The Years Before the Bright Lights

The gym was small. There was no seating on two of its sides, and maroon and yellow pads hugged the walls just feet from the court.

Behind the benches, some wooden bleachers went back about 10 rows, but very rarely were all of those necessary.

For the past nine years, it was the gym Tobin Anderson called home as the head men’s basketball coach of tiny St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, N.Y., about 20 miles north of Manhattan.

On Friday night, Anderson was coaching a slightly better team in a slightly larger venue.  

He led the No. 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson Knights to one of the greatest upsets in college basketball history, knocking off No. 1 seed Purdue, 63-58, in front of nearly 20,000 fans in Columbus, Ohio.

But it’s the tiny gym that might be most relevant.

Just about all of us as leaders have some sort of ambitious dream. We want to take over the company, run the school district, implement our vision and our philosophies upon a team that just needs a lift.

Some of us get the chance. Others never do.

But there are two key lessons from Anderson’s improbable, decades-long journey to reach the highest levels of the sport that we might be wise to keep in mind.

1. There are immensely talented people at all levels

We often fall guilty of assuming the very elite in any industry are in the most prestigious positions. We reason that the best doctors are at the best hospitals, the greatest coaches with the top franchises, the brightest minds at the most elite institutions.

But FDU’s win was a critical reminder that there are gifted people all over, and we shouldn’t thumb our nose or look down upon anyone simply because of where he/she works. Sometimes, it just takes the right opportunity for a person’s skill set to become apparent.  

2. We never know when our chance may come  

Anderson worked for nearly 25 years at the Division II and III levels — often coaching in front of 100 or 200 spectators — before finally getting a Division I chance. 

The reality is that many of us work in silence each day hoping our efforts and our performance levels attract the right eyes. It’s easy to grow frustrated or cynical by our relative lack of progress or that our work doesn't seem to be catching anyone's attention.

But being a true leader requires an unwavering faith that if we do the right thing, if we continue to execute at high levels, if we build honest relationships and stay consistent to our visions, our work will eventually get recognized and we will get our opportunity.

Anderson and his team will be celebrated for years and even decades to come for their win.

But the roots of the upset weren’t planted in Ohio that week or even in practice in the months leading up.

They were established in the solitude of empty gyms in years prior — a coach not looking for his next opportunity but pouring everything he had into the one right in front of him.