By Steve DiMiceli
If you haven't figured it out by now, this coaching search has been dragging me through the emotional muck. I'm way up when we think it might be Keith Dambrot. When he rejects us, I'm lost, because I honestly have no idea what is next. What I do know is that if Dambrot is where the search begins, I'm ok with that. Why? Because he was the best realistic candidate for the job.
I don't have a clue what's next or what names will emerge. None will top Dambrot in all likelihood in terms of qualifications and I need to accept that. Really, it was probably unlikely we would get him to begin with. If I compared our coaching search to the college application process, Dambrot was the reach. It was the school I knew I was 100 points off on the average SAT scores for incoming freshmen and since I wasn't valedictorian, my grades probably weren't good enough to make up for it. When I sent in the application, I knew I probably wasted some time filling out the application, writing the essay, and I damn well knew the check for the application fee was gone forever. It's cool though, Charles Dougherty paid for it just like my parents paid for the fee. When the little letter came in the mail, it would have been unreasonable for me to expect any other outcome besides rejection even if I did write a nice essay about how much better off the school would be with me. However, I'm no masochist for applying to a school I had no chance of being accepted. On the contrary, my rejection gave me the peace of mind that I could not do any better and that if I had to settle, I could do so with out reservation.
With Dambrot out of the picture, Amodio can move on to a part of the process where he can concerntrate on more realistic candidates knowing he couldn't get the best. Making the sting of rejection a little easier, I already knew I got into my safeties just like Amodio knows Joe Lombardi and Mike Driscoll are all in for Duquesne. We just have another tier of candidates to eliminate before we pick one of them. I'm sure Amodio has a ton of feelers out there with other potential suitors more on our level just like I had applications out for schools I wanted and thought I had a realistic shot of getting into. However, until we know who the coach will be, there will be pessimism and anxiety that creeps into our thoughts about the direction of our search. One of the nerve racking parts and flaws in my analogy about this search is that we have no idea what schools we would have applied to. This is a weird twist that piles on the stress. However, just like our college searches, the coaching search will turn out ok in the end.
