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Colton Coale working through first season in full-time role with Oklahoma
Envision thousands of elementary school students filing into a basketball arena and wiggling restlessly in rows of seats.
Their shrill screams ring out at the wrong times, maybe during a missed basket.
Then, their voices reach an imperfect unison. They’re belching sing-alongs that blare from the video monitor. Oklahoma used the wildly popular Disney movie “Frozen” to grab the kids’ attention last year.
“You’ll need ear plugs,” Colton Coale says.
OU’s Sooner Jr. Fan Field
Trip Day (10:30 a.m. Wednedsay, FSOK) generally produces one of the women’s basketball program’s largest crowds of the season. This time, Kansas State (12-9, 4-6 Big 12) is in town to experience the madness.
Coale can’t totally relate to the stunning experience it provides kids. He is Sooner head coach Sherri Coale’s son, so Lloyd Noble Center was always his playground growing up.
And he’s all grown, now.
Coale, who will turn 26 in March, is debuting in a full-time role on OU’s staff, serving as player personnel specialist after two years as a graduate assistant.
He looked for jobs elsewhere last spring during the Final Four, but admittedly, he’d heard OU might be creating another position on staff. He wanted it.
OU approved Coale’s hire over the summer. Other Big 12 programs were increasingly hiring operational and developmental staffers who assisted with recruiting, and the school saw a need.
It was especially useful last fall with a recruiting season busier than usual, due to OU’s large outgoing senior class.
“So here I am,” Coale said. Here he’s always been.
When Coale broke his foot as a 2- or 3-year-old toddler, his mom’s entire NHS girls basketball team signed the cast. He has been a fixture around her players ever since.
He was 4 years old when Sherri took over at OU and began breathing life into a program that six years earlier, in 1990, was cut by the university for an apparent lack of interest.
Coale witnessed three Final Four runs before his 19th birthday and became a practice squad member for the OU women’s team while in school.
In May, he completed his second degree from OU and married former Sooner point guard Morgan Hook, who teaches elementary physical education and is an NHS varsity girls assistant coach.
Leaving Norman was an option when he began looking for a full-time job.
“We talked about it,” Coale said. “I would have
Envision thousands of elementary school students filing into a basketball arena and wiggling restlessly in rows of seats.
Their shrill screams ring out at the wrong times, maybe during a missed basket.
Then, their voices reach an imperfect unison. They’re belching sing-alongs that blare from the video monitor. Oklahoma used the wildly popular Disney movie “Frozen” to grab the kids’ attention last year.
“You’ll need ear plugs,” Colton Coale says.
OU’s Sooner Jr. Fan Field
Trip Day (10:30 a.m. Wednedsay, FSOK) generally produces one of the women’s basketball program’s largest crowds of the season. This time, Kansas State (12-9, 4-6 Big 12) is in town to experience the madness.
Coale can’t totally relate to the stunning experience it provides kids. He is Sooner head coach Sherri Coale’s son, so Lloyd Noble Center was always his playground growing up.
And he’s all grown, now.
Coale, who will turn 26 in March, is debuting in a full-time role on OU’s staff, serving as player personnel specialist after two years as a graduate assistant.
He looked for jobs elsewhere last spring during the Final Four, but admittedly, he’d heard OU might be creating another position on staff. He wanted it.
OU approved Coale’s hire over the summer. Other Big 12 programs were increasingly hiring operational and developmental staffers who assisted with recruiting, and the school saw a need.
It was especially useful last fall with a recruiting season busier than usual, due to OU’s large outgoing senior class.
“So here I am,” Coale said. Here he’s always been.
When Coale broke his foot as a 2- or 3-year-old toddler, his mom’s entire NHS girls basketball team signed the cast. He has been a fixture around her players ever since.
He was 4 years old when Sherri took over at OU and began breathing life into a program that six years earlier, in 1990, was cut by the university for an apparent lack of interest.
Coale witnessed three Final Four runs before his 19th birthday and became a practice squad member for the OU women’s team while in school.
In May, he completed his second degree from OU and married former Sooner point guard Morgan Hook, who teaches elementary physical education and is an NHS varsity girls assistant coach.
Leaving Norman was an option when he began looking for a full-time job.
“We talked about it,” Coale said. “I would have
if there was something I wanted. My wife’s got a good job here. … At the end of the day, it worked out absolutely perfect for us. I started the looking process and then I heard this was in the works. When that was the case, it was a no-brainer to stay.”
Coale breaks down opposing film, is a liaison between local high school coaches and relieves bench assistant coaches by shouldering an organizational workload when recruits visit campus.
“He’s grown up around women’s basketball,” Sherri Coale said. “He has the natural instinct of the inner workings of it and reading people. He has really high emotional intelligence and just understands how important players’ minds are.
“That’s where, I think, he’s had the advantage, because he’s had that inside bead his whole life.”
His role demands a bit of everything, except being a bench coach. Coale wants that someday, perhaps in the men’s game, though he already understands so much about how the women’s game works.
He is aware either opportunity may not always be in Norman.
“We’ve been preparing for this my whole life. I’ve known a long time coaching is what I wanted to do, and I knew the chances I could do that and stay in Norman are about 1 percent,” Coale said. “It’s not like it would be hard decision, if the right thing came along. It would be different, and the dynamics would be different.”
For now he is happily entrenched with the Sooners (10-11, 5-5) as they try to extend an 18-season streak of NCAA tournament berths.
Coale’s buddies sometimes ask just what it is he does all day. It’s always something different, he answers, like bracing himself for a hoard of elementary school field trips in one day.
“That’s part of the reason that makes it so fun. I couldn’t imagine sitting behind a desk from 8-5 all day every day, with the way I was brought up,” Coale said. “I’d be bored to tears, to be honest.”
Coale breaks down opposing film, is a liaison between local high school coaches and relieves bench assistant coaches by shouldering an organizational workload when recruits visit campus.
“He’s grown up around women’s basketball,” Sherri Coale said. “He has the natural instinct of the inner workings of it and reading people. He has really high emotional intelligence and just understands how important players’ minds are.
“That’s where, I think, he’s had the advantage, because he’s had that inside bead his whole life.”
His role demands a bit of everything, except being a bench coach. Coale wants that someday, perhaps in the men’s game, though he already understands so much about how the women’s game works.
He is aware either opportunity may not always be in Norman.
“We’ve been preparing for this my whole life. I’ve known a long time coaching is what I wanted to do, and I knew the chances I could do that and stay in Norman are about 1 percent,” Coale said. “It’s not like it would be hard decision, if the right thing came along. It would be different, and the dynamics would be different.”
For now he is happily entrenched with the Sooners (10-11, 5-5) as they try to extend an 18-season streak of NCAA tournament berths.
Coale’s buddies sometimes ask just what it is he does all day. It’s always something different, he answers, like bracing himself for a hoard of elementary school field trips in one day.
“That’s part of the reason that makes it so fun. I couldn’t imagine sitting behind a desk from 8-5 all day every day, with the way I was brought up,” Coale said. “I’d be bored to tears, to be honest.”
