@@facebook=
@@
OXFORD — It didn’t take long for Charlie Coles to snap out of it.
He and his Miami basketball team had just suffered what he’d later call “as terrible a loss as I can remember suffering” — the RedHawks let an 11-point lead slip away and fell to Evansville, 77-75 — and as he slowly led the way through the perfunctory postgame handshake line, he seemed fully absorbed in the defeat.
In the first row of the Millett Hall seats — behind the visitors’ bench, just a few feet from where Coles would finish up his congrats-to-the-winners walk — a young girl looked anxiously for the come-on-down motion for which she’d waited all game.
Jazz Bennett, Coles’ 10-year-old granddaughter with the long dark hair and infectious smile, regularly joins her beloved, 69-year-old granddad on the court after games and walks with him — often hand in hand — to the dressing room.
She follows him into the locker room, listens to his postgame talk and then the players gather around her as she leads a repetitive chant: “1-2-3 RedHawks!” Afterward, she accompanies her grandpa to the press conference and always sits next to him.
But on this night — after Miami’s fifth loss in six games — Coles uncharacteristically didn’t look in her direction, instead turning and trudging to the dressing room alone.
“I sometimes feel bad for my grandpa when he loses,” Jazz had said earlier. “But he usually gets over it real fast when he sees me.”
Although a little taken aback by the slight, she soon was joined by her three cousins — 11-year-old Tyson Coles, his 8-year-old sister Taya and 6-year-old brother C.J. — who had just arrived from Michigan for the family Christmas in Oxford.
Soon everybody was having fun, though Jazz continued to keep one eye on the court. She knew her granddad would return for his coaching comments with the radio broadcast crew. And when Coles did come back — once he finished with his analysis — it didn’t take him long to motion for the kids to join him.
Within seconds Jazz was at his side, followed by the others, everybody talking and C.J. quickly turning his grandpa into his own private jungle gym.
“On a night like this, this is about the only thing that saves you,” Coles said. “Having grand kids has helped me not feel bitter about losses. I still feel bad. But not bitter. I used to get like that, but when you’ve got young people looking up to you, you don’t want to be the type person who holds onto bad things.”
Eventually he brought the kids into the media room. They sat next to him and quietly listened — except for C.J. who got a “Be quiet boy” from his granddad — as he went through the painful autopsy of the night.
When there were no more questions, Coles looked at the aging press crew and said, “If you’ve all got an extra minute, my man C.J. is a performer.”
Taya rolled her eyes and Jazz giggled, but C.J. was undeterred.
“First of all, he’s a big rasslin’ fan, show ’em that move boy,” Coles deadpanned.
C.J. went through his contortions — complete with grunts — and then Coles asked for one more demonstration: “This cat’s not afraid of the public ... so C.J., what you gonna do for us — karate or dance?”
As the boy contemplated his options, Coles prodded him: “You got to decide fast. These gentlemen are old and they need to go home and go to bed.”
As the little boy quickly channeled Bruce Lee, the old coach — who has directed 643 games as a head coach in college and won more Mid-American Conference games than any coach in history — sat back and smiled:
“Tonight, when we leave here will be pleasant, I guarantee you that. I haven’t seen this crew together for quite a while. We ain’t gonna let one discouraging loss affect Grandpa.”
But after a bit of silent contemplation, he added in a half-whisper. “ ... At least not while they’re awake ... but oh, when they go to sleep.”
Through thick, thin
In his earliest years, Coles lived with his parents and grandparents in the same house in Springfield and became especially close with his grandfather, Sandy Pettiford.
“My grandfather was a special person in my life and in his eyes I could do no wrong,” Coles said.
That was never more evident than when Charlie was about 8 and broke a window at a cousin’s house.
“I was so afraid and I lied about it,” Coles admitted. “Everyone knew I did it, but my grandfather — right up to the day he died — would say, ‘That boy did NOT break that window.’
“I never forgot that — how he always believed in me. That unconditional love, that bond we had ... I think every kid needs a granddad or an uncle that stands with them through thick and thin.”
