An overdue thank you to a friend

Over the years, former Three Rivers College men’s basketball coach Gene Bess has been a mentor and a friend to many people. I am honored to say I am one of them.

Our friendship goes back more than 30 years to when I was a freshman at TRCC (as Three Rivers College was known back then). Like a lot of students at Three Rivers, I was a fan of the men’s basketball team and had classes with several of the players, so it was inevitable I would end up hanging around the Bess Activity Center — and that’s where I met Coach Bess, as I’ve known him (and many others have) through the years.

After taking a few years off from college, I returned to TRCC in 1996 and ended up taking many of Coach Bess’s classes, including one called Basketball Coaching Techniques.

Ironically, it was in that class where I may have taken my first steps to getting into journalism.

Coach Bess assigned us to write a scouting report on a basketball coach — a logical assignment, since coaches need to scout their opponents to succeed on the basketball court. When Coach Bess read my scouting report, he said while it wasn’t bad, it looked more like a newspaper article and I should maybe become a sports writer.

Those words ended up being prophetic, because less than 18 months later, I did just that.

Over the years, Coach Bess has been a mentor and inspiration to me, but he has also been a friend.

Some examples:

• In July 2008, I was recovering from a nasty car crash and needed some blood work done. The medical people were having trouble finding a vein to draw blood from, partially because of my fear of needles. Coach Bess visited me in the emergency room and calmed me enough for them to draw the blood they needed.

• When I was doing college ministry at Three Rivers a few years later, several men’s basketball players attended our gatherings. When we had a pair of special days at my church recognizing our college ministry and its participants, Coach Bess made sure to visit to show his support.

• But most of all, Coach Bess has been a friend, a sounding board, given good advice and shown the right way to live life by his own example. After all, what are friends for?

Coach Bess will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame next weekend. I can’t think of anyone more deserving of basketball’s greatest honor.

In case I’ve never said it before, Coach Bess, thank you for being my mentor and my friend.

Mike Buhler is a staff writer for the Daily American Republic. Contact him at mbuhler@darnews.com.