As someone who has officiated basketball for 32 years now, I know a few things about basketball coaches.  The basketball coach is stereotypically thought of as someone who is loud, obnoxious, and perhaps even abusive.  I have seen some coaches, particularly at the high school freshman and junior varsity levels, who seem bent on getting a varsity coaching job (either at their current school or somewhere else), and who will seemingly let nothing or no one stand in their way.  As a result, they can engage in all sorts of abusive behavior toward officials, the opposition, and even their own players.  They often appear to be simply about winning basketball games – period.

Yet such is absolutely not the case with Coach Kim Elders.  First, he is a relatively quiet man.  Now don’t misunderstand – he is as passionate as any coach I have ever known.  No one loves to win, and, conversely, no one hates to lose, more than Coach Elders.  But he refuses to let winning define him or his teams.  Coach Elders understands that a young man’s basketball skills deteriorate over time – albeit in small increments.  But those same young men go on to become teachers, business people, ministers, as well as husbands, fathers, church leaders, and community leaders.  And so Coach Elders sees basketball as both an end in itself (after all, you keep score because winning is a major goal in athletics), as well as the means to an end – teaching young men important life lessons so that they can become better servants of Christ.  It was just a few years ago that Coach Elders married a beautiful widow lady, Holly, and he also inherited four step children.  But long before that, his players were his boys – his sons, if you will.  The fact that many of his former players attended his wedding, and are often seen at games and on campus for other activities, testifies to the fact that Coach Elders’ positive impact on his former players extends far beyond basketball.

But there is even more to be said than that.  Coach Elders is indeed a quiet, and in many ways a very private, person.  But you cannot know Coach Elders very long without being impressed with his depth and integrity.  Coach E, as folks call him, does not just preach conditioning to his players.  He lives it.  Quite simply, his level of fitness and conditioning for a man his age (he is just a bit older than I, and I’m 52) is remarkable.  He is truly a role model not just for his players, but also for his colleagues, like myself.  That is, I know I’ll never be “like Mike “ (i.e., Michael Jordan), but I would be more than satisfied if I could be “like Kim.”

Coach E is also a man of intense devotion to Christ.  Coach E constantly exhorts his players to become men of God, and to play out their basketball season as a means of giving glory to God.  While Coach E’s teams have won a National Championship and have reached the national Final Four three other times, (in fact, in eight trips to Nationals, CU’s men have lost their opening tournament game only once), it means more to Coach Elders and his staff that Christ be formed in his players, and that they use basketball to teach the deeper, greater truths about becoming men of God.

Over the past 7 years, I have had the privilege of calling the men’s games, first on local radio, and now as part of the CU Audio Webcasts on the CU website.  No one who is not a part of the program has been closer to the Golden Eagles in that time span than have I.  And I can say that, with Coach Elders, what you see is what you get.  Nothing phony; nothing disingenuous.  Just the quiet, passionate drive to transform his players, coaches, as well as himself, into genuine disciples of Christ.  The fact that he has done all that, while also constructing one of the nation’s winningest small college basketball programs, is a bonus that we all can enjoy.  Though Coach E is a man of relatively small physical stature, he is a spiritual giant, a competent coach, and passionate disciple of Christ.  We are all blessed to have him as part of our CU community.