Transcript: Coach Kennedy on Winning Mindsets, Mentorship, and Lifelong Lessons

Welcome back to Late Start Show with me, Charlie Martin. And me, Jack Nelson. We once again hope you're enjoying your nice break from working up at the crack of dawn. Hopefully we can give you something good to listen to on your morning commute to school.

This week's interview is with football defensive coordinator, head varsity outdoor and indoor track coach, and freshman basketball coach, Coach K. It's really cool to talk to one of our favorite coaches that we have ever had, and is already one of US's legends in athletics. But before we get to that great interview, let's first review what this week has to offer. Now, for the starter of this podcast, due to all the fall sports ending, we're going to recap last year's winter sports and then tell some of the best stories to look out for this year as they're progressing.

First, with swimming, there have been some legendary athletic teams and many great athletic coaches in the history of university school. But the swimming and diving team and Coach Perry reached a new height last year as they captured their third consecutive state championship, ninth state championship in his tenure as head coach. Serving as team captains last year were Ben Davis, Matthew Devine, and Miguel Figueroa. And this year, we look to a new generation of swimmers and the talent they bring.

The team looks to do something that was originally thought of as impossible and win four state championships and continue the streak. Let's watch and support them as they start a new dynasty in Ohio school swimming. Next, hockey looked destined to win the state title last year. Seniors like Sam Wade, Luke Palmer, Money, Mike Matthews, Noah Caballero, Cooper Pettipes, Noah Garofalo, and Anthony Messina, just to name some.

They were 60 minutes away from winning a state title before being knocked off by St. Ignatius. This was the second year in a row they lost in the state championship game, and while they didn't win at all, the boys played their hearts out, and the student body packed arenas all season long. The team out for revenge.

We are going to support them in full force, led by Captain Ethan Roberts, as well as seniors Mitch Lengel, Sam Robinson, and Gavin Jones. The team is still looking as dangerous as ever. Season starts November 15th, this weekend actually against St. Francis de Sales, and some big games on that schedule include St.

Ed's, Team Up the Street, Ignatius, and Shaker Heights. Let's get ready to pack the barn for the boys. Next, in squash. Squash defeated Milton Academy 5-2 to win the consolation bracket of the Division II National High School Championships. three, keeping their number one ranking in the 61-team scholastic division.

They had an individual match record of 104 wins to 27 losses, and serving as the team's captains were Joey Applebaum, Chase Grepin, and Fernando Akello. This year, the team looks to defend its number one ranking and keep its prestige intact as they are the oldest squash program in Ohio. U.S. basketball had a great season last year, defeating Willoughby South in the first round of the Division I state tournament. before falling at Strongsville in the sectional final. U.S. held strong regular season wins over Maple Heights, Shaker Heights, Benedictine, and Hawken.

Justin Belcher, Duke Brennan, and Jonathan Diaz served as team captains. Last year's senior captain, Justin Belcher, achieved the 1,000-point total last year. With him gone, the team looks to fill big shoes for last year's seniors, but they're looking to hopefully surpass that team and push on to a state championship. The team has only made it to two district titles, in 2002 was the regional runner-up.

But with a promising, new, and flashy team, it looks to beat all expectations. Lastly, in wrestling. Wrestling compete against many of the best programs in Northeast Ohio throughout the regular season. Dula Gross, Finn Kshubik, and Matt Hurley, all classed at 2027, qualified for the OHSAA District Tournament.

Oliver Thomas and Noah Quisenberry served as team captains last year. The team is ready to be as great as their younger guys continue to progress. Some of the biggest news around the school this past week, after strong performances at a recent competition at Solon High School, two U.S. academic challenge teams have earned an early birth to the national tournament in Atlanta. That'll be in May.

However, as a school tradition, they had to face some of their most challenging competition, the U.S. faculty. Earlier this past week, after beating the teachers last year, the faculty got their revenge and beat the boys 140 to 110. Good luck to them on the rest of their season. Additionally, after reaching a major milestone in the college process, seniors were surprised by a class trip to Topgolf this past week.

Also, Crookshank House is pleased to announce a Winter Clothing Drive supporting Rise Together Cleveland, a dedicated organization assisting newcomers and refugees in Cuyahoga County. We invite you to collect new hats, gloves, scarves, and blankets to help provide warmth and comfort this winter. The drive will run through Tuesday, November 19th. conveniently located near the front desk at the upper school. Only new items can be accepted, and your contributions are truly appreciated.

