"If you don't learn something from losing a game, you shouldn't have lost."
Curt Riley's late father told him this, and he hasn't forgotten it since.
Going into his 36th season coaching, Riley will look to instill his wisdom as the new girls basketball coach at New Bloomfield this season, trying to turn around a program that has gone 15-30 in its previous two seasons.
From his first head coaching job at Linn County more than 30 years ago to his several other positions, including an 11-year tenure in Kirksville and a six-year stay at Father Tolton, Riley has amassed 539 career wins and was inducted into the Missouri Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2014. All that time, Riley said he has tried to outwork people in his duties as a coach while also passing that philosophy down to his players.
"You've got to outwork people," Riley said. "I'm going to outwork whoever I have to coach against. What I say I'm going to do, I'm going to do for (my players). When you do that, I think the kids will buy in because they'll know, 'We've got a coach we can trust.' That's when you win."
This has been a constant feature of Riley's teams throughout the years, he said, no matter the playing style each team has employed. He said he has coached many good players, as well as students and citizens, throughout the years, with the New Bloomfield girls being the latest group that he sees great potential for since he started working with them.
Riley said he doesn't believe in changing everything, as it is most important for the players to buy in to getting "one percent better every day" and playing hard every game. The team should then find the style that works best for them and wins should follow. He said he has seen this happen with his teams that like to run up and down the court to half court teams that pound the ball inside.
The latter style is what worked with Kirksville, Riley said, as he remembers how the players had a lot of size and also recalls how Kirksville had a losing record in four or five years before he was hired. In his first year, they scored more inside and played more man-to-man defense, resulting in a 13-12 record. Riley believes the players outworking opponents and playing to their strengths helped turn things around and is how Riley was able to collect more than 200 of his wins in his 11 years there.
While this New Bloomfield team does have some size, Riley said, he also has noticed they have some athleticism and can shoot, and he's excited to figure out what style will work best for them when he has all of his players in the gym at the same time.
"When I'm talking to a kid, when I'm coaching them, I like them looking at me square in the eye," he said. "That's when you know you have them. If kids are looking away, you don't have them."
Riley wasn't able to do this last season as the assistant coach at Central Methodist University as he said he had a teaching job and had to follow COVID protocols. Head coach Mike Davis - another MBCA Hall of Famer that Riley assisted at Columbia College - agreed Riley couldn't be on the sidelines so he can could continue teaching. This was the first year Riley didn't do any coaching since he was hired for his first job, he said, and this happened the season after Central Methodist had a 31-2 record and won its conference. So Riley missed it, he said, and was eager to get back into it and believes he will enjoy doing so in a great community like New Bloomfield.
New Bloomfield athletic director Jacob White said the previous coach, Patrick Center, resigned toward the end of the school year, which is typically a busy time of year, to start a job in Jefferson City. White said the school was lucky a candidate of Riley's calibur was available and interested, and Riley was hired last Thursday.
"He brings a lot of basketball knowledge to the table, and I felt he is exactly what we were looking for and what we need here," White said. "As far as all the candiates, he had the most basketball knowledge, he had a lot of experience and he brought a lot of excitement to it."
Riley is excited to be "butting heads" with other good coaches once again. He said he looks forward to watching game film as he did as an assistant and for many years now as a head coach to make sure his team is prepared for every game. Most of all, he said he gets to coach the game that he loves that has given him great friends and great players that he also views as family.
Like his father before him, who coached more than 30 years of football; his brother, who is a high school baseball coach; his nephew, who is a volleyball coach at Rockhurst; and his son, who also coaches high school girls basketball, Riley wants to get back to work.
"My teams, not me, have won a lot of games," Riley said. "It's not just about winning games. It's more about just coaching the game that I love and helping kids learn that same game."