CHANDLER (AZ) — I was doing a little research about the UD Women’s basketball team and I ran into an article that I did about Jim Jabir shortly after he arrived at the University of Dayton. Since this was written, Jim has gone through a lot including a three win initial season and a brush with death. Yet, through all of that, he is the same engaging, caring person that I met six years ago. I will be doing an article about Jim and where he sees this year’s team landing, shortly. But, first, I want to give you a vision of what Jim saw back in 2003.


The Young and the Restless
It doesn’t take you long to realize that this guy is different. Most head coaches of major college basketball teams have a certain air about them. For the most part, they talk and act like they are from a different place. They have time for you, but just not too much time. They tend to be guarded; not ever wanting to open up for fear that it might expose a weak spot that might be exploited by someone down the road. They are rarely the guy next door. They are this way for many reasons. They are scrutinized on an almost daily basis. Every wannabe coach out there is ten times smarter than they are and only the things that they do wrong are ever remembered.

As a result, an invisible wall is built around both them and their family. You may see a friendly, cordial individual, but deep down inside, he has 5,000 other things swirling around in his consciousness. Too many things to do and not enough time to do them. Too many things to accomplish while they still have a chance. Another mountain to climb before somebody beats them there.

That is not what you get when you meet Jim Jabir (pronounced Jay’ bur). This might have been who he was before, but not who he is today. The Jim Jabir that you meet today is a fun loving, exuberant, hard working, trustworthy man on a mission. He is a man that wants to get back to the hilltop. Yet, he is a man who understands that the hilltop is not the true summit. Jim Jabir has experienced things in his life that have made him a better man and one that has learned to love the gifts that he has been given and just where they belong in his life. Sometimes failure is all we need to make us succeed.

Jim Jabir was born in Brooklyn, New York and lived a life not unlike most New Yorkers of his generation and background. He lived in a small house, had a number of close neighborhood friends and had a mother that he and many others would never forget. Jim relates, ”We grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood. We moved a lot because of my dad’s changing jobs, although we always stayed in Brooklyn. My mom is a really great person that sacrificed a lot for us kids. It really left an impression on me.”

Jim was the oldest of three children that Rose Jabir brought into the world. His father moved from job to job and died at an early age so the majority of the raising of the kids really fell on Rose. Working multiple jobs, she did everything that she could to put her kids through the best schools yet be able to have some semblance of a home life. “I remember being up at 2 AM helping her pin slips for Gimbals. She would put all of the ribbings on the slips. She was also a receptionist in Manhattan. She would get on the train every morning to go to work, come home, feed us and then start to work again. We had a great family life and she gave us everything we ever wanted,” Jim said.

It was very important for Rose to have her children go to Catholic and college preps schools because college was something that was going to happen for her children. She and her family led a good life, but she knew that there was more out there for them. Her own life has been one of giving. Although she had a rising career in the fashion industry, one that took her across the world, she gave that all up to raise a family. She is a woman filled with spunk as she once broke up a gang fight with young Jim in her arms, refusing to leave until everyone went home.

“My mom is a real neat lady. I owe her a lot. As a kid I wasn’t close to my mom as most boys tend to be when they are young. When I think about my past, she is pretty prominent because of all the things she gave me. I think, when I was young, I had the same issues that most boys have. I was embarrassed to go to the super market with her. As I matured, I realized all of the contributions she has made in my life and for that I am very grateful.”

Like many athletes, Jabir not only grew to love his sport, it became part of his very fiber. This was not just something he did to pass the time; it was something that truly changed his life. “Basketball was very important to me. We knew a lot of people that got into serious trouble and basketball was always a way to keep me grounded, steady, disciplined. We would play in the rain; we would take shovels to schools to clean off the snow so we could play. Things are so different now. I would take my basketball to the park with me at 9 in the morning and came home when it got dark. Basketball was everything for us. My girl friend got me two tickets to a Knick game and I took my best friend. I didn’t even realize how stupid I was for not taking her. I surrounded myself with basketball players. I would play every day. It really gave me an identity. It made me different. Basketball has always been important to me in my life. It gave me real balance and as a coach I try to make players see that.”

Loving a sport and being good at it are two different things. He might have spent thousands of uncounted hours playing the game, but both Jim and every college coach in the land knew that he wasn’t good enough to get a free education. As a result, Jabir attended Nazareth College, a Division III school. “I got better as a player after I left college. I could shoot and pass it a little bit, but I wasn’t very good. The game got more important to me after I quit playing. Being a coach has always been with me. After we would get done practicing, I would just hang around in the gym and watch. I didn’t know how I could support myself but it was fascinating to me.”

