09 Kevin Finley: My Life as a Coach

Well I talked about earlier I was putting this life together and I want it to live but I want it to be a football coach I didn’t want a coach Baskin I played it I played it in high school I played it in college but I really wanted to coach football about 1995 I got the way I see it I got saved by Ken Hall who was a real devout Christian though and we it was in a real small room in now in power at United tribes Technical College and that was in 1995 not much not few months after that he had resigned from that job and when I talked one of our close friends names Hank taking away and we said I say hey who got Ken’s job he said you should call up there and find out so I did and two days later they called me and asked me if I wanted the job I had gone to school there Finney graduated from there and I didn’t know but it is right then and there that I had gotten saved so I started to depend on prayer so I went home told my wife she said no you better not we just got here we just moved to South Dakota then I just got married she said we’ve we’ve only been here we just got our house we got so much to take care of here so I didn’t think much about it and then on Sunday I just kept praying about it through the throughout the week throughout the day weekend then Monday came and my wife said if you really want to take that job go ahead so I called them and I said I would they just felt like the right thing to do so when I when I got there they hadn’t won a one a home game in three years from what I was told the losing seasons for quite a quite a few years and I went into my office there was a desk and a box of pens and that was it I went downstairs and looked at um our basketball uniforms it was just a handful of away at home and it was just some it wasn’t a mess it was not putting my friend Kent on down or anything like that but it was so my first year I won four games I lost 32 I lost 32 games but it was through prayer that I stayed did I think of leaving not once I never had one thought of leaving now following year we won 16 games and lost 16 games we are one game away from the national finals and we lost that game to get there by six points the following year we kicked the door and we made it we made it for the first time and all of the interest wasn’t about us being a basketball team but how do you still live in teepees do you know that kind of thing I’m not saying anything bad but they wanted to know so our team ended up going to different schools and just talking about like this who we are where we come from then what do we do we made it again the next year when we and in tho in six years we played for the regional championship to make it to Nationals and we made it three times that’s never happened it’s not me because when we got to that national tournament I saw that Jim I thought God why do you have me here why am I here then I thought well maybe we’ll lose our first game we can go and have to worry about it anymore we want I thought well maybe we’ll lose this next game then we can go home we won again so but in that time though we didn’t know that we were spreading our culture that people were finding out that you know they don’t live in teepees my teams that we that when we went our GPA as a team not just one guy but as all nine and ten guys had a three-point 6 or higher all of them so it wasn’t about it wasn’t about me being this coach or anything like that but me about instilling principles and values in their lives to where the important things the little things pointing to class getting done time getting your school need to the big things thought of those guys were getting Division One offers to go play basketball in different places Roy Williams who was a great coach and at K you came to our campus to recruit one of our kids six five quicker and lightning guy that could shoot it Jason lob he’s gone now the hardest thing about being a coaches they become like your children and when they go it’s like one of your own children are gone to you so I’ve got six three men are gone for most teens I went to the Nationals they’re really of different thing about is every one of those guys were number 34 yeah so but we’re that number guy really has been retired since so we don’t have to worry about that anymore but from there you know it just got to be a lot and so I resigned and I thought a job down at Standing Rock and they were in their basketball they were struggling and so there would pass if I would be an assistant well they want me to be head coach but I said you don’t have hand I’m just tired of different hotel different night different town it just got to be old so I’ll take an assistant we got those girls to the state tournament we started we started three freshmen a sophomore in a junior and then from there I came home after that and the boys job opened in Mandarin we after that girls job and standing up we got the state tournament went to the boys here in Mandarin we made it again it isn’t anything about me it isn’t this is what God wanted me to do you know so then now we just finished so and sit in those programs nobody’s been back to the national tournament I’ll go state tournaments at that schools and I don’t talk about myself future necessarily I won’t if somebody asked me I’ll tell them I won’t just hey this is me you don’t see me in many pictures I kind of hide from cameras I don’t do many paper interviews it isn’t about me one of that one elder told me his name was Russell Jillette he said if you’re good enough at something they’ll talk about you for you don’t have to talk about yourself so I don’t I don’t I don’t say anything but I finished this football season we finished on a three-game winning streak and that hasn’t been happened here I think since 1994 they announced the other night and again it doesn’t anything about me and it’s those kids that really bought into what we were doing and they were scoring points like you wouldn’t believe I mean they were scoring from all over the field in our last four games we averaged 48 points as a team and we held our opponents to 12 hasn’t happened here in a long time so it goes all goes back to for my lineage comes from what they believed in having strong virtue and character and his container and I’m not I’m not I’m not the poster boy for that you know we argue it’s an old adage we all have a past but God put my eyes in front of my head to see where I’m going you don’t care about what’s buying me and I don’t either no I just want to get up each day and do my absolute very best wherever I can wherever I’m called and just make myself available for our people