DaytonDailyNews.com

OXFORD — If this were a normal Final Four weekend, Charlie Coles would be down in San Antonio with the rest of the basketball coaching fraternity.

He'd go to dinner with the guys on his Miami University staff, spend some time with his old pal, Jim Brown, the Northmont High School basketball coach, but mostly he'd be at the Alamodome for the final games of the NCAA tournament.

"Every Final Four, I go to all the practices, every minute of them. I watch the games ... and I dream," he said. "You always dream that that could be your team out there. I've never lost sight of that."

He still hasn't, even though he's spending this weekend at home with his wife, Dee Dee, in Oxford. There might be a couple of trips to Millett Hall — just to walk the hallways for 15 minutes to build his stamina and help change the scenery after a grueling month of March Madness of a different kind — but he'll be sure to be back home in time to watch the games on television.

The dream is alive ... because he is still alive.

Talk about your Cinderella stories. No one has a beat-the-odds tale quite like the 66-year-old RedHawks head coach. He countered "bad genes," as he calls them, with some good sense he showed the morning of his team's March 1 game with Ohio University.

Since last summer, he hadn't been feeling quite right. There were times he had trouble catching his breath, but they'd come, then be gone for a month.

"But that morning it hit me again, and I just had enough," he said. "I drove myself to the hospital (McCullough-Hyde Memorial) here in town. They put an IV in me, and an hour later, they're airlifting me to Mercy Hospital Fairfield. They said I had that rapid heart rate again and they had to do something."

In 1985 — when he was the head coach at Central Michigan — Coles suffered a heart attack and underwent triple bypass surgery.

Thirteen years later — by then the Miami coach — he suffered another heart attack during a Mid-American Conference tournament game at Western Michigan. That time — thanks to some medical personnel in the crowd — he was brought back to life on the court and soon after had a defibrillator installed in his chest.

This time, he said doctors initially gave him some ominous news:

"They said, 'You're not sick enough for a heart transplant right now, but you're headed that way.' But then I got a PET Scan, I believe that's what it was, and they came back more optimistic. They said, 'Some parts of your heart are working that we hadn't seen before, so we feel better about this and think we can fix it.' "

And so Coles took a temporary leave from his team. Longtime assistant Jermaine Henderson took over as head coach and guided the RedHawks through the three final regular-season games and into the MAC tournament semifinals.

On March 11, the day before the first of Miami's three tournament games, Coles underwent a 12-hour surgery to have three bypasses done, have his heart reshaped — "they made it (smaller) to make sure I get maximum use out of it" — and have the defibrillator box repositioned.

Four days later, there was another surgery for one more bypass.

Then, near the end of the month, he was treated for a bleeding ulcer. All told, he spent a month in the hospital.

"After all that, at the end of the day you're just happy," he said quietly. "Happy that you survived."

Long road back

"I'm feeling pretty good, though I'm beat up now," Coles said. "I'm almost like a boxer getting ready for a fight. I've got to get myself back in shape. I've got to build strength and stamina. There are good days and bad, and a lot of it is mental."

That's why he was at Millett Hall on Friday morning, April 4. Some 15 pounds less than a month ago, he sat in his office with his feet propped up on a second chair to combat swelling.

In a few minutes — for just the third time since leaving the hospital — he'd try walking the long hallways around the basketball arena.

In recent years, he has exercised regularly and watched his diet. Until a few days ago — under doctors orders because he'd lost his taste for food in the hospital — he had his first red meat in 30 years.

"I tried to be healthy, but the thing is, I just have bad genes," he said. "My dad died of a heart attack. My mom had a heart attack, but died from something else."

The other thing he's trying to do now is relax, a concept almost completely foreign to college coaches during the season.

"The nature of our profession is just the opposite," Coles said. "But I started reading again. Right now, I've got Tony Dungy's book, something I probably should have read long ago."

As for his family, he said his wife handles his health issues as well as anyone: "She knows. She's fought cancer several times. With both of us, we've been there for each other in times like this."

He said his daughter has "done her best not to break down around me," and his son has been "a nervous wreck."

So how about now that Dad is doing better?

"He's still ... watchful," Coles said with smile.

Over the past month, he said he's been overwhelmed by the response from fans, other coaches and former players.

What really "astonished" him, he said, were the fans from Ohio University, Miami's most-heated rival: "I got a folder full of e-mails from them."

He grew silent for a moment, then said: "You know people are good. People root for each other."

Not ready to quit

The big question, of course, is whether he will keep coaching.

"I think so," he said softly. "I'm not for sure, but I think so.

"I was told if the operation was a success — and they tell me it was — that the quality of my life would be what it was eight years ago."

His family, he said, has been supportive of his decision, though had the doctors told him not to return, those closest to him would have pushed for that: "Otherwise, they probably feel it would hurt me more than help me to be away from the game. It wouldn't be normal.

"When the kids were small and my wife was following the team, our home was built around basketball. Every Sunday I always took my kids — and the neighborhood kids, too — with me to the gym.

"My daughter started riding the team bus as early as first grade when I was coaching high school. And I don't think my son missed a game until he started playing in high school. Our greatest times ever as a family have been in basketball."

And if you watched Coles this past season, you saw the tradition has passed on to another generation. After many games, no matter the outcome, he walked off the court hand-in-hand with his little grandchildren.

"I've always tried to teach my kids, and now my grandkids, the same as I taught my team," he said. "No matter if you win or lose — no matter what happens, no matter how tough it gets — you gotta love it."

He managed a faint smile:

"And I still do."

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