Hall of Fame coach Sherri Coale discusses new book and life lessons with Robin Marsh

Hall of Fame coach Sherri Coale is back in the spotlight, but it’s not for basketball this time. Coale recently sat down to discuss her second book, The Compost File, a collection of short, inspiring stories drawn from her own experiences.

A Book Born from Observations

“I consider myself a noticer. I just pay attention to things and observe, and I jot those things down. And for years, I threw them in a folder on my laptop computer that was called the compost,” Coale said. “I just had compost on it, and I went through those and started turning them into little pieces, little stories, inspirational tidbits here and there. And after a while, I thought, if I grouped all these together, they might help somebody else the way they've helped me.”

She added, “I like the fact that you can pick it up and not have to remember where you were. The older I get, the more I like that.”

A Lesson in Homesickness

Coale shared a story from her childhood when she first attended basketball camp as a fifth grader. “I was desperately homesick as a fifth grader, my first time to ever go away from home, and I went all the way from Hilton to Lindsay, which is a really long way, maybe 45 minutes if you're driving the speed limit,” she said.

“I had dreamed for months since I first got the little pamphlet in the mailbox of going to basketball camp, because I was absolutely in love with the game and wanted to learn how to do it better. And the day gets here, and I go to camp, and I’m so excited, and I kiss my mom goodbye on the steps, and I go into the gym where they’re playing ‘Sweet Georgia Brown,’ and I think, ‘Oh no, what have I done?’ I’m missing my mom, and it was horrible, but it was a wonderful growing experience.”

A Teacher’s Lasting Impact

Coale also shared how her fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Henderson, made a lasting impression. “She was amazing. She was a little bit different in terms of what a Hilton Elementary School teacher was in that day. I remember being so pretty, and had this gorgeous brown hair that was so shiny, and she had a headband that she pulled it back in every day, and she wore these great colors, and she was just a real, demonstrative, passionate, energetic teacher,” Coale recalled.

“One time she misspelled a word, ‘potato,’ but put an ‘E’ on the end of it, and it was in the corner of her room on parent-teacher night, and some of the parents saw it, and a big stink arose,” Coale said. “And what I remember about it is not that she misspelled the word ‘potato,’ but the way she just the next day, drew a line through it and said, ‘An E doesn’t go here unless you put an S on the end.’ And as a result, we all remembered how to do that. But more than anything, I learned that we all mess up, and so when you mess up, it’s what you do next that matters most.”

The Meaning Behind ‘Don’t Mess with the Pigs’

One of Coale’s favorite life lessons came from her time coaching at Edmond Memorial High School. A mentor, Coach D, frequently teased her and once gave her an unusual piece of advice: “Don’t mess with the pigs.”

“At the time, I had no idea what he meant. And I kept looking out my window and out the front door, waiting under the desk. ‘Where are the pigs?’” Coale said.

“About four months later, I had to deal with a parent who was desperately unhappy about their daughter’s playing time, and I was the assistant coach. I was like, ‘I don’t decide this,’ but I was calm enough to listen to him and let him get through it,” she said.

Coale continued, “I remember thinking, ‘Okay, I need to cry. I need to explode, but I’m not going to do it in front of Coach D.’ And so I had to get past his door to get to the parking lot where my car was.”

She recalled, “I walk past, and I hear his chair squeak, and he says, ‘Hey, Coale.’ And I’m like, ‘Ah.’ And so I turned around and kind of put my shoulder in the doorway. I said, ‘Yeah, Coach D, what’s up?’ And he said, ‘Have you been wrestling with the pigs?’ And I thought for a second, stuck my head in the door, and I said, ‘Yeah, Coach, I think maybe I have.’ And he said, ‘I want to tell you something I don’t ever want you to forget it. Don’t wrestle with the pigs, because you’ll both get dirty, and they will like it.’”

A Different View on Basketball

While Coale no longer coaches, her love for basketball remains strong. “I love watching it for a different reason, from a different vantage point now,” she said. “Love following the Thunder, obviously. Love the way they play. I think it’s so pure. Oklahoma women are having a great season, so I’m enjoying watching, but it’s certainly different.”

With The Compost File, Coale continues to inspire, proving that the lessons learned on and off the court can leave a lasting impact.