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This story was originally published in the Texas Magazine in January 2006

http://www.htexas.com/feature.cfm?Story=535


At the time, Willis Wilson wasn't piloting the Rice Owl basketball fortunes as the primary bench boss, but merely serving as the on-the-floor point guard with the ever-alert eye for the open teammate or the opportune jump shot. However, one game night his junior season, something else caught his eye. Rather, someone else.

"I remember sitting on the bench as a player and saying to myself, "That's the kind of girl I want to marry,"" reminisces Willis with total recall of the initial glimpse of his future wife, Vicki, in the crowd that evening at Autry Court. "She had a lot of personality - just a presence."

This team captain was accustomed to orchestrating the Owls offense, clock-working the orange, dishing and distributing - and he soon devised an off-the-court plan that would deliver nothing less than a large dose of destiny.

"My senior year (1982), it was homecoming, and I knew she was going to be at this party," remembers Willis. "I told my friend, 'I'm going to go find that girl.' To this day, she doesn't believe me that I went over there to find her." Believe this. What Willis eventually found was a lifelong love - for the gal and, soon thereafter, the game. Now a near quarter-century later both remain at the bedrock of much more than merely his professional success.

Love and basketball
"It's different, in the sense of what I thought my life would be," Vicki says now, as she and Willis prepare for their 20th year of marriage. "I don't mean that in a negative way. There are no regrets. My life is very fulfilling, but in a different way than if you had asked me when I was 17 or 18 years old what I thought it would be." Vicki and Willis had only begun dating in 1982. His first taste of the marketplace following graduation - a stint in human recourses - was sour. Willis redirected his sights on law school and was preparing for the LSAT when he accepted a part-time coaching position at Strake Jesuit High School. Fate had hit absolutely, positively nothing but the bottom of the net.

"I was varsity assistant," Willis says. "And fell in love with it. High school was the best experience I ever had in coaching. It was so rewarding - just the opportunity to work with kids who were so hungry and just soaked everything up."

Not so rewarding were the initial financial stakes. This Will Rice College Fellow with a bachelor of arts degree in political science was soon selling women's shoes at Foley's to make the month-to-month ends meet - and also working at an auto parts warehouse as a staff of one. Willis soon returned to the Rice campus as the basketball program's graduate assistant coach, in order to qualify for the monetary stipend. But Vicki could see then that law school was forever scratched from the to-do list.

"He found his passion," Vicki says, "and that's very important when you're out there trying to figure out what you want to do with your life. He was making all those sacrifices just to find something he truly loved; and he was lucky because not everybody gets that."

A different passion was consummated when the two were married in August 1986. Soon, they began Willis's less than arduous climb up the coaching ladder: five years as a Rice assistant, one year away on the staff at Stanford. Then, he received the quick call in 1992 to return to his alma mater and a first-time opportunity to front a program. For the last 13 years, the head coaching chair at Rice has afforded the Wilsons with a luxury rarely found in the profession - stability that so many in the nomadic lifestyle never experience.

"I have friends that have moved every three or four years," says Vicki. "We have friends we talk with all over the country - Oklahoma and Missouri and California - who have paraded from one coaching post to another. We were prepared to do the same. You just have to learn to trust - and trust your own instincts."

Often times, the truest form of trust is that the home front is secure while hours and hours and weeks and days and months are invested in the win/loss livelihood of college hoops. Vicki soon discovered the routine that so many wives in the coaching world relate as routine: that Thanksgiving and Christmas are not occasions reserved for family, but team travel and tournaments; that spring breaks are not so much March getaways, but potential runs to March Madness and the basketball post season; that summers are not built for recreation, but recruiting windows.

"With Willis' job, the family can't always do the regular things that others take for granted," says Vicki. "You can't leave at drop of a hat on a Friday night. You can't just meet friends for dinner or have them come over for a weekend cookout. It's been long enough now that my family and friends are finally starting to understand that Willis isn't going to be around."

In Willis's absence, Vicki wears enough hats to rival a Hedda Hopper review. Mother to daughter Kristin, now a junior at Clements High School; and seventh grade twins, Zachary and Keenan. Tutor. Advisor. Chauffeur. Cook. Household Financial Planner. Disciplinarian. Organizer Supreme.

"At first, you're a little frustrated by it," she says about performing solo duties due to the demands made by Willis's profession. "Then you're a little mad about it, but it all just has to get done, so you just do it. Just move on. And the kids just had to learn that everyone has to pitch in, and everyone has to learn to work together."

"I'm often asked, 'What does your wife do?'" says Willis. "It would be hard to detail and describe all the things that Vicki does. It's hard for people to understand how productive she is every day. She probably accomplishes more than I do."

