New coach Zach Spiker sees Drexel hoops as an opportunity

IN THE FIRST game of his youth baseball career, 9-year-old Zach Spiker stood in the on-deck circle, with the game tied in the bottom of the ninth inning.

Spiker sprinted from the dugout, bat in hand, to get a few practice swings in. The batter ahead of him walked. The bases were loaded.

Spiker was going to get a shot at winning the thing.

He trotted to the batter's box with a confidence - not a cockiness, his father, John, asserts years later - that he has since carried with him at all times.

Ever the opportunist, Spiker delivered the winning hit.

From a young age, this was the Zach Spiker friends and family knew: the boy, and now the man, who saw an opportunity where others saw a challenge, and was never afraid to take the jump.

"He just always pushed his way along, so to speak," John said. "He's always been a self-starter."

Zach, like his father, doesn't use the word "challenge" very often. He opts instead to call a possible roadblock an opportunity.

"If you look at it as a challenge, you get the energy sucked out of it," Spiker said in April. "Every school has its challenges? Or every school has its opportunities?"

An opportunity like, say, selling a prospective college basketball player on joining a program with very little in the way of historical success.

Spiker was introduced as Drexel's 26th men's basketball head coach March 29, taking over after Bruiser Flint's 15-year tenure failed to yield an NCAA Tournament berth.

There were two solid chances for Drexel to build a two-tournament résumé in the past decade, but then, if the Dragons had made the tournament in 2007 (23-9 record) and 2012 (29-7), odds are good Flint would still be the coach.

That quest now falls to Spiker, 39, who is the youngest head coach in the City Six and, after seven relatively successful years at Army, primed to take on a new . . . well, you get the point.

Spiker's coaching career began when it became apparent he wasn't good enough to keep playing.

As a sophomore at Ithaca College, Spiker's head coach, Jim Mullins, realized that his point guard wouldn't be able to fend off the competition for long. Mullins told Spiker, straight up, that he was destined for the bench, but that he wanted to keep him around.

"The thing he did for us, he was a great go-between for me and some of the players," Mullins said. "He was very much like an assistant coach. As a young guy, he could relate to those guys."

In particular, Mullins was having a hard time getting through to one junior player. He was a good kid, Mullins said, but there was no connection between player and coach.

"When we got Zach in that position, it was almost like lights went on with the guy," Mullins said.

Spiker had enrolled at Ithaca with an eye toward broadcast journalism. At Ithaca, journalism is a big deal. If you're there, you're serious about it. But Spiker loved the time he spent learning to coach from Mullins so much that, after his senior year, he was convinced coaching was for him.

He had a two-day break in his finals, so the 22-year-old Spiker jumped in his Ford Escort and headed south for Winthrop University in South Carolina, where he'd heard of a possible opening with Gregg Marshall's staff.

During their interview, Spiker impressed Marshall so much that he became the school's first graduate assistant. The position was created for him.

There was just one problem: It was unpaid.

For a recent college grad, toting a dream and not much in the way of savings, that could have spelled the end of the road.

Instead, in typical Spiker spirit, he looked at it not as a challenge but as an opportunity.

He got a job at a local car lot. Each day, he woke up with the sun and washed cars for cash. At a nearby deli, he helped assemble sandwiches in exchange for one of his own. And then he made his way over to Winthrop to help Marshall's summer camps.

"Here was a guy who knew what he wanted to do, and was willing to sacrifice to make ends meet," said Marshall, currently the highly successful coach at Wichita State. "He's a tremendous mind. He found ways to be productive, and he found ways to add value."

More than a decade later, Spiker downplays the sacrifices he made. He's not fond of talking about himself; he clams up when he's the topic of discussion, and does his best to deflect. It was just what needed to be done at the time, he said. He didn't do anything special.

But, of course, he did. He saw an opportunity, and pushed his way through just long enough to impress the right people.

Of course, he had a support system in his parents. His father worked in the West Virginia athletic department for decades.

