You're In Good Hands With ALLSTATE: The Eric Henry Story

If I look back at my own life, there are certain people that stand out a little more than others. These people are the ones who "If there hadn't been a (fill in the blank), there wouldn't be a David." In other words, there is no way my life would have turned out this way if I hadn't crossed paths with this person.

This is a story about one of those special people.

During my senior year of college, I got a phone call from Linda Sherril. She was the superintendent at Bell City High School. At the time I was doing my student teaching and coaching freshman basketball at Cape Notre Dame High School. Mrs. Sherril said they were looking for a basketball coach, Ronnie Cookson (my high school coach) said I was going to be a good one, and that she should call me.

I had grown up playing against Bell City when I was in school, and we usually beat them BAD. So my immediate reaction was "it's a job," but being honest, I wasn't real excited about possibly going 5-20 every year until they fired me. So I drove down to watch them play. A skinny kid caught my eye, number 22. I looked in the program, and the kid's name was Eric Henry. He was just a freshman. He was pretty good, and they had a few other players I liked. So I met with Mrs. Sherril later that week and accepted the job.

Let me preface everything I'm going to say about Eric by saying this: He is the first great player that I ever got to coach, but he didn't start out as a "great player." He had talent. He was a great, great, great kid. He could take hard coaching. He was humble. He was a hard worker.

You see, to really get better, a player has to allow himself to be coached. He has to accept being pushed, and challenged. This is especially true for talented players like Eric, because they are already pretty good. One of the hardest things to do in life is to go from "good to great." From Day 1, Eric let me push him. He never, ever talked back to me or was hard to deal with. He was a great player, but never yelled at or belittled a teammate. He was a coach's dream.

My first memory of coaching Eric was in open gym, where it couldn't be "practice" back in those days. We only had two rules in open gym. One, you pick up your man full court and play hard. Two, nobody is allowed to call a foul except me. If a guy cried about getting fouled, I sent him home. If guys weren't picking up, running the floor, and playing hard, then I just turned the lights out and we all went home. Simple as that. There is no point wasting time, "pretending" to work hard. So these two rules were all we needed during the off-season.

So there we were, in open gym, and Eric got poked in the eye. If you've ever played ball, you know how bad that can hurt to take a finger right to the eyeball. It hurts! So Eric covered his eye and got mad. He didn't like that he'd got fouled, and he said something to the guy that hit him. I told Eric, in not so many words, to "shut up and play" and that "if you're waiting to get superstar treatment in here, you're in the wrong gym. We don't have any superstars in here." At least that's the PG version of what I said.

I didn't want Eric to get hurt, and this truly was an accident. What I did want was those guys to challenge him and feel like, even though he's better than you, it's okay to play him physical. Eric, to his credit, just said "yes, sir" and went right back out there and played HARD. This would be a continuing theme with Eric. Being hard on him was like stepping on the gas pedal in a car. Push the pedal down, and the car goes faster. The harder you were on Eric, the harder he played. That sounds simple, but that's not the case with every player. He was a coach's dream.

Fast forward to the regular season, sophomore year. I threw the team out of practice one day, and this was the day before a game. We were just practicing terrible. I told them "I'll see you tomorrow at 6" and kicked them out. The game was at 6 pm the next night. Eric, not sure what I meant by that, showed up at 6 am the next morning. I walked in and found him asleep on the stage in the gym. When I asked what he was doing, he said, "Coach, I wasn't sure if you meant 6 am or 6 pm, and I just wanted to be sure." He was a coach's dream.

So Eric made the All State basketball team in Missouri that year as a sophomore. He had a great year, but that "All State" became my nickname for him when he would play bad. I'd call him "All State" and mock him. "They named you All State? That's a joke. You're all All Stater? YEAH RIGHT!" And it went on and on and on. He hated it when I called him All State, because it was NOT a compliment. You know who hated it worse? Dom Johnson, who had to guard him in practice. Dom used to just look at me and shake his head, like "man here comes Eric. He is about to GO OFF now that coach has him riled up." I was stepping on that gas pedal.

Early his junior year, we played Leopold on a Tuesday night. Eric had like 14 points and 8 rebounds, a "bad game" for him. I rode him and rode him for the next two days, "All State" this and "All State" that. I told everybody, "Eric Henry gets no fouls called in any drill or scrimmage, ever again, because he's soft." And this was a big deal, because in our practices, everything was "winners and losers," meaning you ran if you lost. So the guys, who loved him, were like 'sorry Eric, but I've gotta bump you and be a little more physical, because I don't want to run.'

On Thursday, the night before we played state ranked, undefeated Bernie, my assistant coach Matt Asher came up to me as we were leaving practice. He said, "Hey, you do it however you want, but you might back off of Eric just a little. I think he's going to quit." It was Matt's first year working with me (he was an awesome assistant coach), but I had to smile at his suggestion. Because I knew Eric. I was just pushing that gas pedal to the floor now, standing on it. I knew exactly what was coming next.

We played at Bernie the next night. They were good. We were down 16 somewhere in the middle of the second quarter. They were killing us. We were on the road, in foul trouble... then Eric Henry scored 40 points and grabbed 18 rebounds. Everybody else got hot. We won. To this day, I point to that win as the turning point in my whole coaching career. That win made our team believe we could be really good if we kept working hard.

We got on the bus, and Eric was walking up the aisle. I said "Hey All State," and he just glared at me, like "What now? That wasn't good enough either?" I smiled at him. He smiled back, and I said, "Good game." We went on to win the state championship that year. Eric was our leading scorer, and he would be named "All State" again.

Eric would have other games like that one at Bernie... 44 points and 20 rebounds, 50 points and 10 made threes... At 6'1, he was a shooting guard, but he was just a great all around player. When we won state, he had 18 points at halftime and he only scored ONCE when we passed to him. He would tip in rebounds (he was the best at tipping it in that I've ever seen), steal passes and score, etc.

He was just a phenomenal player, a coach's dream. He graduated as the all time leading scorer at Bell City High School, and was the second all time leading scorer of any player to come out of the Southeast Missouri area. He was named "All State" again his senior year. Eric went to college and got a full scholarship to play basketball. He got hurt, and then went to police academy.

Now he is a police officer in St. Louis, MO. To this day, we still stay in touch. I read a story last year about Eric buying a homeless guy a meal instead of arresting him for stealing food. It put a smile on my face. That's just Eric. He's just an awesome person who would help a total stranger.

I guess the moral of this story is, it's almost impossible to be successful by yourself. You need to be at the right place, at the right time, and have the right people surrounding you. When you're blessed enough to be in that situation, and that door of opportunity opens up, it's up to you walk through it.

So Eric, if you're reading this, Thank you for letting that 22 year old coach yell at you, push you, torment you, and call you "All State." Thank you for letting me coach you. There wouldn't have been a Coach Heeb without Eric Henry, without "All State."

Everybody else, today I want you to take a look around you. Who in your life right now is helping you "get where you're going?" You can't be successful by yourself. If you're blessed enough to have those people in your life right now, be thankful and take advantage of the opportunities that you have. If that's not your situation, then take whatever steps you need to take to get yourself around the right people or away from the wrong people.

Everybody have a great day. Try to help each other. Make today a WIN. #JWT

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