come to Denver and
start a new life. Trevor wasout here, but he lived up in
(26:36):
Boulder. Brendan works for Nike nowin Oregon. He's in Boulder. Brian,
my youngest daughter is the head woman'scoach now at Kent State. She
was another college there, and myoldest daughter, Courtney, who's a basketball
coach, refused to move from NewJersey. So anyway we got you know,
we decided let's give it a shotas a new adventure. My batteries
(26:56):
were recharged. I thought we couldhelp the program, and Trevor promised he'd
coach with me for five years.So it was just kind of a selfish
decision because I felt like I neededone more big goat, see if I
could still do it, one moreadventure, and you did. You got
another national championship in twenty fifteen,and then you end up, you know,
(27:18):
just looking at the list of accoladesof your players, I mean,
you've got All Americans Scholar, AllAmericans, Players of the Year, all
conference. When you look at theathletes that have come through these programs,
whether it was DU or Princeton orthe others, how proud are you of
what you've done as far as kindof helping a lot of these young men
(27:38):
become men and successful men. Toput it in a short statement, I'd
say, if they believed in allof us, then we could get them
to be better individually. Every oneof those guys that you mentioned here at
DU, you could go through thatlitany of guys, and certainly at Princeton.
And yes, they were talented kids, but there were more talented teams
(28:02):
than ours. From how many greatplayers you have standpoint, But it was
just buying into the fact that wewere going to make it probably a little
more challenging for you. We were. When Peg offered me the job,
she said, what are you goingto need to win a national championship?
And I said, well, I'mgoing to need your support. I'm going
to need an unlimited travel budget becausewe're going to have to go east a
(28:23):
lot because they're not going to comeout here, and I just need your
support. And who I can hireour facility was great Peter Barton State.
Yeah, so support and admission support, scholarship wise and all that, and
all that was check check check checkcheck. So I had her support,
which is really all you need.And then d use an amazing school.
(28:47):
I go back to all those placesI've been at. You can be a
doctor, you can be a lawyer, you can be an engineer, you
can be in a great business school. And we've also got schools like communications
and sociology and our hotel restaurant hospitalityschool. We can fit anybody into.
Unless they want to be a dumbphized teacher and lacrosse coach, don't.
(29:07):
We don't have that. But it'ssuch an amazing place, and it's an
inspiring place. All the Learfield Cups, which is a championship of athletic departments,
you know, winning those every year. It's just a place that you
want to continue to compete and dobetter. But watching young men and women
walk out of that place with degreesthat are meaningful, watching them get jobs,
(29:32):
yeah, it's it's wonderful that they'reWestberg is a first team All American
and wins US a national championship,and he'll always be remembered for that.
But I think more for the thoseguys who come back that maybe weren't Those
players come back now they've got families, or now they just write that letter
that says, you know, Ididn't like your decisions back then, but
(29:52):
now I get it. Those arethe ones of the most rewarding. Do
you hear a lot from your formerplayers? You do. And I've always
talked about these three kind of guys, the ones that come with it,
whatever it is. I can takeno credit for those guys. They're talented,
they're smart, they have great families, and they just come in and
roll through it. And then you'vegot the guys who kind of get it
while they're there, and you takegreat pride in that because maybe they were
(30:17):
a little lazy, or maybe theyweren't quite into school, or maybe they
had learning disability challenges, whatever itwas, and they grow up. But
the ones, interestingly enough, thatthe most meaningful are the ones who you
kind of even when they get through, you kind of feel like I failed
with that guy. I didn't getto him. I had one this winter
(30:37):
come in. He quit our teamin nineteen ninety six and came back and
he said, everything you told mewas right. Regret that decision to this
day now I got a four yearold daughter, I just lost my job,
and the only thing that's keeping meup is the lessons you taught me.
WHOA, you know you kind ofthose are the ones that you kind
(31:02):
of go all right, maybe theywere listening, you know, and because
the other ones they kind of movedthrough. But so proud of all the
young men that put up with me. I got a note yesterday from a
guy who's on my nineteen seventy fiveGreat Neck South High School team, just
thanking me. Now, WHOA,this guy's are almost my age. I
(31:23):
was only twenty three, twenty twoat the time, which is barely older
than that. Yeah, it's Iwas talking to Matt Neufeld yesterday, our
volunteer coach, and just telling themabout the ups and downs. If you're
going to be in this profession,you better be in it all full bore,
because it's not for the faint ofheart, your wife, your support
(31:45):
people, whoever it might be.They've got to be all in because it's
a tough lifestyle. On the otherhand, the rewards, and I'm sure
the other coaches have told you this. You know, games that you win
it's just relief. Games that youlose. As I always say, losing
games is tougher than dying because yougot to live with it, right,
they're agonizing, and so to havea partner or support person or a husband
(32:09):
or a wife that is with youon that journey makes makes it so much
easier. And then to have theseyoung men grow up and tell the story,
it's really fulfilling and makes you blessedthat you know you're in a profession
that you had some kind of inputon. You have such an extended family
with all of those players. Yeah, so going from that extended family to
(32:32):
your own family and your kids.Three of the four of them are coaching.
As you mentioned, well, allfour of them have dabbled in its.
Even my son Brendan, who worksthe Nike out West. He's in
Oregon. He's Trevor was the oldest, then Brendan, then Courtney and then
Brion. Four kids in five years. That was that was an interesting attack,
(32:54):
especially in Rochester, New York.But Brendon is out Oregon with Nike.
