MACIEO GAINES has had a sports-filled life. At the age of 4, Gaines began playing softball with 6-year-olds. At 7, he added football and basketball to his repertoire, eventually narrowing his focus to basketball.
That love for basketball grew and grew. After making the all-state team as a high school senior, he took the next natural step of coaching and found that he enjoyed being able to teach basketball. He began coaching at a junior high school and then — at 19 — coached in high school, where he was not significantly older than some of the students. This made for some sticky moments, but Gaines “put his foot on the pedal” and never looked back.
Today, Macieo Gaines coaches basketball at Wilson Central High and girl’s softball for kids in the 6 to 11 range. The word “flow” comes up a great deal when Gaines discusses his coaching. A coach has to wear many hats — taskmaster, motivator, role model, and disciplinarian, to name a few. Coaching high school basketball and girl’s softball requires some very different approaches. His overall approach — his “flow” -— is the same for all ages. His first rule is always to work hard, and his second and most important rule is always to have fun.
Having fun is often not synonymous with a coach’s approach. Gaines wants his athletes to win, but he has also found that, ultimately, “just winning” gets him nowhere. To him, sports are an important way to learn and become a better person.
“If I’m winning, but I’m not having fun, I don’t want to do it. I’ve won and lost, but the games I remember most are the games where I had fun. I can’t tell you the score, but I can tell you I had fun. I want the players to have fun because, at the end of the day, these are memories. You can play the rest of your life, but you have to enjoy what you’re doing to want to continue doing it.”
He has discovered that fun and the enjoyment of play are the best motivators. And they’re conducive to winning. He also looks for that moment of connection with the player, which he does right away. He can detect even the most basic connection and then know he and the player are on the same page.
“The moment I know you got it, I can be myself, you can be yourself, and everything flows.”
Gaines has also struggled with some severe issues. At the shockingly young age of 26, he experienced a heart attack. One day, he was at his parents’ house. The next moment, he was picked off the floor and rushed to the hospital. Most people have seen TV dramas with patients hooked up to an electrocardiogram (EKG). For Gaines, it became all too real — he was the patient hooked up to the EKG, not knowing what had happened to him.
The diagnosis was pericarditis, which the American Heart Association defines as an inflammation of the pericardium, a sac-like structure surrounding the heart and ensuring its proper functioning. This happened when he was mid-season into his first full year as a coach. The heart attack was difficult to deal with. Even harder, he related, was changing who he was during the long road to recovery. It was vital that he follow the doctor’s orders, which meant not doing many of the things he’d taken for granted. As a coach, he never sat down. Now, he had to.
“Anybody who’s seen me coach knows that I get very vocal.”
Now, he couldn’t be so vocal.
“I had to have somebody yell stuff for me!”
Not surprisingly, he fully recovered, although he must always be mindful of his existing health condition. He has gained a tremendous amount of knowledge from playing, coaching, and just learning from different people.
Everything is an ongoing process. Macieo Gaines is always reaching and growing.
“I’m always looking for ways not just to make myself a better coach,” he concluded. “But to be a better role model and help people succeed in every way.”
It all comes back to the idea of “flow.” GN