Yet this fall, Vicki also found the time within the daily grind and demands to reach out to a family of nine from New Orleans and help them deal with the strains of evacuating in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and relocating to Houston.

"I am the glue," admits Vicki. "Willis and I discuss things, certainly, but the household routine, the bills and the weekly organization all fall under my umbrella. I don't know what you do to prepare for it. It's such a learning experience. Different things come up, and you just have to deal with them."

"Vicki is very driven," says Willis. "When I really got into this coaching thing, I think it was very difficult for her to relate and see how she was going to be productive and successful. But, I think, over time she's gotten accustomed to it."

Being the wife of a coach is unsung and unheralded. There are no cameras demanding TV close-ups or day-to-day accounts of a job well done.

"In a lot of jobs, you go to your job; you perform your job; and you reap the rewards of that job," says Willis. "When you're very independent, it's easy to say, 'No, I can't lie in the wings. I want to be productive, and I can be productive.' That was the biggest challenge for Vicki, to discover that compromise."

The challenges for Willis are immense: establishing and maintaining a program at Rice, given the strict academic rigors and the absence of a winning tradition. Yet, he stands as the school's all-time winningest coach, having just tutored the school's all-time leading scorer and rebounder. He has navigated the Owls to 60 wins the last three seasons, Rice's most successful stretch since the FDR administration.

And behind the scenes is a surrogate mom to the program who is much more than mere cheerleader. "I'll get many (of the players) who will just pick up the phone and call just to talk," says Vicki, "just to discuss a problem or an issue they're trying to sift through. It's been very fulfilling watching so many come in as boys and leave as men." Not unlike a certain guard from the early '80s who cast an unknowing glance to the crowd and hit the biggest winner of his life.

 

Ex-Rice basketball coach Wilson gets fresh start
By STEVE CAMPBELL

This story was originally published in the Houston Chronicle


Willis Wilson cured his insomnia.

He isn't awake at 1 a.m., 2 a.m, 3 a.m., 4 a.m. anymore, thinking about the Rice Owls basketball team. He doesn't toss and turn with basketball on the brain, doesn't start thinking about the Owls again the moment his bleary eyes open.

Wilson doesn't have a team to coach.

For the first time in 17 years, the Owls opened a season with somebody besides Wilson guiding the team. For the first time in more than a quarter century, Wilson isn't leading his life to the rhythms of a basketball season.

The Owls broke in Autry Court at Tudor Fieldhouse -- the refurbished home Wilson wanted for so long -- Saturday afternoon with a 78-74 loss to Portland State. At the same time the Owls ushered in the Ben Braun era, Wilson was doing radio color commentary for rival Houston's 73-64 win over Western Kentucky.

This is that time where a win or a loss just changes your whole persona, Wilson said. You lose a game or two early in the season, and all of a sudden you're trying to fix something that maybe really never was broke. But the reality is that as a head coach, your responsibility is to put everything into trying to be successful.

And you're being judged for it. So there's this internal pressure that you have to fix something. You try to fix things that maybe aren't fixable.

Wilson had a 219-246 record at Rice, winning and coaching more games than any coach in the history of a school that has been a basketball powder puff. Waiting for the refurbishment of decrepit old Autry Court, the Owls were a team without a home last season. Wilson was fired two days after a 3-27 season, depriving him of seeing what he could do with something resembling 21st-century facilities at his disposal.

When you get terminated from a job -- any job -- you lose confidence in yourself, Wilson said. You lose confidence in your decisions, who you are, what you've accomplished. Jeff Van Gundy (former Rockets coach) told me that, and that was something that was really helpful for me.


Confidence shaken

You hear about players losing confidence all the time. Coaches lose confidence, too. You lose confidence when things don't turn out the way you want them to. You lose confidence when you do all the right things for all the right reasons and still get fired. You have to come to this understanding that you just don't have control over everything. And sometimes you don't have control over the things that are most important to you.

Willis Wilson lettered at Rice four years and became a team captain. He got his degree in political science and put in two stints as a Rice assistant before becoming the coach in 1992. In all, 6100 Main Street has been the center of Wilson's basketball universe for 25 of his 48 years.

He met his wife of 22 years, Vicki, at Rice. Other than a couple of short-lived stints at a car dealership and at a department store selling women's shoes (That was one of the best jobs he ever had, Vicki said with a laugh), Wilson has spent his entire adult life coaching. Until now.

I used to tell him, 'You're so lucky. You have found your passion, Vicki said. Some people go through their whole lives and don't find their passion.

Athletic director Chris Del Conte simultaneously praised Wilson for doing a wonderful job and buried the coach eight months ago, decreeing it was time to move in a new direction. Vicki implored Wilson to resist any impulse to get back into the coaching rat race, to instead take some time to take stock of himself and what he wants to do with his life.