Not long before graduation, Jabir finally came to the realization that he was going to have to come up with some type of a career since he was probably never going to make it in basketball. Jim remembers, “I was an English major probably for no other reason than I probably couldn’t have gotten a degree in anything else. It was getting close to graduation and I began to think about what I was going to do with my life. I got a job as a technical writer with a small high tech company. I hated it and wasn’t very good at it. Yet, I kept getting promotions because I could talk. I felt guilty because there was a junior college grad that worked next to me and put out three times as much work, yet I kept moving up. We had flextime and I would go in early, skip lunch and leave at 1 in the afternoon. With all of this extra time on my hands, I was able to get a job as a part time coach at my alma mater.”

Jabir spent a year on the part time job and decided that his life as a technical writer had come to an end. He took a job at Buffalo State College as an assistant coach while he worked on his master’s degree. He made $1,000 that year. To keep the money flowing, he cut lawns in the summer.

It was during his time in college that he met his wife, Kathy, “I told my wife when we were dating that this (coaching) was something that I really wanted to pursue. I let her know that it would be long hours and I wouldn’t see her very much and told her that it would be bleak at times. But she has been wonderful.”

Kathy was working for Xerox and selling copiers to pay the bills while Jim spent all of his time in gyms and locker rooms. It was his second year at Buffalo State when Jabir received the break of a lifetime. The head coach of the women’s team decided that she wanted to go to school full time to get her doctorate. At least on an interim basis, the job was his. “She handed over the program to me at 23 years old and we go to the NCAA Division III Tournament. She came back the next year and helped me get an interview at Siena College, which honestly I didn’t deserve with the level of experience that I had. I ended up getting the job, which I probably didn’t deserve either. They were not highly invested in the women’s program and I was cheap. I had a lot of energy and enthusiasm and promised up and down that I could do the job.”

Jabir was 24 and the job was his. He convinced Siena that he was ready for the job, he just hadn’t convinced himself, “You have a lot of bravado but it didn’t take me long to feel that I was in over my head. I had this huge anxiety attack after taking over. I remember closing my office door and looking through files hoping to find notes that the previous coach had left. I didn’t even know what a home visit was. I didn’t know what an official visit was. I didn’t know anything.”

Jabir, fresh from one year as head coach of a small Division III school, was eager, but not seasoned. He had never really had a mentor to learn the tricks of the trade from. He had been thrown into the middle of a dung heap and come out smelling like a rose. However, this was different. This was now Division I and he was the “man.” Yet, he could not have fallen into a better situation. Jabir was lucky enough to have as a fellow head coach at Siena, Mike Deane. Although Deane has had his ups and downs in the following years, he was doing well at Siena and happily took Jabir under his wing. Jabir relates, “It was a real blessing. Mike Deane was the men’s coach there and it became a three-year laboratory for me. I basically lived with him. I went to his practices. I spent time in his locker room. He would take me to lunch. I think he is one of the best teachers in the country.”

Deane’s teaching and Jabir’s hard work seemed to do the trick because the Saints went 50-30 over the next three years. After his third consecutive winning season, Marquette came calling. Even though he was just 27, Jim was on his way to the big time. Marquette was a good school with a bad women’s basketball program. He had gotten past the point of not knowing what an in-home visit was, but not the question, “Could he turn around a program at a much higher level of competition?”

The Thrill of Victory, the Agony of Defeat

He was a wise cracking kid from Brooklyn with a new home in the Midwest. Although he had done well in his very brief coaching career, this was a new ballgame. This was a poor team Jim Jabir was inheriting. This was not a team doing well where the former coach had taken a step up the ladder. This was a team that was to go 7-20 in his first season coaching there. This was no lay down.

It didn’t take Jabir long to turn things around, however. The next season began a string of four consecutive winning seasons. In 1993-94, the Golden Eagles received a call on Selection Sunday that changed a lot of lives. “When we found that we were going to the tournament for the first time, the cheering and laughing and crying was unbelievable. The kids that were really talented that had come to Marquette had no real business there. We had 17 years of losing. They took a chance on me. When you pull 15 people together and you do something that no one believes you can do, that’s powerful. That’s why you wake up in the morning. That was an amazing feeling. I want to feel that again.”

That was just the beginning of his success at Marquette. The following year, the Golden Eagles were again one of the top teams in Great Midwest. When it came time for the conference tournament, the Golden Eagles felt a certain level of pressure because the games were to be played in their back yard. In both the semi-finals and the finals, they found themselves down with but a few minutes to play. In both cases, they found the deep down in the gut fortitude to do what needed to be done, “When we won the conference tournament, we came from 18 down with six minutes to go. It was a great feeling. That crowd loved us. That crowd WAS us. They took ownership of us. You could feel it in the stands. It was a wonderful feeling. I need to feel that again. Our players need to feel that. You need to dream.”

