The offer was on the table, and Keith Zalaski was reluctantly prepared to accept it.
An economics major and 2006 Amherst graduate, Zalaski had an insurance job lined up, the extension of a miserable summer experience during which Zalaski estimates he spent more time reading and doing "other nonsense" than he did actually working.
That was before David Hixon, Zalaski's basketball coach with the Lord Jeffs, received a call from the Williston Northampton athletics director that at once solved the Wildcats' need for a varsity head coach and remedied Zalaski's apathy.
The western Massachusetts private boarding school sought a recommendation from Hixon for its open position, and Hixon swore by the little-used guard without any coaching experience — the Simsbury, Conn. native who reminded Hixon of himself.
"I played him very little in his four years, and yet I knew that experience too," Hixon said. "His dad had been an official, a school teacher, a vice principal. My dad was a principal and a schoolteacher, the whole thing. I just saw a lot of me in him, and I thought, ‘This is the guy.' I just knew."
And so began the career of Zalaski, now a self-described "Tufts convert" after joining men's basketball head coach Bob Sheldon's staff two years ago. Following two seasons with Williston from 2006-2008, Zalaski moved onto Trinity-Pawling, where he coached, among others, Wesleyan junior Shasha Brown, the NESCAC's leading scorer, and sophomore Jonathan Kalin, a starter for Colby.
Zalaski, who Hixon called "probably the most talented, underplayed guard" in his 35 years of coaching, played sparingly for the Lord Jeffs, mostly because the lefty arrived one year before two-time Div. III All-American Andrew Olson. Zalaski averaged 6.3 minutes and 1.4 points per game over four seasons, during which the Lord Jeffs sported a 109-14 record.
Also a co-captain golfer for Amherst, Zalaski met the charismatic Sheldon on the links, and they kept in touch over the years. Now he's helping construct a brewing NESCAC contender in Medford, one powered by young recruits that seems a far cry from the squad that won just one conference game in each of the two seasons before Zalaski's arrival.
"I have no regrets about it," said Zalaski, sitting in the bleachers overlooking Cousens Gym following the Jumbos' 74-65 loss to his alma mater on Saturday afternoon, his normally soft-spoken tone elevating with enthusiasm. "It's early mornings and it's late nights, but it's what I love to do and I do it for the thing I enjoy. I just feel different in this atmosphere than I do in anything else."
Sheldon, he of the perfected stone-cold deadpan, has mandated that Zalaski never wear purple, lest the young assistant risk termination from the program, but that hasn't stopped some Jumbos from ribbing the Lord Jeffs alum about his tenure donning the color. Even so, the respect is there for the man who reached two NCAA Final Fours.
"He really has a nice rapport with the players," Sheldon said. "They respect him, they know he's the coach but he's close enough in age that he can keep that relationship going. He didn't know what he wanted [right before graduation], but once he got in, he loved it."
Consider the allegiances — and colors — officially shifted.
"I try to stay away from the purple as much as possible because I know what's coming," said Zalaski, sporting a baby blue Tufts basketball bracelet on his right wrist. "There's no need to push the button."
Before this season began, Hixon offered Zalaski the opportunity to leave Tufts and don purple yet again for the Lord Jeffs, to make that familiar journey west on the Massachusetts Turnpike and join his former coach on the Amherst bench, this time as his head assistant.
Things were different when the Lord Jeffs came calling this time around. Zalaski now has a day job teaching pre-calculus at Belmont High School. He's working on a Master's degree in education at Tufts, and has aspirations of one day taking over a NESCAC or Ivy League program to coach the Div. III and Div. I paragons of student-athletes. And most importantly, he has a fiancee.
He and Kate Bentley, a Palo Alto, Calif., native, will get married on Aug. 3, 2013 in Sun Valley, Idaho, just 20 minutes up the road from Hailey, Idaho, one of the locations of the HSB basketball camps Zalaski helped found in 2007.
Zalaski and Bentley met during his senior year at Amherst, when she was a freshman. This past September, Zalaski was meeting with a Tufts recruit and the recruit's parents at the coach's office in Cousens, when he hastily ended the meeting and shuttled out the door. He had a proposal to get to.
For what it's worth, the recruit will attend Tufts next year, and Bentley, a former soccer player for the Lord Jeffs, has also converted to Jumbos fandom, marked by a birthday card on her fridge signed by the entire team.
"I got lucky," Zalaski said. "We just met late and hit it off, and we had no idea what was going to happen, and we've been together almost six years. I would say that's probably the thing I'm happiest about. It was just something unexpected."
Zalaski was technically answering a question about his relationship with Bentley.
Given the elements of initial uncertainty, unexpectedness and enduring happiness, he very well could have been talking about his coaching career.
