It is probably safe to say, without fear of contradiction, that Marty Fletcher has seen more than most during his career as a basketball coach. He has worked for three famous coaches who could not have been more different in personality: Morgan Wootten, Norman Sloan and Jim Valvano. He has coached at a military academy and at a school once publicly labeled a "renegade program" by, of all people, a Southeastern Conference athletic director. He has taken a team from Division II to Division I. He coached in a game in which 83 three-point shots were attempted and he claims to be the most successful coach in the history of Rupp Arena. "I'm 2-0," he says. "I'd like to see anybody top that."

Now though, Fletcher has taken coaching to a place where no man -- or woman -- has gone before. He has become, as he likes to put it, the Ernie Banks of college basketball coaching. "Let's play two," he said. "That's my new mantra."

That's because he's coaching two -- the men's and women's teams at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, a Division II school a few miles down the road from the University of Denver, his last Division I stop.

"I've got a pretty good chance to make history this season," Fletcher said recently. "I seriously doubt that any college coach has ever lost 40 games in a season. The way things are going, I've got a real shot at it."

Fletcher's unique job description came about after he had coached the women's team at UCCS to a 7-20 record last winter. "I did such a good job that they decided to double my workload," he said. "Most of the time the logistics work fine because we play a lot of doubleheaders. Practice time is no problem. I've been doing this long enough now that coming up with two practice plans in a day isn't very hard."

Fletcher, 52, began doing this as a freshman at Maryland in 1969. He had been cut by Wootten the previous year as a DeMatha senior but was brought back to the program as the assistant JV coach.

"I played as a junior," Fletcher said. "But Morgan had that streak where he'd never had a player who didn't get a college scholarship. He saw me as the end of the streak, so he cut me. I was a company guy; I understood. Then he brought me back to coach once the streak was safe."

Fletcher coached at DeMatha for seven years -- the first four while he was in college. Then he spent two years at Niagara before being hired by Sloan at North Carolina State in 1978. When Sloan left for Florida, Valvano retained him.

"How many guys can claim to have coached under three different guys who won national championships?" Fletcher asked. "Norm won his [in 1974] before I got there. Jim won his [in 1983] after I left, and Morgan won a couple of his in spite of my presence."

Fletcher left in 1982 to become the head coach at Virginia Military Institute. "I did some homework before my interview," he said. "I found out that VMI had three winning seasons in 40 years. I told the committee if they let me coach 40 years I would guarantee them at least three more winning seasons. They must have been impressed because they hired me."

Fletcher actually produced a winning season in his third year at VMI, reaching the Southern Conference championship game before losing by three to Marshall with an NCAA tournament bid on the line. A year later, he moved to Southwest Louisiana (now Louisiana-Lafayette). He stayed there 11 seasons, reaching the NCAA tournament twice, including in 1992 when the Ragin' Cajuns upset Oklahoma in the first round. Two years later, they were back in the tournament and Fletcher was looking for his next move.

"We played Marquette in the first round that year," he said. "The Tennessee job was open and [then Marquette coach] Kevin O'Neill was the hot name. Some of the Tennessee writers asked [then Tennessee athletic director] Doug Dickey why I wasn't being considered and he said, 'I would never hire someone from a renegade program.' Okay, the school did have 120 NCAA violations back in the '70s, but heck, I actually graduated people while I was there."

He moved from Southwest Louisiana to Denver in 1998, hired to take the program to Division I.

"It was supposed to be a 10-year plan," he said. "They knew we were going to struggle for a few years. Then the AD and the vice chancellor who had hired me left and a new president took over. My 10-year plan became a 10-minute plan. Next thing I knew, I was looking for work. It was disappointing because we'd put a lot in place. We won 10 games my last year and had everybody back. Except, as it turned out, for me."

He landed not far down the road at UCCS as the women's coach. The school is in Division II, meaning it is allowed eight scholarships for men and eight for women. It uses only three for each even though it is in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (R-MAC) one of the more competitive Division II leagues in the country, one that includes defending men's national champion Metro State.




"We're only playing them once in the conference this season, so, genius that I am, I scheduled them for a nonconference game too," Fletcher said. "The good news is they only beat us by 10 . . . touchdowns."

The margin was actually 58, meaning even without extra points it was just under 10 touchdowns. The men won six games last season and Fletcher thinks if either of his teams gets to double-digit victories this season, they will have done well. Right now the women are 3-5, the men 0-8.

Recently the Mountain Lions "had a chance to win two the same night," Fletcher said. "That would have almost made up for what happened on the Pittsburg State trip."

That was in late November when the Mountain Lions -- men and women -- traveled 12 hours by bus to Pittsburg, Kan., to play two games each. Both lost on Friday. Then both lost again on Saturday. "Four losses in 24 hours," Fletcher said. "Now there's a record I don't think will ever be equaled."

After the fourth loss, everyone piled onto the bus for the 12-hour trip back home.

"I had to take a shower before we went back," Fletcher said. "The only place I could find was the referees locker room. There were a lot of things I wanted to say to them. I settled for, 'Can I borrow some soap?' "

Still, Fletcher remains upbeat. He says he enjoys all his players and believes both teams will improve with time. And, he believes he now has something he can put on his résumé for this season that will separate him from all the other coaches he knows. "I think I can say, without question," he said, "that I am the best coed coach in the entire country."

He coaches twice a night, but clearly, he is one of a kind.

The source of the story

Washington Post
By John Feinstein