He continued to win at Marquette, but like most young coaches, it just wasn’t enough. He just wasn’t satisfied and the Big East came calling and he was there to answer the call. As most of us have experienced in our lives, what we think we want is not always the thing that we should want and Jabir found that out in a hurry.

Jabir shared his regrets, “I think the biggest mistake that I have made in my career was going to Providence. They really didn’t have the commitment that you need to be successful. I don’t know if I was fooling myself or if I had lost my mind but if you look at the level of commitment in that league, it is hard to compete with a program like Connecticut.

“We were really building a nice program at Marquette, something wonderful. We were building a culture. We would get over 2,000 to show up for games and we eventually had to move off campus because the Fire Marshall said that they would close the gym down because of capacity constraints. I had just signed the 12th best class in the country. That class went to four NCAA Tournaments. I’ve spent a lot of times kicking myself in the head because of the move.

“I left because it was the Big East. It was back on the east coast. I wasn’t very mature at the time and I didn’t realize what I had. I thought I could do anything. I made a grave error, but I learned a lot from it. I’m a better person now. I think I’m a better coach. You have to be a better coach when you play Connecticut. You have to find ways to compensate. You work and work and work. How can I do better with less? I wasn’t a very nice person by the end of my tour there. I was frustrated and blaming everybody. I learned a lot about myself. I left with time on my contract. I just didn’t like who I was becoming and I knew that things were not going to change.”

It is never easy for a doer to admit that he is a failure. Jim Jabir realized that he was not succeeding at something that was part of the core of his being. Worse yet, he was turning into some kind of monster. This is a man that is driven to please. He does it either through laughter or by becoming an integral part of someone’s life. He is his mother’s child. He was put on this earth to bring out the best in people and teach them how to make themselves better in all facets of life. He knew he was failing, not just on the court. He needed to change.

Providence was 7-9 in the league, which was the best the school had done in a dozen years. They had a player on the all-rookie team and had a top 25 class coming in. “We had a lot of things in place that would put us in a position to be good. I just didn’t want to put my family in that place anymore,” Jabir said.

A business friend of Jabir’s offered him a job that would allow him to stay in the Providence area, but Jim just wasn’t ready to give up on coaching. While looking for jobs for his assistants, Jabir stumbled into a job for himself at Colorado. He was on the move again, “When I came home and told my kids that we were going to be moving they all cried as hard as I had ever seen them cry. We all cried, it was the worst day in my life.”

Even tough he was just an assistant, Jabir was prepared to put down some roots and allow his family to make Colorado their home. This stay was to only last a year when Ted Kissell came calling after Jaci Clark stepped down as the head coach at the University of Dayton. Although it wasn’t going to be an easy move for the Jabir family, this was a golden opportunity that could not be dismissed. Although new friends had been made and roots beginning to grab deep into the soil, Jim was ready to pack the U-Haul once again.


On the Road to Success

It was on April 8, 2003 that Jim Jabir began again. He was once again given the reigns to a major college basketball program. He was once again given the opportunity to do what he enjoys. He was once again given the opportunity to change people’s lives.

“I’m blessed with an Athletic Director that cares. I’m blessed with a great coaching staff and I don’t see why we can’t do great things here. In the end, if that doesn’t happen, then it is on me. I’ve been successful when I am given a chance and I expect that to happen here.”

Jabir knows the same things that Jaci Clark knew when she took the job. It is a program that is seemingly going nowhere without a logical reason for that being the case. The University of Dayton is not just a good school, but, a great one. The facilities take a backseat to nothing short of the NBA. The league consists of several teams regularly battling for a spot in the Top-25. There is more than enough budget to get the job done. The University wants a winner and will do everything it can to allow that to happen. It is now Jabir’s opportunity to make it a reality.

He realizes it is no small task, yet feels confident that he can pull all of the necessary pieces together and the beginning of that is filling the stands, “I think we have a perception problem here. I don’t think there is any feeling about us one way or another. I could be very wrong, but my sense is that the people in Dayton will follow a good product. If you look at the number of people that came to watch the Women’s Regional here you have to be impressed.”

It’s not just the perception of potential fans, but also how the program is recognized by potential recruits, “You have to take a different approach when you have not been a winner. Everything is perception. Take Syracuse, for instance. They haven’t won in a long time. They have a new coach that is bringing in the big names to look at the school because the men just won a national championship.”

The program is not one that is in shambles. Jabir does not face the same problem that Jaci Clark faced when she took over the women or Oliver Purnell faced when he took over the men. This is a program that has bordered on the edge of respectability for most of Clark’s stay. She could just not get it over that imaginary hump. The real problem came in the area of recruiting. You can’t win a horse race with anything but a thoroughbred.