He's now learning about coaching because he'sgot eleven year old daughter who plays
soccer and an eight year old sonwho plays lacrosse, and he calls me
every day now bemoaning coaching youth sportsand the parents are crazy, and I
(33:14):
said, both stop at the coachingpart and you'll be all You'll be all
set. And then, as Imentioned before, Trevor promised me five years
and gave us five years at DUand he was just so important in talking
me into hiring Matt Brown when Ifirst came out here. And then Brion
has kind of always been a lacrossecoach, a women's lacrosse coach, and
(33:36):
she got the head coaching job atKent State five years ago and was just
named Conference Coach of the Year thisyear. So that's awesome. A little
dad pride coming out a little,especially my daughters here. And yeah,
Courtney, she was always a basketballcoach, and she was the one that
I spent so much time with fromthe fifth grade on until she went to
college. Every night, zero oreighty degrees, I had to rebound one
(34:01):
hundred shots for her out in thefront things. So Courtney's the one who
invented that three point addage of ifyou hot, keep shooting, and if
you're not hot, keep shooting anywayyou get hot. She was last year
to New Jersey State Coach of theYear in basketball. So I take no
credit for those their successes because Iwas always at of a house mentoring other
(34:23):
people's kids. Right, But mywife Helen was the one who brought them
all up and did a really goodjob. Well, but obviously you had
some influence. And you just saidyou were out there rebounding basketballs. I
mean were You were there a lot, and they obviously thought enough of your
profession to get into it, right, That's amazing. Or maybe they're like
their dad, too dumb to doanything else. So I don't think that's
(34:45):
true either. All Right, So, Bill, now that you are officially
retired, what's next. It's agreat question. Thankfully, du has agreed
to pay me through the end ofJune. So even though Matt Brown cleaned
his office out yesterday, I saidto him, you're not moving in here
quite yet, pal, But he'sgot to coach the Canadian national team next
(35:06):
month in the World Championship. SoI'm still helping around the office a little
bit. But I've been fortunate tohave asked by ESPN to do a couple
of gigs this weekend. I'm doingthe I'm doing the in studio part of
the final four, So I'll beon the air at halftime of the first
game, in between games for agood amount of time, and then halftime
of the second game, and thenthey're flying me down to Philly for the
(35:30):
championship game. That's great. Yeah, And then I'm going to do the
color for two of the PLLO weekends, so I'll be behind the mic,
which will be fun because now Ican start really telling those referees what I
think about it and telling Matt Brownhow all his ideas weren't unique. But
I'm excited about it, and it'sfine. We're just gonna take the summer
(35:51):
and take the year a little bit, see what's out there. And I'm
not a good golfer and I'm nota good lay around guy, so you
need to be doing something, don'tsomething? Yeah? Do you think you'll
stay here in Denver? We're goingto for a while. Okay. Yeah.
But we said to Helen, whenI do retire, you can pick
the spot. She's always been aEast Coach beach person. And so the
(36:12):
week after I announced our retirement,um, she was on Zillo. Well
we're always on ze, right,But I got home one night and Helen
said, I made a decision.I said, Okay, where are we
going? She goes right here.I love it here. So it's pretty
cool to hear that. Yeah,it'll give us some more times. When
(36:32):
you got four kids plastered all overthe country. Denver is a good It's
the perfect watching spot. Absolutely.Yeah, we'll see. I've had some
gestures from the PLLL, the progroup, so we'll see how that works
out. Careful if you're asked tobe a consultant, because they're just trying
to have you exactly all right,But last question for you. You mentioned
(36:54):
that you talk to people and yougive talks and whatnot, and you you
can do great halftime speeches. Whatdo you tell people as you look back
through your years, never having beenfired, but definitely having those coaching ups
and downs. When there are setbacksin life or when something happens, what's
your advice to people? Oh,there's Helen, she's changed her mind.
(37:17):
Okay, anyway, what would beyour advice to people and they have those
setbacks. The first one I gotasked to do. I was in Princeton.
Right across Route one from Princeton Universityis to headquarters for Squib Pharmaceuticals.
I get this call one day fromthe CEO of Squib Pharmaceuticals. I'm a
lacrosse coach, right teacher, Yeah, he says, coach, I need
(37:40):
your help. I said, I'mnot changing jobs. He goes, no,
no, no, I need youto come in. We're having some
trouble with our chemists, are havingtrouble with the administration, who's having trouble
with the marketers, who's having troublewith the salespeople, who's having trouble with
drugs. They couldn't communicate to eachother exactly. They're driving me crazy.
(38:01):
Can you come in and talk tothem? So, I said, I
will. I don't know if it'llhelp any I developed this thing really quickly,
which I hate when I go tothese talks and I'm one of the
persons being talked to. But Idid this quick exercise. I said,
I promise you're not gonna have totell your life story here, but it'll
be quick. Put your heads downand raise your hand if you think the
(38:23):
person next to you trust you.Ninety percent of them raise their hand in
every one of these meetings. AndI'll tell you in the second all these
different groups I've talked to then Isaid, okay, one more question.
Put your hand up if you trustthe person next to you. So the
first one was do you think theytrust you? Second one, so I
(38:44):
turned and looked at the CEO.I said, there's your problem. So
they came up and we talked aboutexactly what you just said. It's building
a team. It's it's trust,it's communication, it's being honest, it's
knowing your role. It's understanding howand that other person is to your success.
You mentioned before my Hall of Famething in two thousand and two,
(39:06):
the title of my speech was somethingto the effect of understand the role that
other people had to play in orderfor you to a change your success.
And so he says, it wasgreat, whatever, and we moved on.
And in the meantime, I've spokento Trevor, and I spoke to
a bunch of orthopedic fellows up inBoulder. I've spoken to the biggest roofing
(39:28):
company in Southwest United States. Onetime, I had had a meeting out
here with four hundred and fifty grocerystore managers that were having their convention out
here. So I got all theseeclectic groups. Obviously a bunch of coaching
groups. Yeah, but the thing, you know, like the grocery store
people. I did a similar thing. I said, first of all,
they were at dinner, so they'veall had a couple of beers or whatever.
(39:51):
I said, how many of youhave ever gotten on the microphone and
said clean up an aisle two?We've all heard that when we've been in
three stores. Oh they're all yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you
know how cool is that? Isaid, okay, now, how many
of you have gotten on the microphoneand said thank you to John the custodian
for cleaning up an aisle two?Four hundred and fifty heads go down,
(40:15):
and so things like that, nomatter what the walk of life is.
The orthopedic guys, how many ofyou have thanked the orderlies got to clean
up that mess in that operating room, you know, the roofers. How
many of you have thanked the guywho's carrying those hundred pound things up the
ladder. And so we start withthat, and two coaches certainly making a
(40:35):
big thing out of the scout teamputting your arm around that kid you know
they'll never play, and given himthe accolade to understand what his input is
doing for the team. Communication understandingthat love doesn't always mean happiness. You
know, we always talk about everyonce in a while on the La cross
field, two guys might get alittle scuffy with each other, and then
(41:00):
what Matt Brown and I do afterthat? And it can be you know,
you got helmets and gloves on,you're not going to kill each other.
But we make them hug each otherat the end, and now they
have to go have dinner together.Oh oh wow, I like that.
Yeah, And so look, thegreat players are great players. They score
the goals, they get the honors. Everybody looks at them and claps for
them. What are those other twentypeople doing? Calling upon them not only
(41:23):
makes them feel better and we'll workharder for you, but it gives the
other guys a bigger perspective to Wow, this is a team. And no
matter what the walk of life is, oh, it's universal, whatever industry
it is, we talk about there'ssomething greater than you out there. Whenever
you get too high on your horse, there's someone better than you, something
(41:43):
better than you. And we dothis for more reasons than just the scoreboard.
