PODCAST: “Why I Coach” with former Adair-Casey coach Cory Bartz

(Elk Horn) Exira-EHK Girls Basketball Assistant Cory Bartz is the guest this week on KSOM’s Why I Coach podcast. The former head coach at Adair-Casey has an unconventional backstory to becoming a coach.

Bartz got the Adair-Casey girls basketball program rolling in the last 5-10 years and has a 2014 state tournament trip to show for it. It’s safe to say he fared pretty well for a guy who just kind of stumbled into the coaching ranks.

“I guess they just offered me the job when I first started. When I interviewed it was strictly for teaching and then they asked me if I had any aspirations of coaching. I told them anything I could do that would help me get the job I’d be willing to do it. In college they said if you want to get a job a coaching endorsement or a reading endorsement would be very helpful for you. I wasn’t much of an avid reader and I enjoyed sports.”

Walnut was his first and only interview out of college, but eventually it became time to move on with Walnut’s declining enrollment playing a big part in that decision. Five years into his career he moved on to Adair-Casey where a head coaching opportunity awaited. They put in a lot of time to become successful.

“My family vacations were our trips to summer camps. We’d be in the gym five days a week and if we weren’t in Adair we were traveling all over the state for games and team camps. We spent a lot of time together. The kids all knew my basketball playing background was nil and I told them it was their job to make me look good. They did it.”

The Bombers picked up a lot of ideas from other programs. The willingness Bartz had to accept input from his players was one of the most unique aspects of his coaching style was. “We were watching what other schools were doing and the kids enjoyed it. They’d go to an individual camp and come back with drills to try. We were all just a bunch of thieves trying to make us better. Some stuff we only did once or twice and others we did for several years.”

Not all ideas stuck, Bartz jokes about one example. “We played SE Polk at a team camp and they just ran us up and down the floor. They had 15 kids and we had six and they just wore us to death. They went to state that year and were in the championship game. They came out and were jumping rope during the pregame and our kids they just thought that was awesome and wanted to do that. I said first of all we don’t have enough jump ropes and half of you would twist an ankle trying to do it.”

Bartz says he’s been fortunate to have kids and parents buy into what he was trying to sell with so many athletes making sacrifices for the betterment of the team. Bartz fully intended to take a break from coaching after Adair-Casey’s final season, but that all changed after taking his daughter to a camp at Exira-EHK.

“Spent tons of time away from my family and so much time with basketball kids. I thought maybe I just needed a break from it. That summer I took my daughter to Tom Petersen’s camp and I kind of missed it. I talked to him and asked if I could hang around and watch some of their things they did into the summer. It morphed into not leaving.”

He hasn’t ruled out becoming a head coach once again, but says he’s very happy with his current role.