Coach: “I Feel Like I’ve Become the Best”

“I got so many phone calls… I can’t believe it.”

Lim Dal-sik, the Chosun University basketball team coach, was bombarded with congratulations on Thursday when the First-Year Player Draft was over. That is because Nam Jung-su and Choi Go-bong of Chosun University will wear the uniforms of KTF and Mobis, respectively. They are the professional teams which Nam and Choi hoped to join. It was the first time that Chosun University has produced professional basketball players.

“We worked hard under bad circumstances. Our efforts paid off,” Lim said modestly. But he was credited with nurturing the professional players.

From fistfight to First League-

He used to be a star player until he joined the Hyundai Team after graduating from Korea University and Huimoon High School. After he got into a fistfight with Heo Jae, a player on the Kia team, at the final match of the basketball championship in 1989, he was suspended for a year and retired in 1992. Then, he became fascinated by golf and he got a semi-professional golf player certificate from the Korea Professional Golfers’ Association (KPGA). His personal best score is 68. In 1997, he started a Korean restaurant in Seoul and ran it for more than two years.

Park Han, Lim’s former college coach and now the head of the Korean College Basketball League, gave him an opportunity to work as a Chosun University basketball coach in 2001. At the time, the university team played in the second league. It was in such poor condition that few could call it a basketball team. There were only three basketballs available. Under the poor circumstances, Lim, who had no background in Gwangju, focused on encouraging players to overcome a sense of failure. He said, “When the team played in two groups, I praised the winners and scolded the losers. I tried to motivate a sense of competition.”

Atop the second league after three years-

The Chosun University team became competitive under the leadership of Lim. It won in the second league basketball championship in 2004 and became a member of the first league. Since he took the helm of the team, he even stopped playing golf, which he liked a lot. In 2004, he became the first national basketball team coaching staff member as a coach of a second league team. Even after other teams scouted players, he focused on developing the potential of promising players.

“Their work is not over, even though they got into a professional team. I hope they become good role models for other players.” His concerns over younger players were endless.

kjs0123@donga.com