Ohio State Buckeyes assistant coach Kerry Coombs follows a simple rule: 'Fearlessly be yourself'
Once he decided to coach like he did in high school, Ohio State assistant coach Kerry Coombs found that his enthusiastic style could work for him at the college level, too. (Marvin Fong, The Plain Dealer)
By Doug Lesmerises, The Plain Dealer
April 12, 2013
COLUMBUS, Ohio ? He tried cerebral and informative and by the book, not emotional and teasing and relentlessly upbeat, and Kerry Coombs lost himself. He was lost because by changing his coaching style, he was ignoring what he'd been telling his players and his own children for two decades, and now, if he was going to quit and go home, he was at least going to try his way first.
Halfway through his first practice on his first day as a college coach at the University of Cincinnati in December 2006, Coombs stood in the back of the endzone and had a conversation with himself. The day before, he'd resigned as the wildly successful head coach at nearby Colerain High School, his departure after 16 years treated like a funeral. He'd been hired by new Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly less than 48 hours after he'd first talked to him, and now on the field with the Bearcats, Coombs was a stranger - ?as miserable as I've ever been in coaching.?
Miserable not with the chance. Miserable with himself for being someone he wasn't.
Colerain would welcome his return. ?You can go back,? he told himself.
At Cincinnati he didn't know anyone. He'd seen the doubts in the players' eyes when this high school coach had been introduced as a new assistant, helping to fill the shoes of Mark Dantonio?s staff that had departed for Michigan State. So he tried to be someone he wasn't.
And he bombed.
?So I said, you may as well coach like you know how to coach and just try to start being yourself,? Coombs said. ?And that's what I learned. I'm not good coaching the way somebody else thinks I should coach. I'm not happy doing that and I'm not good doing that.?
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