LONE TREE

Wearing a short-sleeved bright yellow shirt one game night last week, Lone Tree boys basketball coach and school counselor Joel Herman looked like he had just walked off a southern California beach.

Pretty close.

All that was missing was the surfboard, beach dude.

Before Herman showed up in Lone Tree as a counselor for the elementary school and before he was a paraeducator and basketball coach in Colorado, he was a surfer dude.

Every morning, he’d catch waves in the Pacific Ocean at places like Rincon Point and Ventura Beach up the coast from Los Angeles, or down the coast at the famous Huntington Beach area south of LA.

Those days of surfing have turned into days of snowboarding (well, at least in Colorado) and mountain biking and golfing.

And now, basketball again.

Following the retirement of longtime Lone Tree athletic director and basketball coach Tom Squiers, who still helps run a youth basketball league in town, Herman stepped up for the Lions when the pickings for a new head boys hoops coach were straddling a thin line.

He had been asked for some drill and activity ideas by a Lone Tree administrator. That’s when Herman literally raised his hand for Lone Tree High School Principal Andrew Koshatka and Athletics Director Joe Donovan to say:

“I have experience coaching basketball. I have head coach experience.”

As a school counselor, he wanted to see the high school’s basketball players get a fair shot with a guy who had been there before.

“That’s why I took it on,” he said. “The boys deserve … a coach that has a skill set, but also a coach that can hold them accountable and hold them responsible for their actions and their behaviors.”

They are basketball players, but more than that.

“The bigger picture is teaching them the game,” Herman said, “but my focus is teach these young men, these boys honestly, teenagers, to become young men and eventually become men. That’s my goal.”

Already, there have been lessons.

An ejection and a suspension.

A technical foul for hanging on the rim.

And successes. The Lions are off to their best start in four seasons with four wins in their first six games, including a pair of 30-point victories.

The intensity of a game that lived inside Herman’s psyche while he was a head coach at Woodland Park in suburban Colorado Springs has returned at times. How could it not?

“When he needs to be, yes,” senior starter Ethan Bockelman said. “If he needs to get on us, he will be.”

And then there’s the humbling. Herman is sitting in a head coach’s chair that belonged to Squiers for 35 years. There are few people that walked the hallways of Lone Tree’s schools more than Squiers did.

“I have a lot of respect for Tom,” Herman said. “He’s a great coach. He has stuff on the wall here that I don’t have. You have to give him some credit there.”

And there’s the fun.

Before a game, you’ll see Surfer Guy joking with his players, school officials, spectators. Life is indeed a beach.

“Whether we win or lose, at my age now, I have to have some fun,” Herman said. “When I coached early in my career, I thought it was all about wins and losses. Winning, winning, winning. I’ve changed my mindset, that it’s about, if I’m not enjoying it then I shouldn’t do it. So I have to make sure I’m enjoying it. Making sure that the kids are having some fun, as well, because they only get four years to do this. I don’t want them to look back and have any regrets.”

Herman tells a story about reuniting with a former player during an adult softball game. Eventually, an infielder on the other team looked at him and said: “C’mon, coach, don’t you remember me?”

Soon after, Herman was introduced to the former student’s wife and daughter.

That’s the life that this basketball coach and school counselor enjoys so much now. His wife, Shannon, is a clinical pharmacist at the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics. His two sons are grown up. A walk to the beach has been replaced by a walk through the cornfields.

“I love the people here,” he says. “I love my school.”

News columnist Paul Bowker can be reached at bowkerpaul1@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @bowkerpaul