But, as Spiker's father proudly recalled, they never helped him financially, nor by providing connections when Spiker's path took him to West Virginia in 2002. It was up to Zach to make it work.

"I feel strongly that people have to make their own way," John Spiker said. "You're doing a disservice if you try to pave them a path."

Not that Spiker would ever ask for someone to do that. He gets far too much enjoyment from blazing it himself.

Publicly, Spiker's first few months at Drexel have been marked by a great deal of energy and enthusiasm. He's a man who seems excited about his new job.

"That's a genuine thing. That's how Zach is," said Steve Donahue, the current coach at Penn and a good friend of Spiker's from their days working at Cornell. "He's got some kind of goofiness to him, some corniness, even, but it's genuine Zach."

On a morning in mid-May, as Spiker walked out of his new office, his voice boomed through the lobby of the university's recreation center as he greeted the employee who works the double doors. The coach asked what his favorite kind of smoothie is. The man answered: strawberry banana.

"Alright," Spiker called back, smiling. "I'm holding you to that."

But when the microscope was turned toward Spiker himself - his past experience, his life, his plans - he clammed up. He shuffled his feet; he cast his gaze downward. This is not a man whose interest is piqued by a good pat on the back.

So the conversation changed to a subject he'll gladly discuss: Donahue.

At the mention of his pal, Spiker picked his head up from boring a hole in the sidewalk, and his cheekbones turned upward just enough that a toothy grin broke through.

"He and I have fun," Spiker said.

Donahue has said that he considers Spiker his best friend in the business. It seems Spiker feels the same. The two spent five years together at Cornell. Donahue was the straight man to Spiker's high-energy sidekick role. They made a good team. In Spiker's first season, the Big Red went 13-14. In his final year with Donahue, they went 21-10.

In the early going, before the two turned the program's fortunes around, a particularly dreary road trip lay ahead. The Big Red were heading to Army, and then Lehigh.

Spiker, on a whim, decided to bring a hard hat on the trip. He brought it on the bus. He wore it himself. He gave it to guys after games.

"He would give it to guys and be like, 'C'mon, we're on the road. This is work. Let's go, let's get to work,' '' Donahue recalled. "Because it was work, here I was, wearing a polo and a jacket, and Zach had a hard hat on. The kids thought it was pretty funny."

Cornell won both games on the road trip. The team brought the hat with them on every road game after that.

"It was just Zach doing his job," Donahue said. "He's going to be competitive as heck. He's going to try different things. He's going to think outside of the box."

Now, the two will work a stone's throw from each other. Last season, the rivalry between Drexel and Penn was renewed after a two-year lull, and if the coaches' relationship indicates anything, the Battle for 33rd Street should be back to stay.

That same afternoon in mid-May, Spiker was planning to go for a run.

He's still trying to find a new routine. West Point, in Orange County, N.Y., has a population of around 7,000. Philadelphia is a whole new world. Spiker has to figure out how to run in the city. But he's learning to love it. He likes to run across the Spring Garden Street Bridge and up the Art Museum steps. He said he's run it a few times already.

"That run? That view? I can't imagine it getting old," he said.

As the afternoon waned, Spiker remained reluctant to talk about himself. He'd rather talk more about Donahue, or about his new coaching staff. He's hired three assistant coaches; two, Chris Clark and Rob O'Driscoll, have strong Philadelphia ties, while the third, Paul Fortier, is a former co-worker of Spiker's.

In March, at his introductory press conference, he said putting together the right coaching staff was the most important part of his honeymoon period. Now, he loves the staff he has assembled.

"It's exciting," Spiker said. "It really is. And I just want to get going. I can't wait to show everyone what we have here."

Three hours later, Spiker was spotted jogging up 32nd Street wearing a white, long-sleeved Army shirt and navy blue shorts.

Rain is supposed to fall any minute. Spiker probably doesn't mind.

It's another opportunity.