by John Hardaway (@CoachHardaway)9/17/2024 7:39:29 PM
posted in: Skordle Sampler | 2,438 views
There are times in life where no words are adequate to truly express what a person means to you. Moments of immense sadness normally tend to be tied to the loss of a loved one.
That person can be a family member, a close friend or an impactful mentor. This week I feel like I lost all three of those when my coach, David Glover, passed from this earth.
Coach Glover’s positive impact on me is not worthy of any words or sentences I could ever type, but doing so allows me to remember him and process the immense levels of sadness I have felt this past week.
While writing this, I find threads of joy and appreciation of the relationship I had with Coach and that helps me cope with the grief of losing someone that has meant the world to me.
My family moved to Fairview from Hennessey the summer before my 8th grade school year. I knew who Coach Glover was - the Fairview girls coach - but I didn’t know him.
I always thought he looked like a college or NBA coach because he was always well dressed in a suit and tie.
He coached with passion and confidence and his girls played that way. The Fairview Lady Jackets were as good as anyone playing in Oklahoma at the time.
Coach Glover’s 1995 team lost the state semifinals the last year of 6-on-6 girls’ basketball in Oklahoma. A fellow coach and longtime friend of his once told me, “Glove was a heck of 6-on-6 coach!”
During my first year of school at Fairview, Coach Glover made it a point to seek out the new 8th grader who loved basketball. Coach did this to help a new kid become comfortable and feel a part of a school and community.
He did this with a welcoming smile and a smooth delivery.
As I moved towards high school, I would be in the same building as Coach Glover. He was someone I really liked and I knew he liked me because he was constantly giving me a hard time, but never in a harsh or serious way.
Coach loved to bring me back down a couple notches in the hallway of the high school or in the gym and it was exactly what I needed at the time.
Coach did this in a way that let me know he was keeping up with me.
Coach Glover’s girls’ team my freshman year of high school was excellent. It was the first year of 5-on-5 for all classes in Oklahoma.
The Fairview Lady Jackets made it all the way to the state championship game at the Fairgrounds, losing to Inola by 2 points. I vividly remember it was an excellent game as I cheered in the student section at State Fair Arena like so many small-town Oklahoma kids do if their school is lucky enough to make it there.
I also remember specifically watching Coach Glover “coach” a lot that year from the student section.
My sophomore year of high school was when my relationship with Coach Glover became special and meaningful. I had Coach Glover in class every day and he would be my assistant coach in varsity basketball.
I was about to become “Phat” for the rest of my life and let me tell you a story why.
Coach Glover was my Sophomore English teacher. Coach was an excellent classroom teacher and I absolutely loved going to his class.
For me personally, he was this awesome, funny, confident and highly-successful coach who had an incredible ability for teaching and reaching students in the classroom.
We had a vocabulary test every week, which he taught out of this little old notebook. I learned how to write a five-paragraph essay.
My favorite thing in his classroom was reading books together as a class, normally in a play format with characters assigned by Coach. Of all the stories we read together in class, Of Mice and Men was his favorite.
When it came to reading it that school year, Coach cast himself as George and I was Lennie.
In the book, Lennie asks George several times, “When are we going to get that little place to live on the fat of the land?”
If you have ever read the book or watched the movie, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
During the class readings, Coach gave me the nickname “Phat.” Thankfully he changed the spelling to be cool and hip from the “F” to “Ph” and it stuck.
Coach called me Phat from that point forward for the rest of his life. It didn’t matter about the situation or who was around, if Coach was talking to me, it was only Phat and it always made me laugh.
I can hear the exchanges between us in class just like it was yesterday.
Coach Glover was also our assistant boys’ basketball coach my sophomore year and he was fantastic in that role. We spent a tremendous amount of time together in practices.
He gave me encouragement, confidence and advice. We shot a lot of baskets together before and after practices.
My favorite part was that he wanted to shoot, too, and demanded “change” on all his makes. Coach could really shoot the basketball, a self-described smooth lefty.
I spent a lot of time rebounding and him shooting with him talking some mild trash the entire time. I was, however, smart enough to never shoot him for dollars.
Coach hid the gym key under his mailbox for us players to use anytime. This was the kind of thing you can do when you coach and play in a small rural town.
The number of times I went to get that key would be too many times to even guess.
Coach and I also shot a lot of baskets together over the years, either in the gym or in his driveway. It’s the kind of activity two people who love basketball and each other do, while talking about anything and everything other than basketball.
That following summer would be the start of some of the most enjoyable times that I ever had with Coach Glover as a referee for his summer league.
For the next three summers, Coach and I along with Adam and Matt Diesselhorst reffed a ton of summer league games together. The pay was low, but the experience together was a blast.
Cyndy Glover always took care of us with some Paul Bunyan bread and Sonic drinks. I wrote about this in 2020.
My junior year, my parents bought Coach Glover’s old black 1985 GMC Jimmy for me to drive. It was a stick shift and it backfired all the time.
When it would do this, it scared the heck out everyone nearby. It literally sounded like a shotgun being fired into a tin bucket. It makes me giggle just thinking about how loud it was and how often it happened.
I drove that Jimmy for several years and that little V6 couldn’t pass a single car, even going downhill and putting the gas pedal to the floorboard.
