For Coach Jeff Conarroe, basketball is only the beginning of what he strives to teach his teams as a head coach.
Conarroe began his coaching career in 2003 and has used basketball to give players of all backgrounds access to education and to develop young men of character. His primary goal has always been to build young men of character first and basketball players second.
“That experience working in Mississippi for three years, he became a lifelong mentor for me and I really got an education,” Conarroe said. “About race and racism in the south, the battles the University of Mississippi fought and even [Barnes] personal experiences. Getting to view that upfront, it became a passion and purpose for me and our program.”
Conarroe began his coaching career at Ole Miss under head coach Rod Barnes, one of three African-American men to win the Naismith National Coach of the year award.
Once a season, Conarroe plans an educational trip for the team. Last season he brought them to the Caesar Chavez National Monument and met with Chavez’s son and grandson, this year was the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.
It was not Conarroe’s first trip to the museum but getting to bring his team and share the experience is not something he will soon forget.
“It was emotional for me to bring those guys back there to get a piece of the greater purpose and to see them understand and start to live it themselves,” Conarroe said.
A goal of the trip was not only to educate, but to bring the team closer and give them a better understanding of their different backgrounds.
“I mean as a white person, I didn’t have to go through it, I don’t see it, I don’t go through that everyday,” Sophomore Scott Ruegg said. “But I mean team-wise, it motivated me. You know, we can all come together for a common goal, which happened in the Civil Rights Movement. You don’t quit it if it’s what you truly believe in, then you keep going no matter what’s happening.”
The museum is partially within the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Standing where Martin Luther King Jr. spent the last hours of his life was an experience not easily forgotten.
“Seeing the hotel room where [King] stepped outside and got shot, it’s like ‘oh, this is the motel that he stayed at,” Ruegg said. “You get to see the room, the bedspread, all of it. You were really at the part of history where this happened and it wasn’t just a museum.”
Ruegg and sophomore Adrian Price don’t share a common background other than a love of basketball, but both had life-changing experiences and takeaways from their time in the museum.
“I listened to this Malcolm X interview, and just hearing some of the things that he was saying,” Price said. “The picture that was portrayed by Malcolm X was like by any means necessary and he was this aggressive person. But when you listen to what he was saying, he had a very strong point. It was nice to see and actually put my own perspective on it.”
Colorado College continues to pursue and further its commitment to anti racism. The men’s basketball team has players with a variety of backgrounds, not always understood by each other but strive for a learned respect.
“I would say it was powerful, not sad, but could bring you to tears,” Price said. “When you see some of those things that people have been through and especially being a black man in America today, that’s not too long ago that it could have been me in one of those pictures.”
In traveling to the museum, Conarroe wanted to give his team a better understanding of each other and to empower them to carry on the legacy and commitment to anti racism.
“I think that a lot of times when you’re in a situation like that you realize that it’s not about you,” Conarroe said. “Regardless of your situation and the adversity that you face, I think it’s powerful. It felt like passing the baton, so to speak, empowering the legacy Coach [Barnes] and I had tried to. I’ve been trying for generations and give them something to carry with them as they go and do whatever they do after CC.”
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