In coach John Olander’s 16 seasons at Eaglecrest, the Raptors have made 10 Sweet 16s, six Elite Eights and four Final Fours in addition to winning the 2013 5A state championship.
This winter will be Olander’s last on the bench, although he will continue to teach at the school. Denver Post preps editor Kyle Newman caught up with the legendary coach, who began his career 25 years ago as an assistant at Northglenn High School. He leads the No. 1 Raptors into the Class 5A tournament starting this week.
Q: What did your players say when you told them at the beginning of the year you were stepping away at season’s end?
A: My players were shocked. I guess it makes you feel good as a coach that when you say you’re retiring, you get players and parents coming up to you saying that you’re the reason they came to Eaglecrest or the reason why their son keeps playing. There were definitely some players who were like, ‘No way! Why? Stay one more year!” But you can always stay one more year (laughs).
The hard thing for me was whether to let everyone know before or after the season that I wanted to retire, and I felt for my school and my administration I needed to let them know as early as possible so they could start making plans without me. Our players are mature enough to understand that I’ve got a group of seniors that have been with me for a long time, and they get why the timing is right this year.
Q: Can you take me inside your coaching back story?
A: I started coaching in 1992-93, which was my fifth year of college at Northern Colorado and I was still taking nine credits. I played basketball at UNC, and a graduate assistant there, Mike Taylor, got the head coaching job at Northglenn. He called me and said he needed a coach for his sophomore team that he trusted. So he wanted me to drive from Greeley to Northglenn every day to coach the sophomore basketball team, and I was like, ‘Sure, why not.’
I thought I would be a college coach—that was my goal—but I started at Northglenn for Mike. There’s a long story there with Mike, but basically he was incredibly influential in my life. I wouldn’t be the coach I am without him, and I was there as an assistant for him for two years before he ended up leaving Northglenn to go be an assistant coach at Cornell in the Ivy League. The plan was to get me to Cornell to work with him, but it never worked out and Mike wound up taking his own life (in Dec. 1995), so right at that moment I was like, ‘You know what, I’m just going to try to be the best high school coach I can be.’
So Mike was definitely my mentor. Other than my father, who I played for at Fort Collins High School from 1985-1988, he was the biggest. I didn’t even know how to write a practice plan until I stayed the night at Coach Taylor’s house while he was at Northglenn, and he was up at 4 in the morning preparing and writing a practice plan. I was like, ‘What are you doing over there? What are you writing?’ (Laughs). He told me it’s a practice plan, and asked me what I thought was most important. I told him, ‘Defending’s pretty important,’ and my practice plans have been built off defense ever since. Mike got me addicted to practice plans, and I can’t function without them—every single second in practice has to be accounted for.
Q: Why did you decide this was the year to hang it up?
A: When Elijah Ross graduated from Eaglecrest and we had our banquet, his mom Mary Ross came up to me and said, ‘You’re not quitting are you?’ I told her I had two years left. And she told me, ‘Well, that will be Colbey’s senior year.’ And I said again, ‘Yup, I’ve got two years left.’ (Laughs). I’ve been very lucky and my family’s been incredibly supportive—I’ve been doing it a long time and my kids are getting older, so I started to think about what life would be like without coaching, because that’s the only thing I’ve ever done.
So it actually wasn’t about this team, or giving it up when Colbey graduated; I had been thinking about it for a while, because I’m one of those coaches where the game never really leaves my mind. Even when I’m in the off-season, I’m always trying to think about how we can become better and improve for the next year. I’m ready to not have to worry about that.
Q: Your Raptors host the winner of Rangeview-Mountain Range on Saturday, in the second round of the state tournament. What are the keys looking ahead to a potential showdown against Rangeview, a fellow Aurora school that you beat in the Final Four last season?
A: Us and Rangeview know each other so well—we played in their spring league for 16 years, we play in a fall league at Grandview with them, and it always comes down to execution and whether we’re able to guard their players as well as they guard ours There’s really no secrets with how each team operates, because they’re almost like a league opponent for us. And when you talk about the RPI, Rangeview is one team that probably didn’t benefit from it this year—six of their eight losses came from Centennial League teams, so they basically played the same schedule as we have and they’re battle-tested.