If anything, Jabir would be viewed as a recruiter that succeeds when he shouldn’t. He has been able to recruit levels of players that in the past would not have considered either Marquette or Providence. That success does not come easy; there is a technique that must be used to succeed in a business that turns on the whim of a 17 year old high school student.

“Recruiting is different at every job. Right now we sell the school, facilities and the opportunity to be the start of something great. In the past, I’ve sold me because we didn’t have a whole lot else to sell. You create relationships with kids. You create a relationship with their family. You have to develop trust. At Providence, we were able to successfully recruit kids that we had no business winning because they believed that they were important to us and the fact that we cared about them and they trusted us.

“For the most part, you end up selling you, your philosophy, your personality, your energy, your dream, your style of play. Your physical resources can only take you so far. The good kid will be sold on the school by the personal relationship that you create. I try to talk to them as I hope someone will talk to my daughter some day. I treat all of my players the way that I want someone to treat my daughter when she leaves our house. That is my baseline. That is what I use to tell me how to treat other people. When I go into someone’s house, I tell them the things that we can do for their daughter. I tell them what the University of Dayton is about.”

Two things go hand in hand when it comes to sports: winning and fans. To paraphrase Kevin Kostner, “Win and they will come.” There seems to be a catch 22 when recruiting and attendance are discussed. Do you need fans to show up to be able to recruit or do you need to win to make the fans show up. With that in mind, Jim will do what it takes to accomplish both, “You cannot substitute humor for wins, but if you start winning you can bring people in to follow the program by utilizing a good sense of humor. If people like me and we are winning, it will only bring more to the program. My hope is to start getting 4,000 to 5,000 people to games and if I can be the lightening rod to get that to happen, then so be it. I can relate to different kinds of people and if that helps get people to the games to cheer on the Flyers, so much the better.”

Humor is a way of life with Jim Jabir. It is impossible to have a casual conversation with him for more than 30 seconds and not at least crack a smile. He has the ability to make even a complete stranger comfortable in a very brief period of time and it probably comes from the fact that he refuses to take himself too seriously.

“A lot of my humor comes from self-deprecation. I feel if I goof on myself first, I beat the wise guy to the punch. I used to go around telling Jimmy Durante jokes because I got tired of nose jokes. I think it puts people at ease. I think you can convey a lot of meaning through a joke. I’ll walk into a home visit and there tends to be a lot of tension just because of the newness. If I can make you laugh, you will be much more at ease. Kids relate to that. In this job, more than any profession, you are a scoreboard away from getting fired. Life is too short and it is too important to not have the ability to laugh and be happy. I lost sight of that for a while at Providence. Everything was doom and gloom and it can’t be that way.”

Basketball is his business. That and his family is what he lives for. His desire to succeed is there for all to see. He has expectations, but like all of us, those expectations change as we mature and gain valuable wisdom, “I honestly think that if I can get us competitive in the Atlantic 10 and get us into the NCAA Tournament, anything can happen there. I have come to change my opinion of what success is as a coach. When I was young, I thought that winning the national championship was what it took to be a success. Success to me is vying for the Atlantic 10 championship every year. We should have a shot at going to the NCAA Tournament every year. If I do that, then I would stay here 100 years if they keep me.

“As we begin to win, I’ll begin to ratchet up my expectations and I think that is good as long as they are realistic. I have to have the ability to recruit the right kids. You have to have the ability to hit a home run recruiting now and then. Right now, I can’t even get those kinds of kids on campus. We are going to keep going at it. We will look in Europe, in the Junior College ranks and at transfers if that’s what it takes. We will get it done.”

It hasn’t taken Jabir long to understand the tradition at the University of Dayton and appreciate all that the city of Dayton has to offer. With the recent movement by Oliver Purnell, Dayton has become a stepping stone for bigger and better. Many coaches now leave successful programs just to move only an inch or two higher on the food chain.

Coaches leave Kansas for North Carolina, Illinois for Kansas and the vicious circle continues. They often forget that there is more to coaching than that next rung on the ladder. Not so with Jabir, “Because it is so comfortable here, I would like to coach here for 20 years and then just go away. For the first time, I really feel like the house we live in is where we belong. I feel like I belong here in this job. I have this sense, this desire to lay down some roots. I’ve never been anywhere longer than six years. I want my kids to feel like this is home. I have a lot of reasons for wanting this to be my last job. Having said that, it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to work my hardest. For me to stay here, I have to stay sharp.”

If hard work brings success, Jim Jabir will succeed. If nurturing young women not only on the nuances of basketball, but life after basketball, brings success, Jim Jabir will succeed. This is a man that cares not only about winning, but the people he touches along the way. Jim Jabir is a winner and he will bring a winner to the University of Dayton.