Darwin Zook shared his story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below
Hi Darwin, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share your story, experiences and insights with our readers. Let’s jump right in with an interesting one: What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
Thanks very much for this opportunity! A usual morning is a quick beach walk with a cup of coffee followed by responding to coaching emails. Then off to the gym to follow my new physical therapy designed workout. I never knew one legged sit to stands, holding just 10 lbs weights could be so hard!
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
It’s rare to find a job that brings together past life experiences and ventures into one package. I’ve been lucky enough to find that combination working as the Director at WGV Above Basketball. WGV is a basketball training facility for Kindergarten, all the way through High School. While basketball skill development is a focus, myself and all the coaches have tried to create an atmosphere of personal growth that extends beyond the court. Playing sports has always been a huge part of my life. From shooting into a bucket tied to the window sill in a small town in Germany, to eventually playing basketball at UC Santa Cruz and later semi pro football, I’ve always had a passion for competing as a player. Coaching became a great transition for me to maintain that competitive drive while also embracing all the aspects of sports that I love; Team building, personal growth, the joy of the journey and overcoming obstacles, the exultation of winning, the battle of recovering from a tough loss. I could go on and on, but competing in sports has transitioned into a long coaching career from high school to college and now at WGV Above. Working with amazing coaches at WGV Above basketball and getting to teach so many kids has been incredibly rewarding and has offered a sense of wholeness, combining so many aspects of life into my job. Being a head high school coach or associate college head coach, we had one team to build up and reach our potential. But now, we have grown our program at WGV to have as many as 16 teams we are working with at once. It is a big responsibility, with plenty of obstacles but it is also extremely rewarding. Myself and all the coaches at WGV embrace the process of trying to teach what team building and hard work really is, just as much as how to perfect the cross over dribble or make the right type of pass. Basketball, like all sports can build character, trust and work ethic. None of those traits come easily in life. There are pit falls and moments of self questioning that we all go through., but it is embracing those moments that make the journey so rewarding. I’ve realized as much as I love winning and that feeling of triumph, it means nothing without the obstacles along the way. My 3 and a half years at Above WGV basketball have been amazing thanks to the kids we coach as well as the high level character and skill of all the coaches I get to work with. WGV has become like a family and I think that’s pretty special.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. Who taught you the most about work?
The idea of work is complicated in itself. We work at a job to earn a living. We work to get better at a hobby. We work at relationships. We all have our own successes and failures. We also all have our own sense of what work ethic is. For me, I had 3 people that influenced me the most about work ethic growing up.. My dad taught me how to work for a cause. The Earth is our true home and his work as a professor in Science and his commitment to our natural world around us has inspired me my whole life. As people, our job is not to take over the planet, but rather help be caretakers of it. That sense has been lost and we need more people like my dad who puts the Earth first. His commitment every single day of life to this has been inspiring to me. It has allowed me to realize our best friend we all should have is the planet first and how we fit in. My mom taught me about how to truly care for others on a deep level and put in the time to do so. As a nurse practitioner, my mom reached the top of her field while giving every single patient she saw her very best. She never cut corners, always pushed through no matter how tired she was. My mom is the definition of commitment and hard work. She didn’t need to talk about her toughness, it showed through to me every day of my childhood. The third person that influenced me growing up was none other than Michael Jordan! Some may chuckle at this, but if we all think back to when we were kids, we had certain heroes beyond our friends and family. For me, it was Jordan. I idolized him for not just his skill, but how hard he competed. He would even create obstacles to challenge himself to overcome them. I admired his drive to truly enjoy the process of getting better at something, no matter what level that was at. For me, despite being a very good high school basketball player, I realized soon how hard I had to work to make a college team, eventually start and become a captain. It was a journey that was rough at times both physically and mentally, but it was the type of journey that made me realize how much I enjoyed competing and challenging myself when no one is watching. Overcoming personal obstacles is often more important than the final validation or destination we seek. While goals are important, I’ve always found that the process is really what defines how we look back on times in our life. It’s not always how something ends, but rather the joys we got from the journey along the way.