During my junior and senior years of high school, I had two amazing experiences with Coach Glover. I was his teacher’s aide in the coaches’ office and he was the head baseball coach.
These two years of my life are what made me want to be a coach.
Being Coach Glover’s aide in the coaches’ office for the next two years was simply awesome. All the coaches shared an office together.
I heard and participated in all the discussions, good and bad, of all the games and practices. I bet I only got asked to leave (“go shoot Phat”) a handful of times.
The best part of this experience was talking about whatever was going on at the school or on all the teams. It was a great experience and one I cherish greatly to this day.
Secondly, Coach Glover was my head baseball coach. There are a ton of great stories from these two years of high school baseball.
In the last high school game I ever played in any sport, I was pitching and was just getting hammered on the mound. We were down several runs in an elimination game.
Simply put, I was awful and coach left me in way too long. I never wanted to come out of any game and I could tell he didn’t want to come get me either, but he had to.
When I got to the dugout ahead of him, I went and sat by myself. I was really upset because I felt like I let my teammates, and especially him, down.
High school sports were over for me.
When Coach Glover got back to the dugout, he came and put his arm around me. In classic Coach Glover fashion, he started telling funny stories from the two baseball seasons we had together, trying to make my heartache a little better.
Coach Glover was a heck of a golfer and he would let me borrow his golf cart anytime I wanted if he wasn’t using it. Coach finally told me, after calling him repeatedly, and said, “Phat quit calling me every time you want to go out there and just make sure to put it back on the charger.”
Occasionally, Coach would allow me to join his round of golf and I was always asking for pointers because my game needed lots of improvement.
During my sophomore year of college, I finally decided to do what I really wanted to do since being an office aide for Coach in high school.
That was ditching my pursuit of a business degree and pursuing a teaching degree and becoming a coach. I remember telling Coach Glover and he was genuinely excited for me.
My first head coaching job was when I was 22 years old. I called or emailed Coach a bunch of times that year. I was learning fast that I really didn’t know anything about coaching and being a teacher, but he always encouraged me, challenged me to work hard and to create meaningful relationships with my players.
Coach would always listen to what I had to say and mentor me.
For the next several years, I would cross paths with Coach regularly while he was at Newkirk, Bethel and Okarche while I was at Morrison and Cashion.
I would see him and Cyndy at a lot of basketball games, but also many other sporting and school events. Coach would call, text or email often about my games he watched mainly to let me know he cared about how I was doing.
When Coach moved onto the OSSAA to be the director of small school basketball for the state of Oklahoma, this became a new situation in our relationship.
We didn’t always agree on whatever we were discussing, but every single call ended with him saying “Love ya Phat” and I would reply “Love ya Coach.”
We understood we were both doing what we thought was best at the time.
Coach was an excellent basketball director! He would always take a call or reply to an email from the hundreds of schools, administrators or coaches he served at the OSSAA.
Coach worked diligently on drawing up the playoffs for B-4A every year and he wanted to get it right. Coach had lots of Oklahoma state maps with push pins and rubber bands in his office and at his house creating playoff brackets.
I know he really cherished his time at the Big House representing the OSSAA. He loved watching hoops with Cyndy and their grandkids sitting right next to him.
I loved to go and sit with him at the State Fairgrounds which was his happy place. I always thought he was perfect for that job and he was excellent at it.
When Coach moved to Kingfisher, I would get to see him regularly at ballgames. I also made it a point to try and stop by his house when I was in town.
Coach and Cyndy had my kids over to swim in their pool during the summer.
I really enjoyed going over to his house to see him prior to the start of the state basketball tournaments. We would visit and talk about all the teams and who might win, because Coach loved the state tournament!
Looking back now, I wish I had stopped in more and stayed longer.
Coach and Cyndy attended a lot of my teams’ games just to watch me coach. In 2021, they were sitting in the front row to watch my team at the Tournament of Champions.
Just last year at the Lomega Junior High Tournament in Loyal, they stayed after the Kingfisher game there were there to watch just to see my son, Jack, play his game.
This really meant a lot to me.
If you have or had a relationship with a coach, teacher, sponsor or principal like the one I had with Coach Glover, you are truly fortunate and you should count yourself blessed.
Coach Glover has been coaching me for the last 30 years of my life, not just a single or couple of seasons like most people experience.
I will never take this for granted, but rather know I was beyond fortunate.
Coach, thank you for everything you ever did for me! You gave me comfort, confidence, discipline, laughter and guidance whenever I needed it most.
If I can make just 1% of the positive impact on my own family, players and students that you made on me, I know that would be substantial and profound.
I would never have been a teacher, coach or the person I’m today if it wasn’t for you and your immeasurable influence on me.
Rest in peace coach and I hope you are hitting it long and straight in Heaven!
Love,
Phat
Cyndy Glover World Famous Baked Beans
In addition to the Paul Buyan Bread recipe linked above, I have also included Cyndy Glover’s World-Famous Baked Beans. She made this all the time for cookouts and get togethers. The Hardaway boys (my dad included) loved it so much, my mom asked her for the recipe. This is a picture of the actual recipe Cyndy shared with my mom. I love the notes my mom wrote on the recipe *SO GOOD* and “The boys love this”. This recipe is incredible and the best baked beans you will ever have.
