Big Coach in the Little Gym

January 27, 2011 6:37 PM

Big Coach in the Little Gym Scott Lang was 41 years old when he died last month. He was not married. He had no children. He spent almost all of his adult life as the basketball coach at La Roche College, a tiny Division III school in the north hills just above Pittsburgh.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies (29 comments total)

Beautiful story. Thanks for sharing.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:39 PM on January 27, 2011

Oh, and

.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:39 PM on January 27, 2011

OK. Really. Crying now.
posted by SPrintF at 6:49 PM on January 27, 2011

.

wow. No words right now.
posted by gaspode at 6:52 PM on January 27, 2011

As a proud Division III girl who spent 10+ years working at a soulless Division I, I say bless those tiny schools and the people who work there because the place calls them to it.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 6:54 PM on January 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

To follow up: look, I'm really a nobody. I work at a school district, trying to make a difference for the 10's of thousands of students I'm responsible for. No one knows me, no one knows what I do. No one will dribble a basketball in my memory. But I hope that their lives are improved, even a little, by what I do every day.

I think we are here to help each other. Otherwise, why are we here at all?
posted by SPrintF at 6:56 PM on January 27, 2011 [21 favorites]

Thanks for posting this, I'm not sure how I missed this story when it happened last month. LaRoche is not too far away and I've known people who taught there and a friend of mine works at the hospital that they took him to.

What a heartbreaking story, life's just a cruel MFer sometimes.

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posted by octothorpe at 7:02 PM on January 27, 2011

There are so many people in this world that are working this hard for our children and our young people that this story, which is so wonderful and sad at the same time, probably isn't really that unusual.

This is an era when people that put out this kind of effort for kids are scorned on a regular basis, teachers and coaches are told they work too little and get paid too much, they are asked to to more with less (when so many of them are already working as hard as Scott Lang evidently did every day).

Someday folks like Lang will receive the support they need to do they job the love, and appreciation they deserve.

Thanks for posting this....
posted by HuronBob at 7:18 PM on January 27, 2011 [4 favorites]

"What a heartbreaking story, life's just a cruel MFer sometimes."

I don't know. The guy lived every moment doing something he loved, and he died right in the middle of it. Maybe his life was a kind of sustained flow. Maybe we should all be so lucky.
posted by rain at 7:34 PM on January 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

I hate that I expected there to be a reveal of some heinous past.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:54 PM on January 27, 2011

I'm a firm believer that great humanity and heroism happens at the smallest level, and this only reaffirms that.

Godspeed, Scott. You did good.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:01 PM on January 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

on the upper level college basketball level, the Nick Nolte movie"Blue Chips" is about the sincere love of the teaching and coaching of the game of basketball should be more important than the bullshit that has latched on to the game.
posted by tustinrick at 8:54 PM on January 27, 2011

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posted by gen at 9:37 PM on January 27, 2011

I refuse to feel sad reading this. The guy lived his whole life, doing EXACTLY what he wanted to do, surrounded by people who loved and respected him. The end was sudden, and relatively painless. he made the most of what he was given. Don't cry - EMULATE.
posted by OneMonkeysUncle at 10:23 PM on January 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Here's to coaches like Scott Lang.

Every time I hear about some monster of a little league coach, I try to remember that there are coaches like Scott Lang. As a player and a person, I was made better by men and women who coached out of a love of the game and a love for their players.

Nice work Coach. And thanks.
posted by 26.2 at 12:14 AM on January 28, 2011

He would have hated that this was about him. He would have hated the attention.

What is sad about this is that if you remove his death from the story, no one would be interested. Why don't we appreciate people until they are dead, and then often in ways that they wouldn't even want?
posted by Menthol at 4:06 AM on January 28, 2011

Scott Lang was 41 years old when he died last month. He was not married. He had no children.

Sad. He might have been gay. But that's an unmentionable when it comes to college sports.
posted by Carol Anne at 5:35 AM on January 28, 2011

It's a very touching article. But it is very weird how many times the writer is all, "He had no life. He wouldn't settle down. He wouldn't have a family already. All he cared about was basketball."

Uh.... His choice, dude?
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:17 AM on January 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

.
posted by ejoey at 7:18 AM on January 28, 2011

As a former university student-athlete I can really relate to this. I know so many people like Scott, and understand perfectly the choice to stay in a small place. Some people understand that sport is not about money or glamour, but rather about being the best person you can be at one thing, and then applying that ethic to the rest of your life. This you can do better without the distractions that come with Div. I programs. This guy understood this.

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posted by jimmythefish at 7:32 AM on January 28, 2011

The article explicitly mentions him dating women, so it's not like he was a total ascetic. I suspect no one wanted to compete with the schedule during basketball season....
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 7:33 AM on January 28, 2011

thanks for posting this. i read it via another site earlier today.

my favorite part:

Then they talked about dreams, about all the others they knew who left this area in search of the bright lights that neither of them wanted to pursue. Just before Scott left he smiled and said: “Remember Mike, they might be wealthy but we are rich.”

i can only hope to be so rich some day.
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posted by msconduct at 7:48 AM on January 28, 2011

.

even as a nerd who couldn't hit a three-point shot with a laser-guided missile, this brought a tear to my eye.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:32 AM on January 28, 2011

Beautiful. This guy understood life better than most folks do at twice his age.

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posted by kinnakeet at 8:41 AM on January 28, 2011

This was a moving piece.

That said, Western PA pedantry moment: "He played his high school basketball in nearby Mars Township, went to nearby Butler Community College, then played point guard at Clarion College about 100 miles away." That's four mistakes in one sentence:

1) There is no Mars Township. Mars is a borough, served by Mars Area School District.
2) The proper name is Butler County Community College.
3) The proper name is Clarion University, not College.
4) It's not clear exactly what Clarion is supposed to be 100 miles from, but Clarion is about 65 highway miles from Mars, and about 75 from La Roche.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:00 AM on January 28, 2011

I saw this lovely tribute yesterday, too, and thought it would be a neat post for MetaFilter. Glad you posted it.
posted by librarylis at 10:53 AM on January 28, 2011

Eh, Chrysostom, sometimes the narrative gets in the way of/is more important than the details.

I went to La Roche, but have never followed the sports teams in the 21 years since I graduated because it IS a tiny school, with few sports teams, and what ones they had were never particularly good - as is alluded to in the story. In fact, the only other time I can recall La Roche getting any national attention for its sports programs was when its baseball team got shelled something like 56-1 or some damned thing. That wound up on ESPN.

There really was something about the school though - and maybe many of you who went to small schools can say the same thing. A greater cameraderie? Maybe. Whatever it was, it's clear to me that Lang felt that pull. Good for him - and good for the school.
posted by kgasmart at 11:08 AM on January 28, 2011

kgasmart: "Eh, Chrysostom, sometimes the narrative gets in the way of/is more important than the details."

Well, I DID say I was being pedantic. Agree with you for the most part, it just makes me wonder what else in there is not accurate.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:42 AM on January 28, 2011

Carol Anne: Sad. He might have been gay. But that's an unmentionable when it comes to college sports.

I'm sorry, but I'm wondering what led you to say this. The article mentions that he had girlfriends but that basketball was his first priority. This was a D-III men's basketball coach, and the article you linked to is talking about D-I women's basketball. I don't think that an obit post for a man who was obviously passionate enough about his sport to devote his life to it is really an appropriate place to claim that he might have been gay and link to an article that isn't even closely related to anything in this post.

St. Alia, this was a great post- I couldn't help myself from tearing up when they were talking about the reactions of the players.
posted by kro at 6:51 PM on January 28, 2011