Assistant yearns for dream job

Bob Baptist

Aug. 1, 2008 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- When he saw the young teenager dribbling a basketball as he ran by the window of the restaurant on a Mexican beachfront last August, Alan Major's instinct was to get up from his table and find out where the game was.

But not to play.

An assistant coach for the Ohio State men's team, Major has known from the time he was a 13-year-old in Indianapolis that he wanted to coach basketball. The neighborhood children came by his driveway hoop during the summer, and while they played, Major made sure everyone was in the right spots to catch his passes.

"Then, when the kid knocked the shot in by doing what you told him to," Major said, "that was kind of fun."

He tried out for the Purdue team as a walk-on intent on soaking up every drop of wisdom that coach Gene Keady imparted. When Major didn't make the team as a freshman, he became a manager. That led to a graduate assistant's job at California Lutheran and, later, to full-time jobs at Pacific, Southern Illinois and Xavier.

He will soon begin his fifth season at Ohio State under Thad Matta. But first, Major plans to spend another week in the tropics, recharging for the season ahead and all the while continuing to look for that dream opportunity he mentioned last year in a letter he wrote to the editor of Islands magazine.

Major picked up the publication on his way home from Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Its cover story, "20 Best Islands to Live On," was "what I've been dreaming to do," Major subsequently wrote.

"I am entering my 16th year of coaching, and though I love what I do, I sometimes yearn for the purity of what coaching is all about. My dream is to live on an island and develop a basketball academy for young kids. Can you refer me to any practical resources to help me make this move? I only ask for advice on the living part -- I'll figure out the basketball aspect later."

Major said he is not planning to leave Columbus. Not for more than a week or two a year, anyway. He would like to be a head coach of a college program someday.

While he stays on that track, though, he wouldn't mind getting a foothold on a parallel one.

"Whenever I go down there, it's a good time to just kind of detach," said Major, who also has vacationed in Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta and St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. "But even though you're on vacation, basketball never leaves your mind.

"I think it was one day when I was probably a little bit more relaxed than normal and started thinking, 'What about putting the two things I really enjoy together, traveling and being down in that part of the world and coaching basketball?' "

For now, he said, all he is looking to do is maybe a three- or four-day camp for children and see where it goes.

"Maybe it could grow into training guys down there to keep (developing)," Major said. "Maybe you could get together with local coaches, train them to continue to teach the skills throughout the year, then when you come back (each summer), it just becomes a thing that happens year after year."

Maybe Playa del Carmen produces the next Tim Duncan. And maybe the next Tim Duncan would play in college, too.

But then the NCAA would get interested in Major's moonlighting. That's why he said anything he plans would be looked at by the NCAA first.

But that's down the road because, at the moment, all he has is a dream, no plan. And, at 39, he is not close to the age where he would walk away from what is a successful career in college coaching.

"I still have a tremendous amount of passion for this level and doing it in this environment," Major said. "So (retirement) is at an undisclosed age at this point."

And if he won the lottery tomorrow?

"Then it's age 40," he said, and Caribbean, here he comes.

bbaptist@dispatch.com

"Whenever I go down there, it's a good time to just kind of detach. But even though you're on vacation, basketball never leaves your mind."

Alan Major

Buckeyes assistant coach

Newstex ID: KRTB-0147-27093352