Shawn Dirden knows you don’t have to be the most talented, most heralded, highest scoring or flashiest prep basketball player in order to get a college scholarship.
Dirden also knows it’s better to be a student-athlete rather than just a baller, and that “good guys” with college degrees can be successful in a sport that sometimes glorifies the unsavory or the uncouth.
Dirden knows professional basketball can open up the world for a local kid in a way that rivals the journeys of Marco Polo.
Shawn Dirden knows all this because Shawn Dirden did all this.
“For me, with my basketball experiences, I feel like I’m in the position to relate to more kids on a variety of levels,” Dirden said.
“This is how I got there” is the first speech he gave his new players this season after landing the coaching job for the Cherokee Trail boys team. And that speech includes the promise that Dirden will dwell in their lives as a coach, teacher, disciplinarian, publicist, inspiration, college adviser and — if needed — a father figure.
And while the story Dirden tells of dunking on NBA veteran Kevin Willis probably gets better every time he repeats it, it’s also a hook.
“I know the first day that we met him he came at us with all this stuff, and about being in the NBA,” Cherokee Trail senior Temani Adams said. “When he said that, it automatically got me. I was like, ‘Wow, we got a professional dude.’ ”
Dirden was blessed with the genes of his father, Johnnie, who played in the NFL for the Houston Oilers, Pittsburgh Steelers and moved to Denver to join the Broncos before being lured to the Denver Gold of the fledgling USFL.
Dirden, however, was cut his freshman year of basketball at George Washington, only to make varsity as a sophomore. He transferred to and later graduated from Overland in 1992.
From there it was junior college, the University of Idaho, a brief tryout for the Phoenix Suns, playing for the Idaho Stampede of the ABA and an international career that would take Dirden — who majored in history — to Lebanon, Russia, China, Korea, Holland, Sweden and Venezuela.
“When I traveled, I wanted to be a professional athlete. . . . Everywhere I traveled was like real life history lessons,” said Dirden, who made an effort to learn the local dialect in every country. “I wasn’t that American just over there making the money and wishing I was home.”
Dirden did come home and coached at GW for three seasons before following Patriots standout Jabril Banks to Iowa’s Indians Hills Junior College to be an assistant coach to the esteemed Jeff Kidder.
The next season Dirden took an assistant’s job at Montana State before he and wife, Sierra — whom he met while coaching at GW — returned to Denver to raise a family.
Banks, now a 6-foot-7 senior majoring in communications, is currently playing at Northern Colorado.
“Honestly, he’s meant everything,” Banks said of Dirden. “He gave me the ability and confidence for it.”
When Cherokee Trail players speak of the changes under Dirden, they start with their minds and feet.
“The team intensity is completely different,” senior Kendall Gregory-McGhee said. “We run more than we’ve ever run since I’ve been there. I’m pretty sure we’re in the best shape any team has ever been in.”
The Cougars (3-0) will need that after bumping from Class 4A to the 5A Centennial League this season. Gone are the days of pulverizing overmatched teams with just sheer athleticism. Even getting noticed in a league that boasts Eaglecrest, Cherry Creek, Mullen, Arapahoe, Grandview and Smoky Hill will be a feat, but Dirden and the Cougars are embracing the challenge.
It all starts with intensity, dedication, intelligence and education, and from there, the Cougars can do anything they want. Just like their coach.