So we just try to filter allthat same stuff into these talks that
we talk to our players about everyday. Well, congratulations again on such
an amazing career. I'm excited tosee what you do in the future and
watch you on ESPN or as wecall it, Laker TV and exactly that's
(42:06):
fun, Bill, and enjoy yourtime with Helen and your kids, and
you know it's a great next adventurefor you. Oh. Thanks, Susie.
You know I'm always following you andlove what you do, so I
appreciate that. And I love thatyou're on Twitter. You are way ahead
of you everybody else your age.I'll never be on TikTok. I can
promise you that's okay. Yeah,no, I'm not either, all right.
Hey, Bill, thank you somuch. I appreciate it. Thanks
Susie. Great coaching advice from aphenomenal coach and even better person. Thanks
(42:30):
Bill Tierney. New episodes of Cut, Traded, Fired, Retired come out
every Tuesday on nearly every podcast platform. Get social with the podcast on Twitter
and Instagram at ctf our podcast andcheck out the website ctfur podcast dot com.
I'm your host, Susie Wargin.Thank you for listening, and until
next time, please be careful,be safe, and be kind, take care
I walk in this room and PatBoland is sitting here. Forty five trustees
are sitting around this table. NowI don't know who these people are.
Pegs are sitting there with earth cheshireCat's smile, she said, sitting next
to mister Bolan. So I sittingnext to Pat, and he loved Du.
And you know, we started talkingfootball and one thing led to another.
(00:22):
So now I realize it took mea while to realize that this was
an impromptu trustees meeting to try andtalk me into coming too. DU Welcome
to Cut, Traded, Fired,Retired a weekly podcast featuring conversations with professional
athletes and coaches in a variety ofsports. The reason I started this podcast
and share these conversations is because I'mhoping you hear a strategy, some motivation,
(00:44):
or maybe even a saying that youcan apply to your own life.
And I also hope you enjoy simplylistening to some great stories. I'm your
host, Susie Wargen. This week'sepisode is with a retired coach from the
summer of twenty twenty three, whenthe University of Denver hired Bill Tierney from
Princeton to take over their men's lacrosseprogram in two thousand and nine. It
caught the attention of many. Whywould a successful coach who had been at
(01:06):
Princeton for two decades leave the EastCoast, a hotbed for lacrosse, and
come west to Denver. The answerwas fairly simple. Bill was ready for
a new adventure. His adventure broughthim another national championship, adding to his
previous six, and he became thefirst D one lacrosse coach to win a
title west of the Mississippi. Hisstories as an athlete and coach or fabulous,
and he also offers some great adviceabout coaching your own kids, something
(01:30):
he did with both of his sonswhile he was at Princeton. And to
think his early dream in life wassimply to be the head football coach of
his high school. He went waybeyond ladies and gentlemen. Bill Tierney Trading
Fired retired podcast with Susie Wargin BillTierney, How are you. I'm good.
(01:51):
Thanks, It's so good to seeyou. I haven't seen you in
a long time since I was atnine News. I'd go out and see
all the time at lacrosse practice,and I know that's when we were doing
a little better too, so Imight have something to do with it.
Well there was that. Yeah,First of all, congratulations on a phenomenal
career. You are retired now andofficially done with your duties at DU,
and we're going to go through it. But the years that you have put
(02:15):
into that sport and the athletes andthe young men you've affected, it's pretty
incredible. I was so blessed tobe able to come here to Denver and
you know, just take this programand go with it. You know,
when I took the job, PegBradley Doppus, who hired me, wanted
me to a help the sport growout west and be get our program going.
(02:35):
And I've always said when I leavejobs, I want to leave them
better than I found them. SoI think you definitely definitely did that at
DU. Yeah. All right,Well, so Bill, let's kind of
go back to your beginnings where youwere born, where you grew up.
You're an East Coast guy, EastCoast guy, you know, Long Island,
New York. Baby Boomer grew upin a town called Levittown, New
York, which was really the firstplanned community in our country. It was
(03:00):
for all the gis coming back fromWorld War Two who had lived grown up
in New York City or Brooklyn,and so they wanted to live in a
suburb. So they cleared this land, built seventeen thousand homes. In three
years, seventy thousand people moved inand it was Highland's Ranch before it was
Highlands Ranch exactly. That's exactly whatit was. And every area had had
(03:23):
a pool, and five high schoolsand twelve elementary schools. So the best
part it was such a great placeto grow up. My block had twenty
houses and forty two kids within tenyears of each. How fun. It
was great. It was a greatplace to grow up and go to school
and have older siblings and younger siblingsand friends. And it was really the
(03:46):
introduction of sports for me because everyday you were out doing something different.
What sports did you love growing up? Baseball? Football, basketball, like
everywhere else. And stuck with thatpretty much until finth grade basketball tryouts.
Looking at the cut list and toldthe coach there's a mistake here. My
name's not on it. He saidhe had as a reason for that.
(04:10):
Within seconds, the wrestling coach grabbedmy shoulder and said, you're now on
the wrestling teams. Back then itwas you know, this was nineteen mid
sixties or so, you played threesports. You did everything, and so
then it went to football, wrestlingand baseball. When I got to college.
I went to Courtland State State Universityin New York and played freshman football,
(04:33):
and as one reporter later wrote it, I was a sore armed third
baseman. So switched from baseball tolacrosse because my roommate was at lacrosse goalie
and he needs somebody to shoot onhim. And that's how you got introduced
to lacrosse. So you didn't playedat all in high school. Not in
high school back then, thankfully therewere freshman teams. There were only twenty
(04:54):
of us, so you had toplay. You had to be on the
team. But then sophomore year madethe varsity and made our way through.
That is crazy. But I meanobviously you were athletics, so you had
that athletic ability. But where didthe I mean, all of a sudden,
You're like, you just kind ofblossomed in lacrosse and then it,
I mean sent you on a career. That is where you are now.
(05:14):
Yeah, it really is. AndI go back to an exact moment.
Back then, football wasn't like itis now, where you come in a
month or a month and a halfearly for varsity football. After that freshman
year, probably a few days early, maybe a week or early in school
started. There's a line of guyswaiting to go in to the meeting,
and I look up ahead. Isee the head coach up there, and
(05:35):
Roger Robinson. He had hands twicethe size of most normal human beings.
And I get to the front ofthe line and this big hand hits me
on the chest and says, you'redone. Wait a minute, what do
you mean I'm done. I've beenplaying football since I'm eight years old.
