FAITHFUL CHEMISTRY
> Bruce Weber talks about his formula for coaching—and for living
The Lutheran magazine
Chase A. Chisholm
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You can’t see it, but you can feel it,” Bruce Weber says, describing what he calls the chemistry of the University of Illinois men’s basketball team he led to the NCAA championship game last March. “It’s very hard to find, but when a team really does have chemistry, they’re a special group,” says the head coach from the Champaign-Urbana campus.
I caught up with him this summer at a Chicagoland golf outing—as he caught his breath. Rushing from one event to the next, an enthusiastic Weber had only 20 minutes to chat.
This particular “special group” we talked about finished the 2004-05 season with a 37-2 record, tying the NCAA record of victories in a single season. One loss came in that final game against the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “It’s amazing. We lost—and yet we weren’t a failure,” Weber says, “because of our team, their personalities and the way they played.”
“Having chemistry” may be handy shorthand in the U.S., but explaining the concept of a team having chemistry is hard to translate, Weber explains.
This concept isn’t new to Weber’s coaching. While an assistant at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., Weber was invited to lead a clinic for the Turkish Basketball Federation in Istanbul. The coach had to clarify how a team could “have” chemistry: “When I said ‘chemistry,’ the interpreters looked at me and asked: ‘You mean mixing, chemistry—making drugs?’
“I said, ‘No, no—chemistry, the feel of a team, of a togetherness—blending and molding.’ ”
Laughing, Weber admits, “I could tell they didn’t know.”
Glancing back over a historic season—the closest the Fighting Illini has ever come to owning a basketball national championship—and fast-forwarding to the next, Weber has a new formula in mind.
What’s in the mix? Adding new players to the blend and redefining the roles of returners: Will a newly formed team have chemistry? “You hope that what you’ve built continues,” he says. “Each group needs to carry on the effort it takes, the togetherness and the chemistry.”
Belief in a purposeful life
How? Where does the compound-bonding begin? What is it? And what’s inside? It begins with having a belief. “If you’re at that magic level, if you’re having that success, everyone wants to know why and how you got it,” Weber says. He shares the words of his mentor, Gene Keady, recently retired coach of Purdue: “It’s having a strong faith. A belief. And everyone’s beliefs are different.”
The need to understand these differences is a must, says Weber, a member of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Champaign. So is having a common belief in a purposeful life. “We always talk about [being] put here for a purpose,” he says, adding that he urges his players to live up to that purpose. “You don’t always know the purpose, but each day there’s something there that might make a difference in somebody else’s life.”
Fostering team chemistry also includes learning from 20-plus years of experience. It’s testing new ideas. “Last year I didn’t name a captain at all. I didn’t have to, [the team] just knew what to do,” Weber says. “This year I’ve already named captains. The veteran players have been through it, they understand the hard work and effort it takes, and they bring the new guys along. To me, the enjoyable part of coaching is molding a team, developing roles and figuring out who’s going to be the leader.”
It continues with teaching. “I see myself as a teacher,” Weber says. “When I say coach, I see teacher. What is teaching? It’s change. That’s our job—to change attitudes, to change faith.”
Recalling his influences, Weber adds: “My dad who taught used to say, ‘There’s no better job in the world than to be a teacher. You give to people and you help people. What better way of life can you have?’ ”
Grace and second chances
Then, forgiveness. And add in some grace. “I believe every person deserves a second chance,” Weber says, reflecting on the well-known incident involving star player Luther Head who, with two teammates, was accused of burglarizing an apartment between his junior and senior years and suspended for four games. Weber looks beyond the situation—which caused major changes—for the better. “I always talk about how adversity brings people together,” he says. “Tragedy brings people together. We had a problem. We had adversity. A tragedy. Everyone came together, and it was very important in the development of our team.”
His players respond to his care in personal ways, as well as a team. Weber received much-appreciated phone calls in June. “Several of the guys called,” he says, “and wished me a happy Father’s Day.”
He’s a real father—to Hannah, 19; Christy, 17; and Emily, 13—as well. And a role model, too, says Donna Hacker Smith, his pastor at Good Shepherd, where he and his wife, Megan, and daughters are regular worshipers.
“Parents have said to me what it means to them for their kids to see Coach Weber in church,” Smith says. “I have had moms say how their little boys are freaking out to sit near him. He’s like their hero. Seeing him be a dad and a husband is a wonderful example.”
Inner strength, inner peace
How does Weber’s personal life and faith reflect his coaching style? “It gives me an inner strength—an inner peace,” he says. “There’s no doubt it keeps me humble.”
Weber found himself looking for a sense of strength when his mother unexpectedly died during the height of last season. “I think definitely my faith did that, gave me strength,” he says.
Although Weber is most always on the run, “I’ve got to be there,” he says, “if my kid has a swim meet or [needs help with] schoolwork.”
Being a good husband is definitely an important element. And having a supportive family is, perhaps, the key factor. “They are patient,” he says of his family. “It’s patience with me being gone and, at the same time, to always be in the spotlight. Sometimes that’s not easy.”
How does he keep going? “I’m tired, to be honest,” he says.
But he has one surprising way to relax: cutting the grass. “People think I’m nuts!” he admits. “I love cutting the grass because I’m out there by myself and no one’s bothering me. I’m sweating, I’m in the sun and I feel energized by that.”
And what about the coming basketball season? “You always look forward to it,” Weber says. “It’s part of coaching.”
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