linzie green

By Kirk Hanna
Times staff writer
Most high school coaches blend together.
They want to win games, win championships and for their kids to be recruited by colleges.
In Rawlins, Linzie Green sticks out from the crowd.
It helps that he’s almost 6 and a half feet tall. But beyond the physicalities, he sticks out for another reason. He has experience playing division one basketball at Nichols State University in Louisiana.
“I don’t know ... there’s a lot of schools in Wyoming,” Green said of being the only high school boys basketball coach in the Cowboy State. But as for whether it gives him an edge, he said it does a little of both.
“Yes and no. You can’t expect your players to play how you played, but you can teach them the principles and the values of working hard.” Green said when he was younger he became a basketball junkie: going to the gym early to shoot jump shots, staying in the gym late to shoot free throws, simply working to get better. Basketball is a way of life for Green.
“All I ever wanted to do was coach the game of basketball,” he said. “Most all of my coaches were like father figures.” They helped him with his shooting, with his studies and would even give him rides to and from practices.. “As a coach, you have to have a relationship with the kids, but you also have to draw the line between coach and player.” That’s now his own approach as he is in the middle of coaching his third team in Wyoming.
But Green didn’t just become a basketball coach by night. He spent many years playing the sport he loves, and is now passing along his passion to the next generation of Outlaw graduates.
“Every coach I had was different, and each one had a different impact on my life,” Green said. From little league basketball, to AAU, to high school, to college, Green learned various coaching techniques during his playing days.
So how did this passionate basketball junkie end up in the town of Rawlins? He said it was a little bit of past experience, but mostly the luck of meeting his wife.
Green played at Western Wyoming Community College from 1995-1997 before transferring to NSU. Upon graduation, Green headed to Germany for a few years to continue his hoop dreams. It lasted until 2001 when he returned to WWCC as an assistant coach at the junior college level. He spent two seasons with the Mustangs, then two seasons in Sheridan.
Eventually he met his wife Amber, a native of Rawlins, and the pieces fell together. “It was a good move for us,” Green said of his transition to central Carbon County. “It got us close to family.”
It seems like a story-book ending for a passionate basketball fan. To play in college, travel over seas, coach an alma mater, meet a life partner and settle down as a head coach at the high school level.
But for this ambitious hardwood enthusiast, he said he wouldn’t count out an eventual trip back to the university level.
“I’d love to eventually go back and coach college basketball,” Green said. “I like the idea of recruiting, I like meeting people ... I’m a people person and I want to get out and get more involved ... and if that opportunity ever came, that’d be something that I’d have to seriously think about doing.”
At the end of the day, he does fit in with the coaching landscape. He has hopes that his kids learn not only the game of basketball, but also lessons about life.
“Every coach’s dream is to have a kid be successful in life ... I’m trying to teach (my players) to understand nothing is going to be given to them,” Green said. “I tell them ... to get an education because ‘this it’s what’s going to get you a job’ ... but do they listen? Maybe a handful. You can’t reach everybody, but just reaching one kid is making a difference.”
Of course as a basketball coach “the ultimate dream is a state championship.” Green said it’d be the best case scenario for his hardwood career. “As a basketball coach, (my goal) is the to win the state championship ... especially at the high school level.” And he believes it’s not far along on the road of life. “These kids (in Rawlins) have a chance to do it, but I don’t think they realize it because of talent ... but I think it’s more about experience than talent.”
Talent can blend together, but it’s experience, which sticks out.