From manager to head man

By David Selig
The Winchester Star

“I turned 31 this past Friday, so I guess I missed it by a few days,” Walsh joked by phone Tuesday afternoon, hours after he was announced as the new men’s basketball coach at Centenary College in Shreveport, La.

Considering the path the 1997 James Wood High School graduate has taken to get there, that shouldn’t be viewed as a failure by any stretch.

Because of avascular necrosis in his hip — a condition in which blood flow to the bone is interrupted or reduced — Walsh never played competitive basketball in middle school or high school.

But he refused to let that keep him away from the game.

He served as a manager for coach Garland Williams’ team at Robert E. Aylor Middle School and took on that position for both Scott Mankins’ boys’ team and John Maphis’ girls’ team at James Wood.

“They were very early examples of what it’s like to have discipline and structure in your program,” Walsh reflected Tuesday. “In some ways, both [Mankins and Williams] are more structured than a lot of college programs.”

Walsh moved on to become a student manager during his undergraduate studies at High Point University.

He served as a graduate manager at Campbell University and then worked as an assistant coach at Barton College (2001-03), Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (2003-05), Odessa College (2005-06) and Paris Junior College (2006-07) before joining Centenary as an assistant in 2007.

Centenary (8-21 last season) is preparing for its final year as a Division I school in the Summit League, which will be followed by a transition to Division III.

That led Greg Gary to resign as head coach last week to take a job as an assistant at Duquesne, opening the door for Walsh to be promoted into a situation that most coaches would find less than ideal.

But Walsh — who has also been named an assistant athletic director at Centenary — doesn’t look at it that way.

“We’ll be full D-I for one more year, so it’s going to be very exciting to go ahead and compete at the absolute best level of college basketball,” said Walsh, who will not be permitted to add any new scholarship players this off-season.

“True love of the game”

Walsh’s parents, Nancy and Phil, still live in Frederick County, and Walsh says he tries to return home every few months.

When he’s here during basketball season, Walsh said he always makes a point to go see the local high school teams play.

It goes back to what Mankins calls a “true love of the game” that was evident in Walsh from the time he became a Colonel.

“He would come to practice every day in full gear as a manager,” said Mankins, now Millbrook’s boys’ basketball coach. “Any time we needed an extra body, we’d throw him in there. I think his dad knew about that, but they didn’t tell his mom.”

Walsh said he was cleared to play before his junior year, and he competed with James Wood’s junior varsity travel team that summer, but he was too far behind to become a contributing member of the program, so he stuck to managing.

Mankins said the Colonels kept Walsh on the eligible roster and had him dress for the game on his Senior Night, but that’s not the coach’s foremost memory of Walsh.

As Mankins recalls, Walsh was given the responsibility of video taping the team’s Blue-Gold scrimmage during his freshman year.

Perched on the balcony above the court, the coaches asked Walsh to record a wide view of the action, so they could keep track of the players throughout each defensive sequence and in transition.

“The coaches get together and we pop in the tape. He had zoomed into the player with the ball the entire scrimmage,” Mankins said.

That earned Walsh the nickname “Zoom,” which Mankins even used when the two e-mailed back and forth after Walsh notified him about his promotion on Monday.

“All things are possible”

“Zoom” has some busy days ahead.

He leaves next week to coach an Athletes in Action team on a mission trip to East Asia.

Then there’s the task of preparing his somewhat undersized team for its final season of Division-I basketball.

“We’re going to have an up-tempo team and utilize our guard play,” said Walsh, who plans to implement an array of full-court and half-court presses. “I’m going to have to mix it up a lot.”

Walsh acknowledged the challenges in front of him as he closed his statement at Tuesday’s press conference at Centenary with a biblical reference.

“I will leave you with this, specifically for those that deem this to be an impossible situation,” he said. “From a young man who didn’t even have the chance to play competitive basketball, to the man standing before you today, humbled to be your new coach. From Matthew Chapter 19, Verse 26, ‘With God all things are possible.’”

Walsh considers himself proof of that, and that mindset just might make him the ideal fit for his new position.

Asked if he added any new goals to his résumé after officially becoming a head coach, Walsh said he’d like to start a family and make the most of his current opportunity.

“Even if it’s not a lower D-I job and I have stability at the Division II or Division III level — and as long as I’m working with great people -— I would be absolutely comfortable with that my entire career,” he said.

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