David Owens Interview Essay

Owosso High School’s head boy’s basketball coach, David Owens, is a small town legend in his own right. With over 20 plus years of college and high school basketball under his belt, he has had the privilege to work under the supervision of Michigan State’s head basketball coach, Tom Izzo, and Indiana University’s Bob Knight, as an assistant video coordinator for each program. Throughout the interview with Mr. Owens, he explained how basketball has not only impacted his life, but also the lives of his wife and three children. When asked, “What challenges have you faced as a coach?” Mr. Owens’s first response was “time.” He elaborated on an issue that many sports professionals struggle with on a daily basis. How do you delegate specific amounts of time for each facet of your

Owens basically explained that when he was growing up, he thought that there was only one way to play and to coach basketball. That was Indiana University way. He was convinced that the only way to gain success in the sport that he loved would be by only coaching the way that Bob Knight coached. However, as Mr. Owens became older, and got more experience in the industry, he began to realize that he needed a mix of multiple coaching styles to become the most effective coach that he could be. He didn't realize this until after leaving Michigan State University for Owosso High School. Mr. Owen’s needed to see what other coaches were doing, including their positive and negative aspects, and he needed to apply them to make his own unique coaching style. As long as he was able to come up with a valid reason for liking or disliking a coaching style, that ultimately helped him with finding the correct mixture of styles for his high school team. To this day, he still uses a lot of Indiana University and Michigan State techniques to train and educate his high school