I want to coach football, andnow you're too small. You're out of
(05:56):
here. So Hans walked away,probably had a few tiers, but then
volunteered to coach at Courtland High Schooland then at Ethica High School. But
that's when the lacrosse really took off. My best friend and I decided,
if we didn't have football, wewere going to dive into this lacrosse thing
full of war. Luckily, bothof us made the varsity and sophomores,
(06:17):
and neither one of us was great. But I got us into this thing.
My goal in life was to bemy high school's head football coach.
I became that eventually, but thatled to the college coaching career. Isn't
that crazy? Yeah? When Iinterviewed Sonny Lubick, his whole goal was
just to be a high school teacherand a high school coach and never had
(06:39):
any thoughts about going any farther thanthat. So I find that really interesting
that that was the initial goal.So that was what you did do after
you were done at Courtland State?Which is now correct me if I'm wrong?
Is it now State University of NewYork Cortland right at Courtland? Okay,
so you do become a high schoolcoach after you get out of college?
Are you also teaching at the sametime? My dad was real he's
(07:00):
sick at that point, so Iwent home. My three older siblings were
out of the house. My youngersister was away at college, so I
got eight or nine months to spendwhat mom and dad and he eventually passed
away that next January. But Ihad a great time there, but I
was teaching in a little Catholic elementaryschool. Teaching fizzed for six thousand a
year, and then the coaching footballat north Shore High School for five hundred,
(07:27):
junior high basketball for four hundred,and then I was assistant lacrosse coach
at another high school for nothing.So dat Bill, Yeah, but it
was a good old days. Youlook back now and you say, wow,
that was pretty cool. And thenand then moved on to a couple
of different high schools, and eventuallyyou got that break to go back to
my high school and be the headlacrosse coach assistant football coach from my high
(07:49):
school coach, and then he retiredand I moved into the head coaching ranks
there. So how long did youdo high school coaching in all between all
the sports? Seven years? Okay, seven years? And then the break
come to go to college. Thebreak came my same best friend who he
and I got cut from varsity footballand sophomore year was the head lacrosse coach
(08:09):
at R Rochester and student technology calledme up and said, hey, I
just got it. Was August ofnineteen eighty one, and he said,
I just got the head soccer andhead lacrosse job at Ithaca College. It
pays me five thousand dollars more,so I'm moving on, do you want
this job at r T. Ihad just finished my first season of my
(08:30):
lifetime dream, which was to bethe head football coach, but by then
the lacrosse bug had hit. SoI got a chance to be a college
coach starting the next January. Andhe's moved on into his job. Moved
on. They took you as ahigh school coach. Yep. That was
one of my many times of goingto my wife Helen and saying, well,
we have three kids right now,and in four years, we're making
(08:52):
nineteen thousand a year and I've gotthis college job that I really want to
take. And she looked at mefunny in a funny way, and said,
how much of a pay cut?Three thousand? So we went from
nineteen to sixteen with oh my gosh, a seventy seven Volkswagen Beetle. And
so that was it, and youmoved to Rochester? Did you have to
(09:13):
move? We had to move?Okay, we were from Long Island.
Moved up to Rochester run January twentyeighth and in a snowstorm, and my
first day on the job was Februaryfirst. Wow. And then how different
was college from the high school ranks? Because there's recruiting, there's everything.
There's so much more than high school. It was different. What was fortunate
for me it was that high schoollacrosse coaching on Long Island there's a lot
(09:37):
of great coaches, very innovative,epicenter of high school lacrosse, you know,
Long Island and Baltimore and Upstate NewYork and so had been tested by
a lot of great coaches on LongIsland. Thankfully, when I went to
Division three college lacrosse and Upstate NewYork, there was a little less of
that. So funny funny was myfirst recruiting trip, which was a little
(10:01):
while later. I went back tomy hometown because there was still four high
schools there and so that was fun. And you know, the rat thing
was Division three. My friend Rayross Dan had started to build the program
and we did well. So wewent to the tournament in eighty three and
eighty four, and you were theDivision three coach of the Year in nineteen
(10:22):
eighty three, so I think hedid pretty darn well. We did.
Okay. From there, you getthe chance to go be an assistant coach
at Johns Hopkins. Correct. Howdid that come about? So a young
man named Larry Quinn lived around thecorner from me growing up. My parents
and his parents were best of friends. The volunteer fired apartment and all that
(10:43):
stuff, And Larry was an altthe boy in my wedding, and he
was my goalie at my high school. So Larry gets recruited by Johns Hopkins,
goes there, end up being aDivision one All American and just a
great, great player. So hecalls me in the spring of nineteen eighty
four and says, hey, theassistant coach is moving up to the head
(11:05):
coach, gig Bob Scott. Thead met you last year at that dinner
where you were named coach of theYear in Division three, and they want
to interview you. So I said, well, I'd be great. I
mean going to Johns Hopkins. That'sridiculous. Yeah, he said, the
only caveat is you got to bethe soccer coach too, Like, let's
give it a try, we'll say. So I ended up getting the job.
(11:26):
I don't know why, but thegood news of Hopkins soccer was that
they had only one winning year infifty years of soccer, so no pressure,
no pressure. So I got thereand I learned a lot Hopkins is
a unique place. They are Divisionone in lacrosse, but Division three in
all their other sports interest Division threesoccer. So I grabbed the kids,
(11:48):
all premed engineering, you know,majors, really smart kids, much smarter
than this phizzed major from Courtless State, and said to them, listen,
I've never been as honest with myplayers before, but I'm going to tell
you something. I know nothing aboutsoccer, so you're going to have to
help me. What I will dois recruit and get you in shape and
(12:11):
give great halftime speeches. So wedid that, and somehow we went seven
and nine the first year, andthen fourteen three and one the next two
years, and a d NCAA tournamentmy third year. So people tell me
that's why Princeton hired me later,which we'll get into. I'm sure right.
It's not always about the game plan. It's about the athletes you have
that everything else that you have becauseyou can work to the strengths of who
(12:33):
you have. You went into itnot even really knowing anything about soccer.
You know lacrosse, which is there'sgot to be some similarities in there.
Well there was when I did alllacrosse warm up drills on a soccer field
they learned they did. Yeah,but that says a lot about your coaching,
you know, ability in thinking outsidethe box. If it's not just
about my scheme. You didn't evenhave a scheme. I didn't have a
(12:54):
scheme, and you still one doingthe things that you knew how to do.
Yeah, it's all about out gettingyoung people to believe that they can
do more than what they think theycan do, getting them to buy in.
