GAME OF LIFE

Take a look at that coach stalking the sidelines, drawing up a play on the clipboard courtside, or watching the action, steely-eyed and stone-faced, from the dugout.

Hard to believe that coach was a rookie once, too.

We asked some of Southern Nevada's most accomplished coaches to look back on their first coaching jobs and reflect on what they learned from it.

The result: A scorecard of basics any coach -- as well as any parent, any employee or anybody who wants to succeed -- would do well to consider.

TIM CHAMBERS

Head baseball coach, Community College of Southern Nevada

Tim Chambers, 42, landed his first job, as junior varsity baseball coach at Bishop Gorman High School, in 1990.

While he is in the midst of a successful coaching career -- Gorman made the playoffs seven times during the eight years he was varsity coach, and the college has won one national championship and three league titles since he started there in 2000 -- Chambers says he wasn't as effective as he could have been during that JV year at Gorman.

"I didn't know that much about coaching," Chambers recalls. "I didn't know that much about how to teach."

Chambers figured the only way he could get players' respect was to be intimidating. "I think I was just mean to the kids in order to try to get the respect and get them to do what I wanted them to do."

His players that year, Chambers suspects, "had zero fun. They were scared of me."

As his career progressed, Chambers realized that good coaching -- and good teaching -- is about more than demanding respect. He recalls once hearing former major league manager Whitey Herzog speak.

"He said, 'You can be mean and rip your players verbally and they'll play for you, but if you love them they'll bleed for you.' And that quote stuck with me for my 18-year career."

Chambers learned that a coach's job is to "be an example and teach them some life lessons along with baseball. But if you're just going to be a jerk all the time, I don't think you're going to become a better coach."

Chambers keeps in touch with members of that JV team -- he coached them throughout their high school careers -- and says they do remember his mean period.

Luckily, he adds, they laugh about it now.

LONNI ALAMEDA

Head softball coach, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Lonni Alameda's first coaching job came in 1989, when she was 23 and a graduate assistant at Barry University in Miami Shores, Fla.

By then, Alameda had played softball for years. As she became more involved in coaching, she began to see "just how much more to coaching there really is."

While players concern themselves only with practicing and playing, a head coach, particularly at a smaller school, deals with dozens of issues ranging from scheduling to equipment, and from fundraising to recruiting, Alameda says.

"It's going all the time," she says. "I think one neat thing about it is, you make your own hours. But the hours are long. At the higher levels, you get more support. At the lower levels, you do it all by yourself."

In fact, Alameda says, given the breadth of day-to-day details coaches attend to, whatever happens on the field "is a sanctuary.

"Dealing with budgets, dealing with travel, dealing with recruiting and all those other elements can really bring you down. The Xs and Os, that becomes secondary."

That, by the way, is "why you want to surround yourself with amazing assistant coaches," adds Alameda, who was named 2005 Mountain West Conference Coach of the Year and whose staff also was honored that year as the National Fastpitch Coaches Association's West Region Coaching Staff of the Year.

Alameda, who also took her team to the NCAA regionals in 2005, learned that developing good athletes is only part of the college coach's job. A head coach must concern herself with the quality of her players' character, too.

"As much as I want to win a national championship, I want these kids to graduate and be good people in society and do good things."

LON KRUGER

Head men's basketball coach, UNLV

Lon Kruger's first coaching gig was a summer job, during college, coaching his youngest brother's baseball team.

"It was a real eye-opener because, as a player, you look at it from one perspective and then, all of a sudden, you're coaching these little guys and you realize a totally different side of it," says Kruger, 54.

Namely: Little kids play baseball because it's fun. Kruger learned his job was to "make it a lot of fun and make sure it's a positive (experience) for each of the guys."

Of course, kids, like adults, like to win, too. The trick, Kruger says, is for a coach to develop the fine art of balancing the competitive instinct with the fun of sport.

"The whole thing you don't really think about is, as a player, you're competitive and trying to win," he says. "All of a sudden, as a coach, you're thinking about the experience and reaching these young people."

That first coaching job, he says, "opened my eyes right off the bat that it's not always about winning, especially at that age, as it is looking at the opportunity to participate."

That lesson has carried over to Kruger's collegiate coaching career, even if his players don't always share the coach's definition of "fun."

For instance, Kruger says, "I always felt like running sprints helps you be a better player and you should enjoy that."