Next, looking at our week's senior speeches, we had an excellent speech from Jackson Penny on Monday, and we look forward to next week's speeches from Cooper Rehack, Michael McNally, and Tucker Greer. Well, guys, that's enough from us from this week. Coming up soon is an interview with the football defensive coordinator, head varsity outdoor and indoor track coach, and freshman basketball coach, Coach K. All right, let's jump into it.

Coach K? next good morning and welcome back to the show we're here with football defensive coordinator head bar c outdoor and indoor track coach and freshman basketball coach coach candy better known as coach k how are you coach k i'm doing great boys how are you we're great great to have you here so just so our listeners have some context you coach both of us in freshman basketball charlie and football and you've coached at U.S. made a significant impact on all of them. Z. McGee gave you a shout out during his senior speech for being one of the most influential people in his career here at U.S. And then Cam Shiver called you one of the people he constantly looks up to, just to name a few.

So how do you manage to make such an impact on the people you coach? It's a great question. I try to make sure that my coaching style, leadership style, follows the saying that it's not about being charge. It's about taking care of those in your charge.

And when I was about your guys' age, I had coaches who modeled that in every sense of the term, whether it was I was going through things that were good, like big wins or big performances, or helping me through tough times, like losing a teammate around your guys' age. They were there to take care of the people in their charge. So I remember Simon Sinek is the person who said that line. first heard him say that it kind of began to mold my style and how i want to impact people wow i mean that's really cool it's just like coaches impacting other coaches and like i don't know you always hear those stories of like teachers saying the reason they wanted to teach is because another teacher really put that into them i mean that's just the coolest thing yeah now i've heard a lot about your coaching career and the countless people you've influenced during your time here but i think one of the less known stories is your time playing Can you tell the listeners about your time playing sports as a child and how that really impacted you? So my life in playing sports, I have played organized sports in football, basketball, baseball, soccer, track, bowling.

If it's a sport that isn't having to ice skate, I have probably done it in some organized fashion at some point in time in my life. Football teams win two state titles, be nationally ranked two times. And, you know, that type of experience or the types of people I was around did a whole lot of molding of who I am today. That's for sure.

I mean, it's just really cool, like how you've had how you've had just a journey playing all these different sports. I mean, we obviously know with all your trivia, you know, every single sport, no matter what. Another story I've always wondered is just about your journey coming to U.S. as a coach after you were at all boys school at Benedict. which I'm assuming you knew about U.S. at the time. When was the time decision in your head that you wanted to come coach at U.S.?

So we've got to go back a little bit. So I started coaching high school football when I was 20 years old in a small town in northeast Ohio called Thompson Township. And it was a small school called Ledgemont High School. And towards the end of my five-year run at Ledgemont, another place huge impact on my life miss dennis who you guys may know i coached her son there and you know the whole community big impact on my life but as i got towards the end of that i started to meet a gentleman by the name of coach ben malbasa because he was coaching at my alma mater and we kind of just stayed in touch and got to know each other eventually he takes a job at ndcl and i decide to leave ledgmont to join him there and then ultimately his dream job of his alma mater of university school opens up opportunities to go other places.

I valued the respect that I had for Coach Mabasa and my relationship with him. And sometimes change isn't always a good thing. Sometimes when you got a good thing, you got to recognize it and stick with it. And that's what has me at U.S.

Combined with, as you mentioned, I'm a big believer in the all-boy education, having come through it myself. Interesting. I mean, how did your school at Benedictine really impact the way you think of us going to school? Because I know that's one of the things that I've always really, really appreciate is no matter all the sports that we play, you really just kind of appreciate the fact that we have school, we have homework and stuff, and you always are really, really mindful of that.

How did going to Benedictine and going through an all-boys school there and that education impact your way you think of our education? Well, first, I'm a big believer in the all-boys education because I do think that when you focus on just one type of section of student, It allows you to hone in to more of a specific style and how you handle a classroom or a team and and allows you to play towards, you know, understanding the types of personalities that are in the room, because although every personality will be different, they'll all fit within that box of their teenage boy. Right. So I feel like the education that you get when you can focus in on things gives you a leg. up for being able to reach a student or an athlete and to help them grow, mature, and see what the important things are, how you prioritize, how you manage time.

And it all starts by being able to know that the entire room kind of fits in the same box. Yeah. And with all this wisdom, there has to be, it has to come from someplace, right? So has there been a mentor or someone who's really influenced your life and taught you a lot of this?