Tom Penders can vouch for the three years he spent in television and radio before taking the UH job, saying, I think if every coach had a sabbatical every so many years, they would benefit from it.

Wilson scratched some of his coaching itch for six weeks of the summer, staging workouts at a couple of high schools. He has, by his count, visited about a dozen high school and college practices.

I've tried to make a conscious effort, Wilson said, to be spontaneous every day.


Plenty of interests, time

He has the time on his hands to watch his son, Zachary, 15, run in cross country meets. He has the time to watch his other 15-year-old, Keenan, play basketball. He has time he never had for Kristin, 19, and for Vicki, and to take on yardwork and house repairs. He has reached out to friends he used to be too busy to see once basketball practice started.

Its a little bit funny and awkward at times to call people, Wilson said, and they don't have time for you.

Not long ago, Wilson received a call from a coaching buddy who had broken away from preseason practices to recruit players on the West Coast.

It was sobering to realize how many guys in this profession are doing things they either accept or don't like or really have a strong disdain for, Wilson said. Its a cycle you get caught up in. There's a whole other world going on out there, and as a coach you really don't realize how consumed you are by it until you get out of it.

One season had bled into another for the previous 16 years. There is something to be said for the pay, the relationships, the adrenaline rushes, the practices and preparation, the chances to meet people and see things that few people do. But there is a tradeoff: Life is perpetually on hold.

When our season ended, that next day I was kind of throwing things on the board thinking about things I maybe wanted to do differently, things I wanted to try, people I wanted to reach out to talk to about ideas, Wilson said. You get pretty eager and excited about the opportunity that the players had to develop from that day forward. Every day you don't do something is a day lost. But every day you do something is a day you put something in the bank to draw on later on.

For the first four months after Wilson lost his job, he rarely could bring himself to get in a workout. He felt exhausted and kept wanting to sleep. His energy eventually returned, and he has been working out four or five days a week.


Outside the box

Mostly, the workouts consist of long walks. Hell walk for an hour, maybe two, and think.

I don't like to ponder; it kind of leaves things unanswered, Wilson said. I've always known I could do other things. But I think the last several months I've really learned that lesson. I'm not just a basketball coach. I used to tell my players all the time: Basketball is what I do, not who I am.

He has contemplated offers to get into sports administration. He has received feelers about coaching overseas. People have come to him with business ventures unrelated to basketball. He's intrigued by what will become of his radio work and by the possibility of doing television. And before long, there will be the next wave of coaching openings.


College. High school. Professional.

He's one of the most respected coaches in the country, Penders said, and a guy who knows what's going on.

One of Wilson's confidants is former Rice assistant coach Todd Smith, now the athletic director at the University of St. Thomas. Wilson and Smith talk at least twice at week.

I think he misses coaching quite a bit, Smith said. I know that even though the time away is enjoyable, its just a matter of time before he gets into coaching. I know that's in his blood.

So Smith considers it a given that Wilson will make a beeline for the sideline?

I don't, Smith said. Some guys who are coaches, I don't think they could do anything else. I think there are other things that he could do and enjoy. He's always been into politics and has an opinion on books and movies and everything. He would always bring up other subjects, other interests.


College hoops dilemma

On the one hand, Wilson laments how college basketball increasingly creates compromises between winning and what's best for the players. On the other hand, he wonders what it would be like to coach at a place that can recruit on relatively equal footing with the competition.

At Rice, you don't have to cloud your head with how you want to do a lot of things, because you're limited, Wilson said. You're limited by the academics. You're limited by the resources. You're limited just by the nature of the program, falling into an academic Ivy League environment.

The chance to be somewhere different, the fun thing would be knowing there's a whole other world and way of doing things. That would be intriguing and fun.

Vicki Wilson said the time away from coaching has been like a renewal for her husband. Some days, she said, she hopes her husband gets back into coaching. Some days, she's not so sure. One of the boys recently asked Vicki, When is Dad going back to work? He's starting to like this too much.

Maybe the fact Wilson has taken lately to reading books about leadership is a hint of where his head and heart will guide him. Maybe this cure for insomnia is worse than the affliction. And maybe not. What he does know is that time has begun to heal some of the wounded confidence and hurt feelings.

I know I'm a good husband, Wilson said. I know I'm a good father. Call it ego or whatever you want, but I know I'm a very, very good coach. Doesn't mean I'm going to be as successful as somebody who lands at the right program where they have the right players. And that doesn't bother me. For a long time, that did bother me. It bothered me to not have the resources and do the best job you can and it not be enough.

I think there just comes a point where you have to do what's right and not worry about somebody judging you. You just have to know you're going to make some wrong decisions, and you're going to make them right. Just like you tell your players every day: You play through it. You play above it. You play above your mistakes.