But, he concedes, "that doesn't always work out that way."

Kruger knows what he's talking about: He has been named to the all-time Big Eight team (third team) and was an Academic All-American his senior year at Kansas State University. His own No. 12 jersey has been retired there. He took the Rebels to the NCAA Sweet 16 this year for the first time since 1991.

"I'm really intent on the college experience being a good one for our players, and a positive one."

MIKE SANFORD

Head football coach, UNLV

Mike Sanford's first job was as a graduate assistant under former UNLV head coach John Robinson at the University of Southern California.

"It was a shock to me the kind of time commitment, the kind of detail that went into preparation and practice and teaching," he recalls.

Sanford learned from Robinson that coaching is largely about organization. "I think that good coaches are good teachers, and good teachers are very well-prepared," he says.

"No matter how long you've been a coach and how old you are, it's all about, number one, teaching," adds Sanford, 52. "And it's also about developing a relationship and trust with those people you're teaching.

"I think that's a critical thing. The days are past where you're going to get respect and trust just because of your position. I think you have to earn that from those you're coaching."

UNLV marks Sanford's first head coaching job. Before coming to Las Vegas, he was considered one of the country's top assistants. In 2004, as offensive coordinator at the University of Utah, the team ended the season ranked fourth in the country and earned a trip to the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.

Most of all, Sanford says, "the thing I've really learned through the years is, you've got to be yourself."

TYRONE ARMSTRONG

Head football coach and assistant boys track coach, Mojave High School

Tyrone Armstrong's first paid coaching job came in 1978 with the varsity girls track team at his alma mater, Beecher High School in Flint, Mich.

Armstrong, 51, considers himself lucky in having had his own high school track coach as a mentor. "I was able to tap into that resource on how you organize your team and how you run your team," he says.

As he studied coaching, Armstrong says he would think about his own coaches over the years and what they demanded of him as a player. And, from that, he began to form a coaching philosophy of his own.

"First of all, I learned to treat athletes like athletes," he says. "It didn't matter whether they were girls or guys. My job as a coach is to try to get the best out of them. So I never treated my girls any different than I treated my guys, and sometimes I'd even challenge the girls (more) than the guys.

"All athletes want to be the best, and that's important to them because they want to succeed."

Armstrong also learned to make use of any resource that might help his athletes. For instance, his players traveled to meets at Ohio State University and the University of Michigan to see what they could learn.

"I think that's what makes a good coach," Armstrong says. "You beg, borrow and steal from everybody."

Among the highlights of Armstrong's coaching career: Taking his girls track team in Michigan to three state titles, two of them back-to-back; winning a state title with his boys track team at Las Vegas High; and going to the state finals as an assistant football coach at Cheyenne High School.

Armstrong pays attention to his players' academic lives, too. He serves as coordinator of the Play It Smart program at Mojave, which monitors student athletes' academic progress and helps to prepare them for life after high school.

One of the most important lessons Armstrong has learned throughout his coaching career is that a coach has to be himself.

"You have to be who you are and they respect you for that," he says. "They can see through a facade, where you're trying to be somebody else."

SUE THURMAN

Head boys and girls volleyball coach, Las Vegas High School

Sue Thurman, 34, began her coaching career as head girls volleyball coach at a small 1A school in Pennsylvania. She was 21 and concedes that her first year wearing a whistle was a bit bumpy.

Thurman had played volleyball in high school and college and, she says, "got that job based on my playing experience, not really coaching experience."

Thurman still had a player's mind-set that first year. "I kind of felt like I had to show them how to do everything."

In the years since then, Thurman has learned enough about coaching to figure out "all the things I did wrong" back then. Since Thurman took over the girls program at Las Vegas High School in 2000, her teams have won seven consecutive conference titles. Thurman took over the boys program in 2005, and her teams have won two conference titles and one state title.

She has learned to spend time helping players develop their skills, rather than demanding that they do exactly what she does in the way she would do it.

"I think another thing I learned that first year is, you cannot expect high school kids to do what you expect a college kid to do," Thurman says. "There's a very big difference between college and high school."

And, as a coach, Thurman has learned that "there is always so much about a sport to learn."

"Twelve years ago, I thought I knew everything," she says. "Now I feel like I just know small pieces. I feel I'm constantly learning more and more about my sport."