So I'll do it quickly. There are four people who, without maybe even just one of them isn't what they were in my life, I may not be coaching, let alone at university school. First person is a gentleman who's named Augie Basu. He's the reason that coaching comes to mind when you think about being somebody that wants to impact lives.

He was my freshman football coach who was 85 years old roughly at the time, but he was the winningest coach in Ohio high school history at the time. And I saw how somebody could walk into the building with gray hair to me and the class that I was in. And they had the same admiration and they would light up the same way and he could control their ears the same way. And that had a deep lasting and meaningful impact on me because that is ultimately what I wanted to be able to do with my life, to be able to have that type of situation happen.

Staying in that same realm of time in my life, there was a gentleman named Tony Russ, who was our Dean of Students. And Tony was like an old grizzly bear, okay? door with a razor and no shaving cream. And if you needed to shave, he was just giving you the razor. He didn't cross Mr.

Russ. But Mr. Russ also had a real soft spot that maybe people didn't realize till he was gone. And people may have thought that, oh, he's mean and he's rough around the edges.

But what he was, was brutally honest. And you always knew where you stood. And he kind of shaped my style in how I do things. And then the last two people, jointly, who would have made an impact on why coaching.

There's actually my parents, you know, both passed on now. But all those sports I said to you throughout all of their busy schedules, one of the things that I was blessed to have was parents who sometimes just simply showed up. And no matter what I was doing, where I was doing it, they showed up. And in showing up, you could always see on the teams where I was on how involved my parents were. were and they were always going to be willing to help and having parents who ingrained in me that we help people it kind of something that was already a nudge towards education or coaching or something that was going to be in the realm of helping people and that's why you see me doing the types of things i do today yeah having you as a coach i can definitely see and just having you around you really do exhibit those qualities that those people have like you said just showing up you're always at games you're always places for us.

So I do really appreciate that. You know, Jack and I constantly ask ourselves about what keeps us moving to keep moving on. What do you believe is your why? What keeps you to just pushing forward through life and through your coaching career?

It's a really good question. I'm going to give you an honest answer. A recent example. You know, we lost a playoff football game to CVCA.

And every year, I have a really hard time with the last football game. And every year, I will probably tear up at the end of it. And it's that feeling of feeling like I'm helping people be a part of something bigger than themselves, feeling like I have made a connection with people in such a way that it matters to me that I won't coach them again. Um, that feeling is what drives me.

It's the relationships and the day where I feel like really all I'm doing is coaching and not building relationships is probably the day I stopped coaching. Um, because then some of the hours might not be quite as worth it. Going to that point. What, I mean, this may be, you've had many, many, many athletes.

Had there been maybe one or a couple that just stuck out to you over the years that you can remember just really having that, like, you really had that relationship with them and you really, like, just were so proud of what they were able to accomplish? Yes. There's a number of them. I will refrain from maybe saying specific U.S. ones for now, but I'll go back to, you know, my Legemont days were really, really impactful for me.

And along with Mrs. Dennis' son, Kyle, you know, there was, Some gentlemen named Danny LaRosa, Samuel Grabinski, Brad Seiler, Brad and Jimmy Marsik. Those are kids that played for us at Ledgemont. Although I probably don't talk with them as much as I want to and wish I could nowadays, when I think back on my coaching career, if I don't build the type of relationship I had with them and feel the rewards of having that type of relationship with them, I don't think I'd be here right now.

Because although I went into coaching wanting to make those impacts, it's not guaranteed that you can make those impacts. So the relationship I had with those guys kind of solidified, hey, I can do this. And the things that, you know, they're growing beautiful families now and they're great young men and I'm really proud of them. There's also plenty of examples while I've been here at U.S. because U.S. is an incredibly special place filled with incredibly special people.

And it's too hard to pick and choose which one I was talking about. And I think one of the reasons you build such a relationship with all the people you coach is because you coach us, not in sports, but in life. And a good example of that, after a tough basketball loss to Gilmore our freshman year, last year you had an amazing strategy that you taught us after a tough loss, whether that's just a failure in life or sports in this case, but it really taught us how to move forward after our failure. So can you explain that strategy to our listeners here?

Yes. So within track, within freshman basketball, and Coach Alvarez uses this saying at times too, and Coach Mbosso used it at times, gentleman named Tim Kite, who when he was at Ohio State with Urban Meyer created event plus response equals outcome. And I'm a big believer in that. Where I have expanded on it was his son, Brian Kite.

I steal everything. I'm not completely as smart as you think I am. I'm just good at listening, seeing things like, oh, that's good. Let's do that.

