Like Bob Knight, Cooter's David Mathis finds success from hard coaching

On the day that college basketball coaching icon Bobby Knight passed away, it’s fitting to tell the story of the success achieved by Cooter High School baseball this fall.

There is no shortage of tremendous coaches throughout Southeast Missouri – in every sport. However, there may not be a more similar personality to Coach Knight than Wildcat baseball and basketball coach David Mathis.

“We have a process that we go through,” Mathis said of preparing each of his teams for a successful season. “There is conditioning, and then reps, and I’m extremely hard on them.”

Mathis may not be old, but like Knight, he is definitely “old school” in his approach to getting each of his athletes to meet (or exceed) their potential.

“We try to make them tough,” Mathis said of his coaching philosophy. “We’ve had successful kids. They are successful past (high school) because they get pushed hard.

“Parents don’t like it because I’m high-strung. I’m not nice about it, and I don’t talk to the parents a lot. But maybe one or two kids in 13 years, in both sports, have not been successful dads and go out in the community and work.”

That demanding environment was evident this fall, which was acknowledged by all who watched Cooter to be a rebuilding year after winning 17 of the past 18 District championships at the MSHSAA Class 1 level. However, after losing five of its initial six games this fall, Cooter closed the season by winning 10 of its last 13 games, which included clinching the Tri-County Conference regular season crown, as well as the conference tournament title.

“The process paid off in the end,” Mathis said, “because we weren’t the best team in the conference.”

Many would argue that Knight’s Indiana University teams weren’t often the best either, but the Hoosiers managed to win three NCAA Championships, win 11 Big Ten championships, and advance to five Final Fours.

“We told the kids that you don’t inherit standards,” Mathis said. “You have to make your own standards. The kids competed. They took the butt-chewings. They took the long practices. They ran and it wasn’t fun, but to (the coaches) watching them grow, it was awesome for us.

“It was completely on them, and they accepted (the coaching).”

Not only did the Wildcats begin to forge their own “standards” on the diamond, but led by two seniors, Tyson Banks and Talan King, the 11-man roster began to lead themselves in some manners, another trait of a Knight-like squad.

“I didn’t know what would happen,” Mathis said of the young, inexperienced group being coached hard. “I thought maybe some kids would quit and we’d get down to eight or nine players. But they evolved and it got fun halfway through.

“We knew that the process was hard. The hard part was not fun, but when we got going, it was fun to take a step back, we laid off, and let them play.”

Following the early losses, Mathis instructed the Wildcat to run, and that didn’t stop when the winning began, according to Mathis.

“We ran them after (games) for losing,” Mathis said. “We’d run them after (games) for striking out looking. It got to the point where we told them ‘If you don’t want to do this anymore, then stop losing.’

“And then when they did win, we were doing it to them anyway. That is what we do.”

There is little doubt that Knight would give Mathis his full approval.