Freshman’s Behind the Scenes Look at Assistant Coaches
Jim Murphy has one goal this season: to look better than Cannons general manager Mark Kastrud.
Entering his seventh season with the Cannons, “Murph” is the longest-tenured coach with any team in Major League Lacrosse. He even outranks his boss, head coach Bill Daye. In that time, he’s coached nearly 100 players, 19 MLL all-stars, 13 MLL Offensive Players of the Week, 14 Defensive Players of the Week and 2 MLL MVPs, through over 80 games in three different stadiums with one gingery Executive Bench Manager.
Despite all that he’s seen, Murph still puts much consideration into how other teams see him.
“[Daye and I] not only are always sure to have the best haircuts, but always the best dressed and best styled staff in the MLL also,” he said. “A lot of goes into the selection of the long pants, the khaki shorts, the fabric, and that’s something Coach Daye and I take very seriously.”
Murph’s style is just one thing fans fail to notice with the league’s crop of frenzied assistants.
“We’re the Blackberry hounds going back and forth to each other,” Murph said. “With text messaging, maybe the occasional phone call, we’re back and forth maybe 15 times from a Sunday to a Thursday … We all go through our own things, with Coach Daye and I over the years now, having different minds come together, just really for the main purpose of having a good season, and a successful season if you want to win it all.”
Murph is just one of a handful of assistants to have lasted through more than one head coach on the same team, the other exception being Denver’s Tom Graesser. Like the rest of the coaching world, MLL assistant jobs yield a relatively high turnover rate, with all six teams featuring at least one first- or second-year assistant.
And like the rest of the league, “intangibles” in coaches are much appreciated. For Nationals coach Dave Huntley, finding Canada’s next-best alternative to Dr. Phil seemed ideal for parenting his burly bunch of angry Northerners. Team Canada trumps the league with collective 27 penalty minutes in four games.
“Our President and GM Stuart Brown has worked with Jeff [Genik] and Jason [Johnson] in the past,” he said. “Jason has worked with a lot our guys in the indoor game and coaches with Darris Kilgour, NLL Bandits GM and coach, who I used to coach with. It was a very easy fit. Jeff is a doctor who counsels families on relationships so how could you turn that down?”
No confirmation was yet available if Genik would be bringing talkshow-style therapy to LaxUnited, in attempts to remedy Geoff Snider’s (league-leading 10 penalty minutes) predilection for American blood.
In Denver, meanwhile, coach and general manager Brian Reese’s savvy deduction skills led him to fall upon current defensive coordinator, and rumored future Denver University assistant, Trevor Tierney.
“Trevor's last name is Tierney. His dad is Bill Tierney,” Reese said. “He has coaching in his blood and since he kept getting concussions, he has a lot to offer the team.”
Tierney retired at the end of the 2007 after suffering his seventh and final concussion just weeks before. Now, he enters his second year bossing around the league’s second-ranked defense (12.5 goals allowed per game), and has even lured papa Bill to the home of the worst Real World season in MTV history.
Like Genik’s situation in Toronto, no word yet as to how soon father T will be taking over the Outlaws.
Denver is the only team that explicitly designates assistants as offensive and defensive coordinators. Other teams keep that line blurred, with Murph, for example, working with personnel, face-offs, scouting and goalies, while rookie assistant Steve Duffy primarily handles the box. But in Chicago, head coach John Combs is fortunate to even have one assistant.
“It would help to break things up responsibility wise, but we don’t have the budget right now to have a big staff, because a lot of our finances go into traveling and the expense of traveling,” Combs said. “We fly in 14 guys for home games, so that’s where a lot of our money is spent.”
Instead, Combs entered the season relying solely on second-year assistant Phil Ryan, who brings more than coaching expertise to the table. Ryan served as vice president for the now-defunct Chicago Shamrox of the NLL just months before joining the Machine staff. As a result, Ryan works with the defense and logistics like travel arrangements and flights—an area conventionally seen outside the realm of coaching.
“I think [Ryan’s] very comfortable in both roles,” Combs said. “He’s well equipped to handle those front office issues when the front office isn’t around.”
Just recently, however, Combs brought in former colleague and current Utica (DIII) head coach Mike Parnell to run the box for the Machine. To many familiar with the New York area, Parnell is known as the outspoken signal caller that often favors giving teams half a point if plays are “pretty” yet fail to score. Adding to the multitude of Syracuse players on the staff, Parnell has cemented a Central New York flavor to the powder blue.
“Being from Upstate New York, we just have a certain way, similar to Coach Combs,” Parnell said. “We’re straight shooters. We don’t tend to sugar coat much. And we tell you exactly how it is. I get a little excited on the sidelines.”
Yet with all of these assistant coaching changes hitting the league, the only apparent constant appears to be the amicable line of respect that coaches hold with players off the field. While league coaches unanimously contend that players treat them with the utmost respect, they are also quick to admit the social atmosphere they have with their teams on and off the field.
“Our guys let us know what they want to do and what they are seeing,” Huntley said. “We run our ideas by them and then agree on what works best. We all agree that the less ‘coaching’ we do the better.”
Murph even takes it a step further.
“When you can beat your players at any kind of game, it’s fun to remind them of that,” he said.
Murph contends that the tandem of himself and Daye are just as unstoppable on the field as off. Specific instances include crushing Kastrud and Cannons Director of Communications Stephanie Krauss in a game of Cornhole, to the point the two were tossing blindfolded shots en route to “a complete wipeout.”
At the Billerica, Mass. native’s high school alumni game, he bested current Cannon midfielder John Ortolani 5-6 in faceoffs—quite embarrassing for a faceoff specialist.
“I was sure to let him know I’m old enough to be his father,” he said.
Still, Murph, like the rest of the assistants, are just happy to be a part of the highest level of lacrosse in the world, no matter what their roles.
“The people you’re surrounded by, the players you’re surrounded by--that’s what makes you look forward to every day,” Murph said. “The sport I hope is going to be better because of guys in the organization, and that’s giving no credit to [Jason] Chandler.”
Just kidding, Chandler.
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