He had his own types of things that he would have to fit into E plus R equals 0. What I've taught you guys was what I kind of combined what those two guys would talk about and created what I believe the three steps of responding to events are. Events both positive and negative to allow you to get to the outcome that you want. For me, the one I use the most and the one that I think a lot of kids have used the most over the years is DMGB.

Doesn't matter. better. Oh, I didn't play well today. Doesn't matter. Get better.

I won a title today. Great. Doesn't matter. Get better.

Doesn't mean don't celebrate or don't talk for a minute, right? But eventually you got to have a growth mindset either way. Then there's NRT, next right thing. Sometimes it's hard for people to conceptualize the next big thing they need to do or they're having a hard time just focusing.

Those are times where you want to think the next right thing. Sometimes the next right thing after a bad race is just take your spikes off. And once you've done that, what's the next right thing? Put your warmups back on and just do little, little actions to then hopefully end up creating big whole actions.

And then 20 square feet. It's one I kind of hold dear and I kind of do push on you guys a little bit more often, but that's one that kids fight a little bit more because it does hold a little bit more accountability when you think that your 20 square feet is roughly your personal space, right? And what you do in your 20 square feet and every culture that you're a part of matters. And we're all a part of dozens and dozens and dozens of cultures in life.

There's your team, there's your school, there's your class within your school, there's your classrooms, there's your family, there's U2 as a podcast. It is all communities where you have to make sure that you're doing your job and taking care of your 20 square feet. Because if you're not taking care of your 20 square feet, well, building a house on the floor was bad than 20 those square feet you would replace those 20 square feet right so it's all about kind of uh taking ownership over things and making sure that you understand that everybody leads everybody everybody impacts everybody and you have to take care of your space wow i mean that's really just impressive i mean always i can always think of some of the greatest speeches i've ever heard and really ever like just took upon were those football speeches like those last second were about to go out the d-line Indy speeches, which everybody's like, oh my God, we're about to go into a game. And you just have some profound statement that makes everybody go out there and just, I honestly feel like we played better at the end of the day just because of those D-line Indy speeches.

I'd like to tell you I have those planned out and give you some big secret as to, oh, well, here's how it happens. I don't start thinking about those till we start the drills in Indy. And in freshman basketball, speeches I would give at half or in pregame, those really just come from relationships and the fact that I understand the room that I'm talking to and being able to mold a message that you know can be heard in a way that can be heard. There are years where me coming into a locker room or me going to the back of an end zone at a pregame and really just screaming and hooting and hollering.

There are a group of guys that that's what they respond to. There's groups of guys where it's a little bit more of a calm talk. And then there's guys where you want to be able to start a story and connect it all back at the end. And that's how they respond because it's a group of guys that maybe have a bigger imagination, which is a little bit more what I thought you guys were this year.

So it's really more about just knowing who my audience is than actually planning it out. There is no secret. When it's good, it's more luck than it is talent. person to look if we have any prospective student-athletes that are listening to this or interested in the school. I think you're a great person with your experience in the many sports you coach.

So if there are any prospective student-athletes listening to this, can you give them your best recruiting pitch? Okay, interesting. So it's easy for me to talk about U.S. because all I really have to do is be honest. I believe that university school is the best style of education that a boy can get in this area, in this state.

I would still challenge somebody to prove me wrong that it's not the country because U.S. has had a unique ability to change with the world and mold with the future while holding on to things that are important to the development of young boys. And the greatest example of that, in my opinion, is our senior speeches. How many places in this world can you go to a place where they still cherish public speaking, the ability to create your own thoughts, to have your own thoughts, get them into words, and then present them in a way that holds an entire room of your peers and people older than you. It is a big challenge.

And it is really cool to me that that is something that we still require of young men, because that is something that I think a lot of other places would shy away from doing. U.S. does an incredible job of leading young men. I would also say U.S. is different. U.S. is unique.

U.S. is special. U.S. is not necessarily for everybody. Neither is Harvard. And therein lies the difference.

A lot of people can go to, you know, school X. You got to be a special person who wants to be challenged and wants to do something special to go to Harvard. to come here, you've got to ask yourself, do you want to be like everybody or do you want to learn who you are and be yourself? Because that's what this place will do. Wow.

I mean, thank you so much, Coach K, for those inspirational words and just such a great podcast and taking the time to talk about you and your journey and everything. To our listeners, thank you very much for tuning in and we hope you join us next Wednesday for another episode of the Late Start Show. Thank you, Coach K. Thank you, Coach K.

Thank you, gentlemen. you