When you’re watching any sport at Bakersfield College, or any junior college for that matter, you can start to think that every coach is just trying to win games. Sure that’s one of their goals, but it’s not the main one.
Many of these coaches are trying to help their players advance their education and continue their play to the next level. It’s easy to be critical of BC coaches when the teams are struggling, and I’ve been there, saying that they need a change of coach because the team isn’t responding, but even though the season might not be a success, the coaches might have a good year getting their players new opportunities at different levels of that sport.
It is all about the players and getting them a chance to continue on to a four-year school. Even though the chances these players will go pro are slim, they do get the opportunity to go to a four-year school and get a degree. BC coaches know that for most of these players, BC is just a transition point. They know that players want to use their athletic abilities to keep getting better as a player, but also, to further their education to help support their families.
Some of these players at BC, for whatever the reason, weren’t able to make it to a four-year school right out of high school, so they come to BC hoping to advance their playing careers. The coaches know that and genuinely care about them and want to see them succeed in that. They try to help them to get into a four-year school so that they can have a degree, and for the lucky few, even go pro in their respective sport.
When you talk to coaches here at BC about how important it is that players move on to four-year schools, they express the satisfaction they get from that. When I talked to BC men’s basketball coach Rich Hughes, he said that he obviously wants to win games, but ultimately, his main goal is to help his players move on to the next level. Of course, some coaches can just say that to sound good, but I actually believed what he said because he seemed genuinely happy to see his players continuing on with their education and their playing careers.
A perfect example of what coaches helping their players moving on to four-year schools can do for them is BC’s new swim coach Matt Moon. Moon swam here at BC in 2008 under Charlie Pike, and then moved on to a four-year school and got his degree. Now he’s the swim coach at BC and Pike helped him in that by recommending him.
These coaches aren’t only trying to get some W’s or help their athletes to get better each day to help them reach their optimum levels in their respective sport, but are also helping them with getting their future jobs, just like Pike did for Moon. These coaches really go to great lengths to help their players with getting better and helping to get support for the program through fundraisers, but most of all they help them to ensure they have a chance to have a good education.