Bo Knows Motown

I completely forgot to mention that I had the opportunity to hear Bo Ryan, head coach of the Wisconsin Men's Basketball Team, speak at a small gathering on Monday night.

As some of you know, I co-manage the campus visit program at UW-Madison, and thus co-supervise the student tour guide corps. On Monday night, we had a staff meeting and Bo was our surprise guest speaker. To talk about teamwork and such. The tour guides were thrilled!

Bo was hilarious. Just so intense and full of energy. So damn funny. And he could just talk and talk and talk and talk. I recieved an overview of his entire life story in just under forty-five minutes. I now know so much about the man. Like how he was born in the "projects" of Chester, Pennesylvania, and as the only white boy on his highschool's basketball team, came to know every word of every Motown classic. Want to know the six cd's that are currently in Bo's cd changer? Because I now know this, too. There's WAR, Outkast, Prince, Fugees, Annie Lennox, and I seriously cannot remember the sixth. But it will come to me eventually. So anyways, the man definitely knows music.

I might also point out that Bo can do the Hambone, which is a rhythmic knee and chest slapping motion that was originally an African-American plantation dance, brought from West Africa by slaves who performed it during their gatherings when no rhythm instruments were allowed. Bo did a short performance for us on Monday night. He's quite talented.

I also loved when he talked about his wife. He described their relationship in terms of basketball playoffs, with him as the 16th seeded team, and his wife as the 2nd seed. He described how he just felt so damn lucky to have snagged her. His whole face just lit up when he talked about her. It was pretty touching.

So I really loved Bo. He is great--upbeat, genuine, and a true campus leader and teacher. And what a nice person to take time from his obviously insane schedule to talk to forty campus tour guides about teamwork. I'm his new biggest fan.