Feb. 28, 2008

By Matt Martucci

If you follow major college basketball, or even just the Atlantic 10 and what takes place on Hawk Hill, it is a résumé you know very well. It includes a perfect regular season, several conference championships, a Naismith Coach of the Year Award, and an Elite Eight appearance. Saint Joseph's head men's basketball coach Phil Martelli's accomplishments on the bench obviously speak for themselves.

You can add a miscellaneous activity or two to that résumé. There's his weekly TV show, HawkTalk, which at times has probably kept some up at night taking Tylenol while leaving others in stitches. Martelli recently added a new venture to his off-court portfolio. The Head Hawk recently teamed up with co-author Dr. Harold Gullan, Ph.D. and released his new book Don't Call Me Coach: A Lesson Plan For Life, published by Philadelphia-based Camino Books. Several months of conversations between Martelli and Gullan and some 200 pages later, the book has emerged as a local bestseller.

Released in mid-September, the main focus of the collaboration centers around Martelli's life experiences from his time growing up in Southwest Philadelphia, and later as a student at St. Joseph's Prep and Widener, to his ascent toward the ranks of major college coaching. Don't Call Me Coach is told in the first person and makes you feel as though Martelli is actually talking with you in his "tell it like it is" (and occasionally sarcastic) style.

"I want each reader to feel like they've had a conversation with me," Martelli said. "It's a one-on-one conversation. I may not be at the coffee table with them. I may not be riding in the car with them. I may not be sitting in their living room, but I want to be able to talk with them and hopefully through the written word I've been able to do that."

That type of communication applies to a widespread genre of different readers. The goal that both Martelli and Gullan had in mind was to make the book one that just about anyone could pick up.

"I think there's something here that will leave an impression on you no matter who you are," Gullan said. "Whether you're a student or a CEO you can take something away from this book."

"I wanted it to be a book that a seventh grader could pick up," Martelli said. "I wanted it to be a book for the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. I'm not saying that every lesson in the book has to apply to every person nor do you have agree with each lesson. I'm just presenting how I got to where I am. "

The title Don't Call Me Coach also makes itself incredibly clear. Martelli as told to Gullan, communicates his philosophy that we are all coaches in some aspect of life. He also emphasizes that it is not a person's occupation that defines who he or she is.

"People will put you on a pedestal and expect certain behaviors from you," Martelli said. "I'm not saying that we shouldn't be held to expectations but to me, I think it's really important that people see their value. It drives me crazy when people say I only did this or I only did that. That's what you are, but that does not define who you are. I think that everybody has a value to the greater group that they're in, whether that be a family, church, community, charitable endeavor, or a team. I would hope that people think of their role and hope to be the best at whatever it is they do." All this is encompassed in Martelli's ten-point lesson plan for life, but the book isn't all motivation. Readers will also get to see a side of Martelli that they may not necessarily see amidst the TV cameras and the media attention. They will get to see the Phil Martelli who is one of seven children of two loving parents (Mary Jane and Philip Martelli), married his sweetheart Judy, and once boldly proclaimed to childhood friend Stevie Stefano that he would one day be the head coach of the Saint Joseph's Hawks.

"I'd like to break away the outer cover of `Oh well that's the Coach' and allow people to know that I worry about my family like you worry about your family," Martelli explained. "That on game day I can be very ritualistic and tight and that I have a tremendous sense of responsibility to those who have allowed me to coach at Saint Joseph's."

"It's very evocative of Phil," Gullan added. "It's really saying that he's just an ordinary guy with an extraordinary opportunity and he's learned a few things in his experiences that might help you."

The combination of so many different aspects of the coach's experiences with the life lessons and humor in the book has truly made Don't Call Me Coach a rousing success on the local level. Over 7,000 copies have been published and Gullan expects that several thousand more are on the way.

"It's been a great experience for me to have been able to collaborate with Phil on this," Gullan said. "I knew the book would do well locally but now I'd like to see it resonate on the national level."

"I am humbled by people who read the stories and read the conversations in the book and then come up to me and tell me what they think," Martelli said. "I still marvel at the whole process."

Whether the book will rise to the national stage has yet to be seen, but visualize this: coming soon to Barnes and Nobles' across the country, The Don't Call Me Coach National Book Tour. After all, as we've learned from the experience of a certain Martelli-coached team just a few seasons ago, anything is possible on Hawk Hill.