When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
I’ve been lucky enough not to go through true pain like so many people do. My mom overcame cancer and seeing that journey and recovery was scary, sad and uplifting all at once. So far in life, I’ve never had to face something like that. But like everyone, we all have our own moments of pain that we go through. Having expectations and goals are often taught as positive aspects of life. While they can be uplifting, I think they also can also lead to pain. If we are always seeking more and higher, we aren’t really in the moment and it’s those moments along the way that make up life. Physical pain and injuries I’ve always been able to work through and take as challenges to overcome. Pain though can be more complicated from a mental aspect. We often get into trouble when we expect some end goal to happen because “I worked hard or had some big plan.” That’s just not life. We can work hard, have goals and sometimes it doesn’t end the way you think. I don’t think this means that journey along the way was unsuccessful. But that realization can be hard. I think back to when I was most disappointed and I think it was from that illusion of always wanting something more, rather than appreciating the journey of what’s happening. This often stems from outside forces of society/social media putting expectations into our head. I think many people often live lives that they think they should be doing, rather than what they really want. They follow the course of our current times to match the expectation of money, house, car, job, marriage that society has subtly laid out. This can happen both professionally and in personal relationships. Pain has taught me that true power is not about having things society has laid out for us. It also isn’t about our own individual goals that may or not be reached. Power is embracing who you are, regardless of what others may say. This is not easy to do however and is certainly something I work on every day.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Is the public version of you the real you?
There are days I prepare to go coach for 8 straight hours and I know my mind is not in the place to maintain the energy I expect of myself for 8 straight hours of coaching. In this case, it is about overcoming that obstacle and presenting the best professional version of myself I can. This public version of myself isn’t really matching what I’m feeling in that moment, but I think it is something we all go through on some level. In a more general sense, I think we all have different parts to ourselves that we either accentuate or diminish depending on the setting we’re in. I’ve found the older I get, simply a walk on the beach or sitting in a green area can allow me to truly feel free without expectation from someone else or society as a whole. I think another way to think of this question is saying “Are you generally true to yourself?” There are moments in life everyone likes to have back and it’s impossible to always “get it right.” Being true to oneself means making mistakes too. Maybe I reacted too strongly to someone not making a bounce pass in the paint or not hustling after a loose ball…maybe I shouldn’t have yelled as loud :). But that is also what I felt in that moment and submersing that reaction too much would not be putting my true self out there. What I admire most about our coaches we have at WGV is we have a wide range of personalities. It seems to fit together incredibly, where we pick up each other in practice and don’t miss a beat. We can read each other’s movements or voice inflection and know when to jump in and take over an aspect of practice. It’s the most amazing coaching group I’ve been around in how we seem to fit together.. Different ages, backgrounds, methods of coaching but I think it all fits together so well because we all are the true versions of ourself. Of course we are still in a professional setting while coaching, but who you see is really who we are. I truly feel lucky to work and be friends with such genuine, intelligent and fun people.
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What do you think people will most misunderstand about your legacy?
I don’t really like the word legacy, because it takes the importance of a concept like self awareness and elevates it to some excessive plain. I think a big fault of the modern human western world is we often have such an inflated sense of self importance. Our home, the Earth has become secondary to the complications of every human connection we have. Connections with other people are certainly important, but we can get so wrapped up in every detail and conversation that we forget how we actually feel. I know I have been guilty of this many times in life. We get wrapped up in all the every day minutia of “getting by” and completing our task lists, that we forget to actually live. I think we all have some trepidation of how we are viewed or will be remembered. I think for me, some people might misunderstand decisions or actions I’ve taken in life. One example in my life that sums up decisions some may question, is when I left behind a fast growing broadcasting career at 20 years old to take a year off from school and go train to play Division 3 college basketball. The other people I was working with at Fordham University at that time went onto become national very well known broadcasters. Some may say my decision was foolish; losing out on money, fame and a sustained lucrative career. But, then I wouldn’t have played D3 basketball, wouldn’t have had incredible relationships over the years, ended up coaching at multiple places, lived all over the country, still got to do some broadcasting, while ending up at Above WGV. We all have to own our own paths. Legacy is just about our own journeys, so I think we have to live it as close to our own heart as possible and process all the outcomes, both positive and negative that come with those decisions in life. When those emotions feel like a lot, a simple morning walk on the beach and view of the ocean makes me remember, we are just blips on the radar of time. Value yourself but don’t be too self important. We’re only here for a short time, so enjoy the ocean, the plants, the sky as best we can. I guess from a human view, I hope I made people smile and laugh sometimes.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.abovebasketball.com
- Instagram: abovebasketballwgv
- Linkedin: Darwin Zook
- Facebook: Above Basketball WGV
Image Credits
Julie Ryan photography for the second pic (in black shirt)
