Friday, July 4, 2008
At GW, Bozeman finds right balance
Mike Bozeman is having trouble tracing how he got here - to this sun-filled office in Foggy Bottom with the 42-inch flat screen and the pictures of smiling people on the walls.
Did it begin with family - with the way he chose basketball because he idolized his older brother and would do anything just to be near him?
Did it start with service - that feeling that always has tugged at him and told him he was called to help others?
Or did it just start with the game - the way he loved playing, watching, just talking about basketball?
The problem is that somewhere the three got all tangled up and blended together, and now the 41-year-old finds himself at the helm of one of the premier women's basketball programs not knowing how he arrived at George Washington.
So what the heck? He figures he just will start the story and hope he finds the beginning.
Come to think of it, he says, it started here. Well, not here but real close - just "a stone's throw" away - at the old Ira Bozeman's three sons.
Or maybe it began a little further out, in the backyard in Prince George's County where Mike and his brothers, Todd and Danny, used to play basketball.
Or maybe on the playground blacktops, where Todd and Mike went after Danny died of complications from diabetes, seeking solace in one another and the game they shared. It was there - sitting mesmerized on the sidelines as Todd dueled with Danny Ferry - that Mike began to see his brother as a hero.
Or maybe later at NCAA tournament and used pregame introductions to recognize his idol on national television.
"Yo!" Mike screamed into the camera at center court of the Pontiac Silverdome. "What up Todd?"
No matter how far apart, the game always brought them together.
Then the feeling hit him. It told him he needed to help people. So he moved back to Prince George's County and became a police officer. Vice, narcotics, hostage negotiator, it didn't matter - he would do anything. He had to work hard for his wife, Wendy, and daughter Nikki, who was growing up fast.
So for a while it was all about providing for those he loved and giving back. But basketball had a way of sliding in there. Like the night he was on a stakeout and his pager wouldn't stop beeping. It was Todd. What could his idol - now the coach at California - possibly want right now?
"YO!" came the voice on the other end of the pay phone receiver. "I just signed Jason Kidd!"
"What? Jason Kidd?" Mike asked. "Dude, I'm on a stakeout! Wait ... is he good?"
Or the next year, when Mike and Ira piled into a Maryland to be with his family after the NCAA punished Todd for recruiting violations?
Family - there it was again. And again a year later, while Mike was coaching boys' basketball at the Boys and Girls Club when the girls' team coach approached him.
"Whose kid is that?" she asked, pointing to 9-year-old Nikki, who was netting jumpers from the free throw line.
"That's my daughter," Mike replied, a sudden pride rising within him.
"Well, can I get her on the team?"
Maybe that's when it started. Before that, he had never wanted Nikki playing ball. Never wanted his daughter ending up like the sweaty behemoths he remembered from the women's team at Fairleigh Dickinson. But she loved it, just as Danny had and Todd still did. So he let her play. It was family. It was the game.
It was service. At least that was the feeling a few weeks later, when the girls' coach quit and the parents came and begged Mike to step in. He felt it again the next year after his police motorcycle skidded out and the doctors had to fuse the bones in his spine together. Yes, he was on crutches, and yes, this was the worst pain of his life, but he was going to coach.
Or was it the game? Was it the game that had him studying how girls shoot differently than boys? Was it the game that caused him to fall in love watching Nikki and the other 10-year-olds executing a fullcourt press to perfection? They called it the "PAIN!" press, and they loved it.
So maybe it was the game that had him coaching their AAU team the next year and then for two more years while juggling police work and raising three younger girls. Then again maybe it was family. After all, it was Martha who cooked the food at the gym's concessions stand and Wendy who ran the cash register and Ira who drove the team bus on road trips.
But which was it that day when he got the call from his two old friends at Tony Johnson, the athletic director, wanted to know whether he would consider coaching the girls' basketball team at his alma mater.
It would be a sacrifice, balancing police duty and his new job. But Nikki was in eighth grade, about to enter high school, and coaching at McNamara would give him an opportunity to help young people further themselves and earn college scholarships. Plus he would get to coach the game, so of course he was hooked.
He took the job, and Nikki followed. But why should she be the only Beltway Lady Cougars player to get a good education? Why couldn't her friends from AAU come too? So what if they came from rough backgrounds? Mike would help them get financial aid.
Bozeman also raised the money so they could travel the country to play in tournaments. He did the same when the girls at Anacostia High wanted to play in the tournaments. He just liked seeing their faces when they got to ride on an airplane for the first time.
In six years at McNamara, he helped 11 girls earn Division I scholarships. McNamara was ranked No. 1 by USA Today in 2003. Meanwhile, Wendy and Martha were still working the concessions, Ira was still driving the bus and Todd was stopping by to help coach.
College coaches called, but he simply didn't have the desire. He admired men like Joe McKeown, the women's coach at George Washington and one of Todd's old buddies in the coaching fraternity, but there was no family or service in college hoops.
Nikki was getting older. Fordham wanted her, and they wanted Mike as an assistant, and after struggling for years to make ends meet, maybe it was time Wendy and the kids started living better. It was about family - remember?
So off went the Bozemans to the Georgetown.
He spent another winter at McNamara, doing what he loved best. But eventually, when McKeown asked him to join the staff at GW, family, service and basketball all came together. McKeown told him he would be in charge of skill development and promised to let him duck out of practice early and drive Martha to see Todd, who had resurrected his career by coaching at Morgan State.
Now, four years later, he's sitting in McKeown's old office, the new coach of the Colonials, after McKeown took the job at Northwestern.
Bozeman has to have that balance in his life, he says. Always has, still does and will forever.