Most everyone told Derek Kurnitsky it was the wrong move. “You’re going to coach the East Rowan boys basketball team?” they exclaimed. “For your first head coaching job? You’ll never want to coach again.”
Then, the 28-year-old kid, who goes by Coach K, prowled the sidelines for the first time, leading the Mustangs to a win that produced a shocking 88-point performance by an even more shocking 39-point bulge.
That’s all it took for most everyone to realize that Kurnitsky was making all the right moves. The naysayers just didn’t know what Coach K was all about.
They do now.
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Principal Harry Starr and athletic director Worth Roberts had a good feeling the first time they interviewed him. When they decided to give Kurnitsky the keys to the Mustang family car, it was running with all the precision of a Pinto. He grabbed those keys with a zeal of a 16-year old as if to say, “I’ll turn this into the family Cadillac.”
Kurnitsky admits that he knew what he was getting into when he accepted the job back in the summer. Everybody told him.
It was beaten into his head like a drum: East has never won. East never will win. You’ll be out in in a couple of years. You’ll lose your confidence. It will ruin you.
Kurnitsky laughed in the faces of anyone who told him that.
Every time some Joe Blow would tell him he didn’t know what he was getting into, he’d quickly remind them, “You don’t know what you’re getting either.”
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Kurnitsky is always reminded about the past. He’d go to a fish fry and someone would say, “East hasn’t had a winning season since 1989.
“That has nothing to do with me,” he’d chirp.
He’d sit in Todd Eller’s barber shop in Granite Quarry and be reminded that East is 48-188 over the past 10 years.
“So?” was the reaction.
He’d talk with people at football games and hear that East hasn’t beaten West Rowan in 27 games or North Rowan in the last 21. Only beaten Salisbury once in the last 14.
Doesn’t matter, he’d say.
Kurnitsky fed all of this into his computerized basketball-and-nothing-but-basketball brain and the result was not what people expected.
He wanted this challenge.
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First, he surveyed.
He walked into what was supposed to be his office.
“It looked like my fraternity house,” laughed Kurnitsky, who sat on Pat Kennedy’s Florida State bench in the early ’90s as the manager for the Sam
Cassell-led Seminole teams.
With some prodding, he got the school to get some paint on those walls and the booster club to carpet the floor. Next, he put name plates on each kid’s locker. And in the future, if a kid idolized, say, Derek Talbert, while he was growing up, he’ll get Talbert’s locker when he reaches East.
It was also time to win over an apathetic basketball community.
So Kurnitsky got out among the people. He knocked on doors, asking for money for a basketball/winter sports media guide.
A what?
He’ll talk hoops in McDonald’s or while getting gas at a convenience store. He goes to those fish fries even though he doesn’t like fish.
“Ieat the hushpuppies,” he grins. “The main reason I go is to meet people.”
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But the people he really had to win over were the players themselves. Could he make a senior like Matt Belk believe East could win after all that losing?
Those questions have been answered. Coach K might call Belk at 11 at night just to ask what play he’d run in a certain situation. At first, Belk was stunned. Now, he expects his coach to call.
“The kids have bought into it,” Kurnitsky said of his style. “And that’s key. And that’s fun!”
One of the first things he told Starr was that there had to be open gym.
“Itold him it would probably be open on Christmas Day,” Kurnitsky chuckles.
And get this. Kurnitsky is even putting an entertainment system in the locker room with a TV, VCR and, of course, play station.
“Just in case the guys need to wind down,” he says.
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Coach K doesn’t seem like the type who wants to wind down. He is go, go, go all the time. Gotta pump up those players. Gotta keep the fans interested. Gotta get everybody into the gym to watch East Rowan boys basketball.
For the first time, there will be a pep band. Kurnitsky has even established a Hall of Fame. When East plays North Iredell on Feb. 8, Gilbert Sprinkle and Jesse Watson will be the first two inductees.
And East Rowan is going to look like winners. Coach K is putting his players in navy blazers. With ties. And an East Rowan patch.
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All of this is well and good but what happens on the court really matters. You can have all the patches and blazers and media guides you want ... but if you can’t win?
“Somebody told me if we won 10 games, they’d build a statue of me in Granite Quarry,” Coach K laughs. “But you know what? If we only win 10 games, they’ll have to put me in a straight jacket.”
The two coaches he seems to admire most are Davie’s Jim Young, who’s offense he is stealing, uh, borrowing, and West Rowan’s Mike Gurley, who is as emotional about the game as he is. And Kurnitsky wants to one day win like West Rowan.
Like Gurley, he’ll do it his way.
“I’m a strict disciplinarian,” he reminds us. “No shoes untied. No tattoos. No rings in your nose. And I don’t play favorites. I yell at everybody.
“I wasn’t hired to be their friend. I was hired to build a program.”
Oh, by the way, there was one other thing that had to be done during the rebuilding process.
Watch the movie Hoosiers.
“Why can’t we be like Hoosiers?” Coach K wants to know. “Why can’t we shock the world?”
It all sounds so strange, this confident talk coming out of the East Rowan gym from a virtual stranger. But look into Kurnitsky’s eyes. Go ahead. Look. He means every word.
“I’m not the savior,” he says. “The kids are the saviors. I’m just the wacko running up and down the sidelines.”
Making — so far — all the right moves.
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Contact Ronnie Gallagher at 704-797-4287 or rgallagher@salisburypost.com
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