Catching a Coach on the Run
Somehow in the dead of summer, Jeff Bzdelik and I found time to pass an hour or so together last Wednesday. One of us has had a rather busy schedule.
I’ll let you guess who.
The fruits of our conversation will run in tomorrow’s Journal. Be warned that it’s short on real news, which I guess can be a good thing given that only three players (Gary Clark, Ty Walker and Nikita Mescheriakov) were in first semester summer school and the rest won’t arrive until second semester starts tomorrow. Instead, it’s just a catchup of what his first two and a half months as Wake Forest’s head basketball coach have been like.
A point he kept coming back to was how welcome he feels at Wake, and how taken he is with all the wonderful and supportive people he has met. He maintains it’s people, and not buildings or infrastructure that make a place what it is. I agree, and that’s why I’ve enjoyed covering Wake Forest going on 20 years now.
One person who has made Wake Forest a special place was honored and celebrated last month when Cook Griffin retired after his 26 years as the executive director of the Deacon Club. I’ve never seen Cook without his warm smile. He’s a good man who did a tough job well. I know his work will be missed, but I hope he’s not. That would mean he’s no longer around, and I can’t imagine Wake Forest without Cook or Julie Griffin.
Hope you enjoy the piece on Bzdelik. I’ll pick up some scraps that fell off the plate and serve them up here in the next day or two, unless I just happen to head off to Timbuktu for a week or two.