I've always been known as a disciplinaryand maybe tough coach to play for
all these years. But you know, if you love them and they know
(13:15):
that, and you get them tobuy into whatever the team culture is and
the team style of play, whichthose soccer guys taught me, you can
go a lot further than people believeyou can. If I've always said if
you set your sights at being fivehundred, you'll be five hundred. It
sets your sights at winning and goingtoo. NCAA tournament said, winning them,
(13:37):
you'll eventually get there. It isamazing the mindset and some players that
I've had and have talked about,how they'll walk into the first meeting and
they'll say the goal this year isto get to the playoffs they're used to.
They came from the Broncos, wherethe goal was to win a championship,
and just that whole mindset of like, okay, yeah, we're in
the playoffs, but we didn't dovery well as opposed to We're going for
a championship every year, no doubt. And it's people who think losing's okay,
(14:03):
will lose. It's real simple,but you got to be driven and
you've got to make people believe inyour vision. I do a can talk
to a bunch of different groups overthe years, and basically you just got
to make them believe in each otherand make them believe in a journey and
set your sights really high. Youbrought up the Princeton job. You go
(14:24):
there in nineteen eighty seven. Doyou think they really just hired you because
of your soccer ability? It's notreally. But the funny part about it
was in eighty seven at Johns Hopkinswe won the national championship and it was
at Rutgers, which is twenty minutesnorth of Princeton. So the ad Bob
Meislik, went to the games.And back then there was no limit on
the number of lacrosse coaches you couldhave, So there's like nine or ten
(14:48):
coaches. All the other ones wentto Hopkins. So I didn't know anything,
and of course in their minds anyway, But we won the championship in
eighty five, lost in eighty sixthe championship game, and then won at
eighty seven, and then this Princetonjob opens. Bob MYI slit. The
ad at Princeton calls me and askedme to come interview, and they interviewed
(15:09):
thirteen people. So I really didn'tthink I was going to get this job.
But anyway, he said, listen, I know you must know lacrosse.
I know you're probably a pretty goodo lacrosse, but I couldn't tell
which one you were down on thefield somebody. There was so many of
them, you know, when wewent down there. So I said,
well, if there was anybody gettingyelled at, I was that guy.
(15:31):
So but we had upset Maryland whowas undefeated. We had upset Cornell who
was undefeated and won the championship.But then going through the interview process,
they kept saying, how did youdo this thing at Hopkins Soccer? Because
at the time Princeton had had along history of really successful lacrosse, but
going back into the fifties, sixties, seventies, and then fell on some
(15:54):
hard times in the eighties and theprior three or four years they had only
one, two or three IVY Leaguegames, which was the big thing,
you know. And so that ideaof now taking another team, which I
had kind of built my reputation,of going from nowhere to somewhere. They
honed in on that Hopkins soccer thing. Yeah, the culture and the culture
(16:17):
and asked me, as you didabout that, and I guess I was
the guy, so you gave theright answer. I get the right answer
when we went two and thirteen thenext year. I'm not sure they thought
I was the right answer, butthat's okay. Well, it's funny.
I asked you before we started.I said, you know, you've never
been fired, Bill, And that'sa coach. You get hired in coaching
to be fired. It's just thatcomes with the territory. But you've never
(16:40):
been fired. Hell, I've sowe stayed one step ahead of the law.
I guess I always talk about mylast high school coaching experience because,
as I said, we went midyearto r and so my last high school
coaching experience. I was coaching thegirls basketball team. We went to this
Westberry High School was big time basketball, and I had all these nice girls
(17:02):
that would giggle all the time theyplayed basketball if but they were great kids.
Well, we get off the busand this Westberry High School is pressing
us from the moment we're off thebus until they put us back on the
bus. But we go up twoto nothing, and I'm ready to quit.
You know, we're good, We'redone. You know, they scored
the next seventy two points. Wescored the last point because the coach was
(17:25):
a nice guy, and so welost seventy two to four in my last
high school coaching experience. So Ithink at the time my r I t
a d lu SPIATI was kind oflooking at that I hired the right guy
here or not, But I probablywould have been fired from coaching girls basketball
at the time. But back thenand probably still now, if you can
(17:47):
find somebody who's willing to coach anyof these sports, whether it was wrestling,
I coached wrestling for two years.I coached into a track, I
coached, you know, my mainstayswere football and lacrosse. Then I got
thrown at soccer. So I've bouncedaround a little bit. Sometimes the warm
body is all they're looking for,right, exactly? All right, So
at Princeton you had got you havesix NCAA championships there, you turn that
(18:11):
program around. You said they fellon hard times, and I mean,
boy, they came back with thevengeance. What did you do to help
create that culture of winning there?The story goes that the first meeting that
I had, The real truth wasit was the first meeting I had the
next year because I had my firstgroup of recruits in. But the story
goes that in the first meeting,I said, we're going to win an
(18:33):
aational championship by the time you guysgraduate. Of course, guys are,
some are laughing, some are smackingeach other in the heads. You know,
we've won, you know. AndI said, if you don't believe
that, get out, leave theroom. And none of them left.
And so we just set our sightson that and just knew it would take
recruiting and knew it would take time, knew it would take effort, but
(18:56):
Princeton's a unique place. They reallywanted to be good in lacrosse, just
like PEG wanted to be really goodand lacrosse when I came out here,
and so when you have that support, you've got great kids. Obviously,
these kids at Princeton are well drivenin there what they want to do in
their lives with their careers, andthey were good athletes, and they they
kind of had, as I said, fallen on some hard time, so
(19:19):
anything would have been a good changefor them. And we just kind of
went to work and just got bettereach year and then finally did it.
That's amazing. You've got four children, two boys, two girls. I
want to get into what they're doingnow in life because I find that fascinating.
But both your boys, Trevor andBrendan played for you at Princeton,
as you mentioned earlier, and youbecame the first father son combinations to win
(19:41):
a national championship in lacrosse. Whatwas it like to coach your sons?
Number one? Thankfully for them,Trevor was a goalie and Brendan was an
attackment. So those were the twopositions I didn't work with. My associate
head coach, David Metzbauer worked withthem, and so I had another coach
asked me this past week, what'sit like because he was considering coaching his
(20:04):
sons, and the advice I've alwaysgiven people is don't do what everybody says
you should do, which is behotter on your son than everybody else.
Don't do that. Don't be easieron them, but stay as consistent as
you possibly can. Trevor was afirst team All American goalie, he was
a World team goalie. He wasa pro goalie. But Brendan was He
(20:26):
was like his dad. He wasfive nine, one hundred and forty five
pounds, understated, underappreciated. Butthe players knew that Brendan was my favorite.
