When the gym exploded, one man stood still.
As parents threw up their hands and the gym floor flooded with USA-garbed students, John Tharp, head coach of the Hillsdale men’s basketball team, stood wide-eyed and speechless after his team beat Northern Michigan University on Saturday by one point thanks to a buzzer-beating dunk.
“I was really proud of the kids who kept on fighting and when that happened I was literally in shock, and then it went from shock to a whole lot of thanks,” Tharp said with a laugh and a huge smile.
Coach Tharp cares a lot about winning. Point guard Zach Miller called his coach “the most competitive person he knows,” which is quite a title. But Tharp cares more for his players, which is why he is such an influential coach.
Tharp’s competitive edge is derived from his serious love for the game of basketball. A coach for 21 years and a Hillsdale coach for eight of those years, he said he loves the X’s and O’s of the game— the philosophy of basketball.
“It’s funny how everything relates back to the game with him,” Hillsdale basketball alumnus Anthony Manno ’14 said of Tharp. Manno said Tharp equates everything from raking leaves to dealing with a pesky squirrel in his gutter to a basketball game against his rival and shouts: “Boys, we can not let them beat us!”
It’s this unwavering passion that puts him in a defensive stance on the sidelines, or on his knees pounding the floor during big plays. He cares so deeply about the outcome of the games that he reportedly doesn’t sleep after a loss or a win.
Miller said it’s this toughness and thirst that inspires the team.
“Coach wants to win as badly as we do, and we want to reflect him in trying to win every possession and every play,” Miller said.
Manno said he knows Tharp may look intense and determined on the sidelines, but says that’s not Tharp’s only side.
The coach Manno knows is one who approached him at every practice just to ask, “Hey, how’s the family?” or “How’s school?” or “What’d ya do this weekend?”
“He’s not asking to pry for information,” Manno said. “He’s the kind of guy where if you ever sit down to talk to him multiple times he’ll ask ‘how are you doing?’ And he might have just asked you that five minutes ago, but he wants to know again.”
Tharp is the coach who pushes his team to average a 3.0 in the classroom. He’s the coach who invites the entire team, managers included, to his house for dinners. He’s the coach who has taken in a sick player, caring for him at his home until he recovers.
“We’re far from perfect but I think at the end of the day, at the end of the season, at the end of games, we all know that we care a great deal about each other,” Tharp said.
After Saturday’s win, crowds of retired Chargers threw on that blue and white jersey once more to play in the annual alumni basketball game. Tharp said he saw boys that had played for him who are now successful businessmen or in their third year of law school, all returning to reflect on the camaraderie they shared with their teammates.
“It’s the things you sometimes forget about when you’re coaching. But this put it into perspective,” Tharp said. “I mean you played a very small part in their development in becoming a man.”
A ‘very small part’ may be an understatement.
