PART XXIV - The Secret of Longevity - Things Happen.

People ask me all of the time why I don't get overly upset when things aren't going my way. When prodded about the topic, I tell folks that everything happens for a reason. Yes, a very generic statement, but it is very true when it comes to not just my coaching career, but my life.

Not many folks know that after my first season of working as an assistant boys varsity basketball coach at R.J. Reynolds (my alma mater) in the 1994-95 season, I came very close to quitting and doing something else with my life.

However, Howard West, my high school coach and, at the time, the guy who I was now coaching under told me that I had a chance to be a good coach, but I needed to have my own team. When coaching with him that first season, I said little to nothing out of the respect I had for him. I didn't want to say the wrong thing or suggest something that was incorrect. He told me that he was going to make me the head ninth grade coach the following season, which he did, and for the majority of the season, he left me on my own.

That season was exactly what I needed.

A year later, at the close of the 1996-97 season, the year after I started The Winston-Salem Stealers, I was offered the varsity GIRLS head coaching job at Starmount. I met with the athletic director and principal, spent the day in Boonville and stayed around to watch the Rams softball team play East Surry. By the end of the day, the job was mine. However, there was a break in communication either on Starmount's part or mine and the entire summer went by without a word if I officially would be the coach.

School started back at Reynolds and I was in the classroom during 1st period when the phone rang. It was the athletic director at Starmount asking if I was planning to start school next week there? I told him that I hadn't heard anything from them, so I went back to Reynolds.

If I had officially been offered the job at Starmount, I would have taken the job. I had told Coach West that past spring that I was probably leaving and had made the arrangements necessary for the move.

It wasn't meant to be... Things Happen.

That summer, David Norman, the former girls coach at Starmount and a big supporter of the Rams approached me during a high school summer league game that I was coaching in at T.W. Andrews High School in High Point. He told me that if I don't take the girls job at Starmount, there may be an opportunity to coach the varsity boys the following season.

He was right; at the end of the 1998 season the varsity boys job came open, and I applied, again. The interview was good and both parties agreed to keep the communication lines open IF the job was offered.

It was offered and I took it.

I loved Starmount. Yes, things got off to a rocky start that first season because the football team won the state title that year. I didn't get a full squad of kids until mid-December. We played without the football players the first 8-9 games and got off to a 1-9 start. Somehow, we got things together, made the state playoffs and almost pulled an upset in the first round losing a late ten point lead at Graham.

Two seasons later at the end of the 2001 season, the head varsity girls basketball job came open and I was being pushed by everyone in the now, large, Stealers program, to interview for that job.

As much as I loved Starmount, Reynolds was home. I put my name in for the job and immediately got an interview. Following the interview, which was in the middle of the school day, I walked from the office to the gym to talk to Coach West. I was stopped by several girls basketball players asking if I was going to be their coach, and I told them I hope so, but nothing is given.

After almost two months of waiting I got the call. I didn't get the job.

Was I upset? Yes, but only for a few minutes. I went back to Starmount for the 2001-02 season and, as many of you know, that was the year when so many unexplained things took place.

Our starting point guard Nick Martin died in a car accident a couple of days before the start of our season. We won our first game of the season on a 3-pointer at the buzzer. Later that year, we rallied from a nineteen point deficit in the fourth quarter to win a critical game vs. Alleghany. We then lost a game at Surry Central where I came, for a second time, oh so close to never, ever coaching again.

I chronicled that game a few other times before, but the short version is that we lost a sixteen point fourth quarter lead in which I called a timeout I didn't have to give Surry Central a win in a game that essentially cost us a state playoff birth.

We would later play a play-in game versus Alleghany at East Wilkes where we again lost at the buzzer on a layup.

I, at the time, didn't understand why these things were happening to me. Why wasn't I the girls coach at Starmount? Why didn't I get the girls job at Reynolds? Why did this tragedy happen with Nick? Why did we lose not one but two games in the final seconds where if we won just one we would have been in the state playoffs?

I did my best to remember that everything happens for a reason. Things happen... don't question them.

Losing those two games at the end of the 2002 season made me realize that I needed a fresh start. Starmount needed a fresh start. We both needed a reset. I felt it was best to turn in my resignation letter and go find something else, outside of basketball, to do. Too many things didn't go as I had planned and I felt like something or someone was trying to tell me you need a different environment and pursue a different route.

I held onto the resignation letter for a month. At the end of April, literally a day before I was going to call it quits, I get a call from George Repass, the principal at Bishop McGuinness. The head varsity girls job was open and the former coach, Marc Pruitt, who grew up down the street from me and had told Mr. Repass to hire me. Marc had seen the growth of the Stealers program and felt like I could take that passion for girls basketball to McGuinness and turn that program around.

I, reluctantly, interviewed, but didn't go in with high hopes because of what happened a year earlier. To my surprise, I was offered the job and after telling Mr. Repass and Dennis Allen, the athletic director, no two times, I took the job.

Shortly after taking the job at Bishop, two years later almost to the day, I was offered an assistant coaching job at UNC-Charlotte with the women's basketball program. I turned it down because of what I thought could be accomplished at Bishop and my love of the Winston-Salem Stealers program, at the tme six years old.

I would wind up turning down three other college coaching jobs, including in 2013, with N.C. State when Wes Moore was hired. That was a hard one because Coach Moore kept telling me that "No one has ever told me 'no'... ever, when it comes to being offered a job."

I look back at how one phone call in 1997, how one decision in 2001, how one bounce of the ball at the end of the 2002 season or one choice between 2002-2013 could have shaped or reshaped the futures of not just me, but so, so, so, so many others.

Things happen for a reason.

So now, it is the March of 2024. We lost a tough fourth round game in this season's state playoffs after winning back-to-back state championships the previous two seasons. In the two years prior to that we lost in the Final Four on a putback at the buzzer and in the Elite Eight, again at the buzzer, by one point.

All losses are tough, but the amount of incredible moments, amazing feelings and irreplaceable relationships that have been formed during my time at Bishop make any disappointment minimal.

I understand that the disappointments I face these days all are a setup for something wonderful to take place later. I can't see what's coming, but I know if I keep going, I keep working and if I stay focused and true to what I love to do, something so much better is going to be right around the corner. I am thankful for the disappointments... because all of this almost never happened.

It really is amazing to me how all of this never, ever happened, but because of having faith that everything does really happen for a reason, it allows for me to keep things moving knowing that everything, whether I like it or not at the time, is a setup for something so much better than I ever imagined.

Things Happen.

Yours For Better Basketball Always,

Brian / Coach Robinson