So as we were getting towards thefourth day of the week of three
hour practices, they would send Brendandown to get some water, and as
he walked by me, he goes, Dad, don't you think that three
(20:48):
hours enough again? Today? Whateverhe said I would do, so it
was. It was amazing. Anddid you have to recruit him? Well?
I did because both of them wererecruited by North Carolina. Both were
recruited by JOHNS. Hopkins, andBrendan, who was better student than Trevor,
was recruited by Penn and they bothwent down to North Carolina for their
(21:10):
visits. Of course, on aSaturday night, a football game, all
sorts of stuff happening in the NorthCarolina. Both of them called me that
night and said, I don't knowthat I think this might be the place
for me, and I said,okay, just wait till tomorrow when you
meet with their coach. Well,thankfully, their meetings with the coach didn't
go real well, so they cameback. Brendon actually had we had the
(21:32):
coach from Penn, great coach namedMark van Arsdale. He's now the assistant
at Loyola, was a Virginia foryears. Mark was the head coach at
Penn and actually had the nerve tocome in my house and your couch,
yes on my couch for Penn.So I did have to recruit them,
but I think having been in thatculture, you know, those guys went
(21:52):
on trips with me all the time, and sometimes those were scary because the
players would bring him to the backof the bus and god knows what lessons
they were learning back then, butit was amazing. I still oftentimes people
will ask me, you've been blessedwith seven national championships as a head coach,
what's your favorite, And of courseIt's hard to say, except in
(22:15):
two thousand and one I won withboth of them on the field, and
so that's an easy one for absolutelyvery special. And the next year,
in two thousand and two, yougo into the National Across Hall of Fame.
That's over twenty years ago. You'realready in the Hall of Fame.
And everything that you did since that, it was there weren't very many people
deserving. I guess I'm not true, not true, not true. All
(22:37):
right. Let's fast forward Bill tothen two thousand and nine, and that
is when you make the trek outwest to become the head coach at DU.
And you mentioned earlier Peg she's agood saleswoman and she's the one that
got you here. But what really, I mean, that was a big
move and people are like, wow, that's a big time head coach coming
from the East to come here.DU's getting serious. Yeah, And I
(22:57):
think number one, my son Trevor, after he graduated from Princeton in two
thousand and one, actually moved toDenver. So he was actually the assistant
coach at DU for one year andthen started into other things that he was
doing. So he called me upand said, Dad, you got to
take this job. You need achange in life. Think about how you
could help Western lacrosse. And sohe kind of got me going, and
(23:21):
I said, listen, I don'tneed to move him. I could put
myself on automatic pilot. I thinkI'll survive being at Princeton. But it
had been twenty two years. Andyou know, the one thing my wife
Helen, and I had always said, is because we'd been out here to
ski on some vacations, is thatif we're ever going to move or retire,
we'd like to look at Denver.So one thing led to another,
(23:41):
and you mentioned Peg and she calledme up under the guise of listen,
we're down to three candidates. Canyou come out here. We know your
son's out here. Will pay foryou to have come for the weekend,
just to help us sort through thesethree guys. Oh, you were going
to be a committee member. It'sgoing to be a committee member. Or
she's so smart. Yeah, wellI was born at night, but last
(24:02):
night, so I knew I knewsomething was and I came out here,
and of course you've been over theremany times. You know. She takes
me out on that patio and it'sanother beautiful Denver day like today, and
she starts talking to me and saying, you know, look at this place.
You know all it needs is you, and you know all this great
(24:22):
stuff. And then the next morning, Pam Wedding was PEG's assistant, and
I was supposed to meet with Pegagain at like ten o'clock. Pam calls
me at six thirty in the morning. It says, you got a half
hour. I'm going to pick youup. We gotta go somewhere else,
okay, so we go somewhere else. Was the old Bule mansion. I
walk in this room and Pat Bolandis sitting here. Forty five trustees are
(24:48):
sitting around this table at seven inthe morning on a Sunday. It ended
up being eight o'clock. And itmight have been a Saturday, Okay,
still it's away it was it was, it was, yeah, and so
I walk in. I don't knowwho these people are. PEG's just sitting
there with her cheshire cat's smile,she said, sitting next to mister Bowlin.
So I sitting next to Pat,and he loved du and you know,
(25:10):
we started talking football, and onething led to another. So now
I realized it took me a whileto realize that this was an impromptu trustees
meeting to try and talk me intocoming to DU. Wow, And it
was really cool. The funny partwas after the meeting, we walk out
this a nice little reception area andeach one of them comes up to me
(25:30):
and I see him looking at apiece of paper. Peg had given him
each a lacrosse question because ninety percentof them we didn't know lacrosse from basketball.
And so one of them comes outto me. You know this great
big time business guy says, so, coach, what's the percentage we need
of facing off wins for us towin a few more games? This guy
(25:52):
knew a face off from nothing,right, So now I'm getting this whole
thing. Go back to school,and Peg offers me the job and the
great opportunity to come to DU forthe thirty thousand dollars pay cut, which,
okay, I'm glad you brought thatup because she's told me that beforehand.
So you take a pay cut.So again you're going to Helen say
yea, let's make a move,and instead of now three thousand dollars,
(26:15):
it's thirty thousand dollars. How'd youget that one past her? She's been
the best, you know, obviously, Yeah, she just said, well,
you know, it's another adventure nowobviously at this time, now our
kids are grown up. Yes,so it's glad to come to Denver and
start a new life. Trevor wasout here, but he lived up in
(26:36):
Boulder. Brendan works for Nike nowin Oregon. He's in Boulder. Brian,
my youngest daughter is the head woman'scoach now at Kent State. She
was another college there, and myoldest daughter, Courtney, who's a basketball
coach, refused to move from NewJersey. So anyway we got you know,
we decided let's give it a shotas a new adventure. My batteries
(26:56):
were recharged. I thought we couldhelp the program, and Trevor promised he'd
coach with me for five years.So it was just kind of a selfish
decision because I felt like I neededone more big goat, see if I
could still do it, one moreadventure, and you did. You got
another national championship in twenty fifteen,and then you end up, you know,
(27:18):
just looking at the list of accoladesof your players, I mean,
you've got All Americans Scholar, AllAmericans, Players of the Year, all
conference. When you look at theathletes that have come through these programs,
whether it was DU or Princeton orthe others, how proud are you of
what you've done as far as kindof helping a lot of these young men
(27:38):
become men and successful men. Toput it in a short statement, I'd
say, if they believed in allof us, then we could get them
to be better individually. Every oneof those guys that you mentioned here at
DU, you could go through thatlitany of guys, and certainly at Princeton.