Coles and his wife, Delores, have two children: Mary, Jazz’s mother, is a fundraiser at Wright State and her husband, Craig, is an assistant athletics director at Miami. Chris Coles, who’s married to Robin, is an assistant coach at Saginaw Valley State.
“Dad has always been very open about his priorities,” Mary said. “He obviously loves basketball and is very serious about it, but he’s not shy about showcasing his life with people ... And that includes his family.
“When I was young, he was coaching high school in Saginaw and I’d ride the bus to games. And Chris, when he was little, he’d lead the team onto the court, dribbling the basketball.”
Yet, these days, Delores said, the dynamic is different with grand kids:
“When it’s your father, the connection can be more difficult than when it’s your grandfather. Your father, he’s also the disciplinarian. You end up performing for your father, making sure you get it right and all that.
“But when it’s your grandfather, you don’t have to worry about him coming home and you being chastised about anything. It’s all about fun.
“Part of it for us, too, just comes with age. As you get older, some things you thought meant so much don’t mean a thing. That joy kids bring, the love of life, that’s what’s important.”
With Coles it has been heightened by some real health issues. In 1998, he suffered a heart attack during a game at Western Michigan and was brought back to life on the court by a doctor who had been in the stands. And a few years ago — in a 14-hour surgery that included repositioning his heart — he had his second bypass surgery in some 20 years.
So when Coles says being a grandparent has, in part, “helped give me a second life,” he’s not just offering platitudes.
Up until five years ago, both Mary and Chris and their families lived just a couple of doors down from him in Oxford, so they all were intertwined in each other’s lives.
When Tyson and Jazz were small, Coles first invited them onto the court for the postgame walk and they did it on occasion after that until Chris took the job in Michigan and moved the family.
Jazz was crushed when her cousins left and Coles said that’s when the two of them began to bond all the more. She became a postgame regular, now rides the bus to a few away games and even sits at the far end of the bench in some of those rival arenas, including OSU on Thursday night and UD Arena a year ago.
“I’ve told my team I want my family around guys who are doing something positive and I believe they are,” Coles said. “I believe the players are the most positive influences she can have in her life other than her family.”
The experiences resonate more with Jazz because she’s already a basketball player of some note herself. She’s a 5-foot-1 point guard for her Oxford rec team and last season she had a game in which she scored 30 points.
And that sounds like she’s following grandpa’s footsteps yet again. In Coles’ senior year at Bryan High in Yellow Springs he was the leading scorer in the state, averaging 42.1 points per game. It’s thought to be the second highest single season average in Ohio prep history. At Miami University, he scored 1,096 points in his Hall of Fame career.
Jazz also plays flag football on a boys’ team coached by her dad and grandfather.
She follows the Tennessee Volunteers women’s basketball team and not only has attended coach Pat Summitt’s camp — where she won top honors — but accompanied her granddad to one of the Vols’ practices in Knoxville and got the royal treatment from the coach and her team.
“Watching all this and being with my grandpa, now I want to be a coach one day,” Jazz said. “I’d like to be just like my grandpa.”
A second life
Coles had a challenging week leading up to Christmas.
Along with the two-point stumble to Evansville and a 29-point rout by No. 2 Ohio State, he got put to the real test Friday night.
That’s when he and Jazz — with the help of the other three grand kids — put on a Christmas concert for the family.
“Jazz has written five songs for it — one’s called “Snowville,” another is “Winter Clothes” — and she directs it and handles everything.” Coles chuckled earlier in the week. “She and I have already had two practices for it. She’s made it very clear when I come in, the parts I sing, everything. We’ll have a real party with this and it’ll be a lot of fun.”
After thinking about it a few seconds, he tried putting it into perspective: “I didn’t realize until I had grandkids what they would do to my life. Like I said, they gave me a second life.
“Some folks don’t realize how much of a help it is to have kids who are very, very innocent around you. When they’re around and when they love you and you can love them back, you just always feel so lucky.”
And this Christmas — even after a tough week on the court — the old songster of a coach has never felt luckier.
About the Author