And yes, they were talented kids, but there were more talented teams
(28:02):
than ours. From how many greatplayers you have standpoint, But it was
just buying into the fact that wewere going to make it probably a little
more challenging for you. We were. When Peg offered me the job,
she said, what are you goingto need to win a national championship?
And I said, well, I'mgoing to need your support. I'm going
to need an unlimited travel budget becausewe're going to have to go east a
(28:23):
lot because they're not going to comeout here, and I just need your
support. And who I can hireour facility was great Peter Barton State.
Yeah, so support and admission support, scholarship wise and all that, and
all that was check check check checkcheck. So I had her support,
which is really all you need.And then d use an amazing school.
(28:47):
I go back to all those placesI've been at. You can be a
doctor, you can be a lawyer, you can be an engineer, you
can be in a great business school. And we've also got schools like communications
and sociology and our hotel restaurant hospitalityschool. We can fit anybody into.
Unless they want to be a dumbphized teacher and lacrosse coach, don't.
(29:07):
We don't have that. But it'ssuch an amazing place, and it's an
inspiring place. All the Learfield Cups, which is a championship of athletic departments,
you know, winning those every year. It's just a place that you
want to continue to compete and dobetter. But watching young men and women
walk out of that place with degreesthat are meaningful, watching them get jobs,
(29:32):
yeah, it's it's wonderful that they'reWestberg is a first team All American
and wins US a national championship,and he'll always be remembered for that.
But I think more for the thoseguys who come back that maybe weren't Those
players come back now they've got families, or now they just write that letter
that says, you know, Ididn't like your decisions back then, but
(29:52):
now I get it. Those arethe ones of the most rewarding. Do
you hear a lot from your formerplayers? You do. And I've always
talked about these three kind of guys, the ones that come with it,
whatever it is. I can takeno credit for those guys. They're talented,
they're smart, they have great families, and they just come in and
roll through it. And then you'vegot the guys who kind of get it
while they're there, and you takegreat pride in that because maybe they were
(30:17):
a little lazy, or maybe theyweren't quite into school, or maybe they
had learning disability challenges, whatever itwas, and they grow up. But
the ones, interestingly enough, thatthe most meaningful are the ones who you
kind of even when they get through, you kind of feel like I failed
with that guy. I didn't getto him. I had one this winter
(30:37):
come in. He quit our teamin nineteen ninety six and came back and
he said, everything you told mewas right. Regret that decision to this
day now I got a four yearold daughter, I just lost my job,
and the only thing that's keeping meup is the lessons you taught me.
WHOA, you know you kind ofthose are the ones that you kind
(31:02):
of go all right, maybe theywere listening, you know, and because
the other ones they kind of movedthrough. But so proud of all the
young men that put up with me. I got a note yesterday from a
guy who's on my nineteen seventy fiveGreat Neck South High School team, just
thanking me. Now, WHOA,this guy's are almost my age. I
(31:23):
was only twenty three, twenty twoat the time, which is barely older
than that. Yeah, it's Iwas talking to Matt Neufeld yesterday, our
volunteer coach, and just telling themabout the ups and downs. If you're
going to be in this profession,you better be in it all full bore,
because it's not for the faint ofheart, your wife, your support
(31:45):
people, whoever it might be.They've got to be all in because it's
a tough lifestyle. On the otherhand, the rewards, and I'm sure
the other coaches have told you this. You know, games that you win
it's just relief. Games that youlose. As I always say, losing
games is tougher than dying because yougot to live with it, right,
they're agonizing, and so to havea partner or support person or a husband
(32:09):
or a wife that is with youon that journey makes makes it so much
easier. And then to have theseyoung men grow up and tell the story,
it's really fulfilling and makes you blessedthat you know you're in a profession
that you had some kind of inputon. You have such an extended family
with all of those players. Yeah, so going from that extended family to
(32:32):
your own family and your kids.Three of the four of them are coaching.
As you mentioned, well, allfour of them have dabbled in its.
Even my son Brendan, who worksthe Nike out West. He's in
Oregon. He's Trevor was the oldest, then Brendan, then Courtney and then
Brion. Four kids in five years. That was that was an interesting attack,
(32:54):
especially in Rochester, New York.But Brendon is out Oregon with Nike.
He's now learning about coaching because he'sgot eleven year old daughter who plays
soccer and an eight year old sonwho plays lacrosse, and he calls me
every day now bemoaning coaching youth sportsand the parents are crazy, and I
(33:14):
said, both stop at the coachingpart and you'll be all You'll be all
set. And then, as Imentioned before, Trevor promised me five years
and gave us five years at DUand he was just so important in talking
me into hiring Matt Brown when Ifirst came out here. And then Brion
has kind of always been a lacrossecoach, a women's lacrosse coach, and
(33:36):
she got the head coaching job atKent State five years ago and was just
named Conference Coach of the Year thisyear. So that's awesome. A little
dad pride coming out a little,especially my daughters here. And yeah,
Courtney, she was always a basketballcoach, and she was the one that
I spent so much time with fromthe fifth grade on until she went to
college. Every night, zero oreighty degrees, I had to rebound one
(34:01):
hundred shots for her out in thefront things. So Courtney's the one who
invented that three point addage of ifyou hot, keep shooting, and if
you're not hot, keep shooting anywayyou get hot. She was last year
to New Jersey State Coach of theYear in basketball. So I take no
credit for those their successes because Iwas always at of a house mentoring other
(34:23):
people's kids. Right, But mywife Helen was the one who brought them
all up and did a really goodjob. Well, but obviously you had
some influence. And you just saidyou were out there rebounding basketballs. I
mean were You were there a lot, and they obviously thought enough of your
profession to get into it, right, That's amazing. Or maybe they're like
their dad, too dumb to doanything else. So I don't think that's
(34:45):
true either. All Right, So, Bill, now that you are officially
retired, what's next. It's agreat question. Thankfully, du has agreed
to pay me through the end ofJune. So even though Matt Brown cleaned
his office out yesterday, I saidto him, you're not moving in here
quite yet, pal, But he'sgot to coach the Canadian national team next
(35:06):
month in the World Championship. SoI'm still helping around the office a little
bit. But I've been fortunate tohave asked by ESPN to do a couple
of gigs this weekend. I'm doingthe I'm doing the in studio part of
the final four, So I'll beon the air at halftime of the first
game, in between games for agood amount of time, and then halftime
of the second game, and thenthey're flying me down to Philly for the
(35:30):
championship game. That's great. Yeah, And then I'm going to do the
color for two of the PLLO weekends, so I'll be behind the mic,
which will be fun because now Ican start really telling those referees what I
think about it and telling Matt Brownhow all his ideas weren't unique. But
I'm excited about it, and it'sfine. We're just gonna take the summer
(35:51):
and take the year a little bit, see what's out there. And I'm
not a good golfer and I'm nota good lay around guy, so you
need to be doing something, don'tsomething? Yeah? Do you think you'll
stay here in Denver? We're goingto for a while. Okay. Yeah.
But we said to Helen, whenI do retire, you can pick
the spot. She's always been aEast Coach beach person. And so the
(36:12):
week after I announced our retirement,um, she was on Zillo. Well
we're always on ze, right,But I got home one night and Helen
said, I made a decision.I said, Okay, where are we
going? She goes right here.I love it here. So it's pretty
cool to hear that. Yeah,it'll give us some more times. When
(36:32):
you got four kids plastered all overthe country. Denver is a good It's
the perfect watching spot. Absolutely.Yeah, we'll see. I've had some
gestures from the PLLL, the progroup, so we'll see how that works
out. Careful if you're asked tobe a consultant, because they're just trying
to have you exactly all right,But last question for you. You mentioned
(36:54):
that you talk to people and yougive talks and whatnot, and you you
can do great halftime speeches. Whatdo you tell people as you look back
through your years, never having beenfired, but definitely having those coaching ups
and downs. When there are setbacksin life or when something happens, what's
your advice to people? Oh,there's Helen, she's changed her mind.
(37:17):
Okay, anyway, what would beyour advice to people and they have those
setbacks. The first one I gotasked to do. I was in Princeton.
Right across Route one from Princeton Universityis to headquarters for Squib Pharmaceuticals.
I get this call one day fromthe CEO of Squib Pharmaceuticals. I'm a
lacrosse coach, right teacher, Yeah, he says, coach, I need
(37:40):
your help. I said, I'mnot changing jobs. He goes, no,
no, no, I need youto come in. We're having some
trouble with our chemists, are havingtrouble with the administration, who's having trouble
with the marketers, who's having troublewith the salespeople, who's having trouble with
drugs. They couldn't communicate to eachother exactly. They're driving me crazy.
(38:01):
Can you come in and talk tothem? So, I said, I
will. I don't know if it'llhelp any I developed this thing really quickly,
which I hate when I go tothese talks and I'm one of the
persons being talked to. But Idid this quick exercise. I said,
I promise you're not gonna have totell your life story here, but it'll
be quick. Put your heads downand raise your hand if you think the
(38:23):
person next to you trust you.Ninety percent of them raise their hand in
every one of these meetings. AndI'll tell you in the second all these
different groups I've talked to then Isaid, okay, one more question.
Put your hand up if you trustthe person next to you. So the
first one was do you think theytrust you? Second one, so I
(38:44):
turned and looked at the CEO.I said, there's your problem. So
they came up and we talked aboutexactly what you just said. It's building
a team. It's it's trust,it's communication, it's being honest, it's
knowing your role. It's understanding howand that other person is to your success.
You mentioned before my Hall of Famething in two thousand and two,
(39:06):
the title of my speech was somethingto the effect of understand the role that
other people had to play in orderfor you to a change your success.
And so he says, it wasgreat, whatever, and we moved on.
And in the meantime, I've spokento Trevor, and I spoke to
a bunch of orthopedic fellows up inBoulder. I've spoken to the biggest roofing
(39:28):
company in Southwest United States. Onetime, I had had a meeting out
here with four hundred and fifty grocerystore managers that were having their convention out
here. So I got all theseeclectic groups. Obviously a bunch of coaching
groups. Yeah, but the thing, you know, like the grocery store
people. I did a similar thing. I said, first of all,
they were at dinner, so they'veall had a couple of beers or whatever.
(39:51):
I said, how many of youhave ever gotten on the microphone and
said clean up an aisle two?We've all heard that when we've been in
three stores. Oh they're all yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you
know how cool is that? Isaid, okay, now, how many
of you have gotten on the microphoneand said thank you to John the custodian
for cleaning up an aisle two?Four hundred and fifty heads go down,
(40:15):
and so things like that, nomatter what the walk of life is.
The orthopedic guys, how many ofyou have thanked the orderlies got to clean
up that mess in that operating room, you know, the roofers. How
many of you have thanked the guywho's carrying those hundred pound things up the
ladder. And so we start withthat, and two coaches certainly making a
(40:35):
big thing out of the scout teamputting your arm around that kid you know
they'll never play, and given himthe accolade to understand what his input is
doing for the team. Communication understandingthat love doesn't always mean happiness. You
know, we always talk about everyonce in a while on the La cross
field, two guys might get alittle scuffy with each other, and then
(41:00):
what Matt Brown and I do afterthat? And it can be you know,
you got helmets and gloves on,you're not going to kill each other.
But we make them hug each otherat the end, and now they
have to go have dinner together.Oh oh wow, I like that.
Yeah, And so look, thegreat players are great players. They score
the goals, they get the honors. Everybody looks at them and claps for
them. What are those other twentypeople doing? Calling upon them not only
(41:23):
makes them feel better and we'll workharder for you, but it gives the
other guys a bigger perspective to Wow, this is a team. And no
matter what the walk of life is, oh, it's universal, whatever industry
it is, we talk about there'ssomething greater than you out there. Whenever
you get too high on your horse, there's someone better than you, something
(41:43):
better than you. And we dothis for more reasons than just the scoreboard.
So we just try to filter allthat same stuff into these talks that
we talk to our players about everyday. Well, congratulations again on such
an amazing career. I'm excited tosee what you do in the future and
watch you on ESPN or as wecall it, Laker TV and exactly that's
(42:06):
fun, Bill, and enjoy yourtime with Helen and your kids, and
you know it's a great next adventurefor you. Oh. Thanks, Susie.
You know I'm always following you andlove what you do, so I
appreciate that. And I love thatyou're on Twitter. You are way ahead
of you everybody else your age.I'll never be on TikTok. I can
promise you that's okay. Yeah,no, I'm not either, all right.
Hey, Bill, thank you somuch. I appreciate it. Thanks
Susie. Great coaching advice from aphenomenal coach and even better person. Thanks
(42:30):
Bill Tierney. New episodes of Cut, Traded, Fired, Retired come out
every Tuesday on nearly every podcast platform. Get social with the podcast on Twitter
and Instagram at ctf our podcast andcheck out the website ctfur podcast dot com.
I'm your host, Susie Wargin.Thank you for listening, and until
next time, please be careful,be safe, and be kind, take care
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