Dave Rose feeling lively, energetic and optimistic

In a 40-minute interview Thursday with BYU coach Dave Rose, he discussed his health, his battle with cancer and other matters related to the Cougar basketball team. Rose was full of life, energetic and loaded with optimism – more so than I’ve ever seen from him. There are stories in Friday’s Deseret News on BYU’s non-conference schedule next season and an update on Rose’s health and progress toward a return to full-time coaching. However, there was not enough room in the paper for all the things that Rose discussed in my one-on-one interview. Below are more of my questions, and his answers on his battle with cancer. A much longer and more detailed blog than most, but if you’re a BYU fan, or just someone who is wishing the best for coach Rose, you’ll want to read it. Sometime in the next few days I’ll blog about Rose’s answers to my basketball-related questions.

Question: How you feeling?
Rose: “Every year you get into the middle of July and early August and you get pretty excited to have all the guys back on campus, getting them here and getting them ready to go for the first of September. But this summer is unique. I can’t ever remember a July 16 when I’ve been so ready to go with my team.”

Question: So things still look pretty optimistic?
Rose: “What I try to do in everything that happens is try to look at the good things that can come from this. The bottom line is that I’ve been dealt this, it’s here, but I have a ton of faith in these doctors and their ability to do what they say they can do. If I do my part, I believe they’ll do their part, and this will all work out.”

Question: So you’re anxious to get the attention back to basketball rather than your health?
Rose: “This will be an interesting year because everything that we go through will be unique because we’re trying to get to a point to where the doctors turn me loose and I can get back to doing what I really love doing.”

Question: Are you worried about your battle with cancer being a distraction for the team?
Rose: “What we have to do is prepare everybody for what the possibilities are. But I believe in the best-case scenario and that’s what I’ll prepare for, but we also need to make sure that our coaches understand that there are other things that could happen. But really, that can happen on any team with any staff.
“The players are feeling more and more confident every day and every time they see me and we have a chance to get together. At one point it was ‘what’s really going to happen?’ and there were a lot of questions. But our players really have a lot of confidence in this staff and they feel extremely comfortable with my plans and what I’ve told them and what I believe is going to happen and that’s how we’re moving forward.
“Still, it is what it is. I’m really, really fortunate. It’s an amazing turnaround that I’ve had in the past six weeks, so I’ll just look forward to another positive day tomorrow and how I take this thing on.”

Question: Can this whole situation turn out to be motivating for the team?
Rose: “There are things that happen that really pull your team together, and this is a thing where we were all really focused on only one thing for quite a while, and that was kind of getting me better. And I think that can help all of us focus a little bit better and try a little harder.”

Question: You mentioned a couple weeks ago that this was going to be a special season, and once it was over you were going to do something special with the coaching staff. What did you mean?
Rose: “If we can get that first year behind us after my diagnosis, it’s going to be very special for me. I’m hoping it’s going to happen. I believe it’s going to happen, and I’m preparing for it to happen, and when it does it will be very special and we’ll celebrate.”

Question: Are we going to see the same Dave Rose coaching the Cougars this year as we have in past years?
Rose: “What I want to happen is that our preparation will be every bit as intense and as competitive, and we’ll play every bit as hard with the same desire to win, and winning and losing will continue to be an extremely high priority, but depending on how things go we’ll appreciate the wins a little bit more and maybe learn to move on to what’s next when things don’t go so well. That’s kind of what I hope is maybe a little bit of a change. Don’t dwell on the bad things and move to what’s next and the good things. But still make sure our emphasis is on competing and doing things the right way so it continues to be like it has since we started.
“But we’ll play hard, I promise you that. The guys will be prepared and they’ll play together as a team and we’ll do the things that have made us successful. That’s the only way I know how to do it.”

Question: Have your coaching goals changed?
Rose: “My outlook on life is different. I want so many things for our players. I want them to continue to improve and get better, but they need to be prepared for life. I mean, life is unpredictable. I think there will be a lot of things I’ll do with these players to try to just help them prepare for what’s ahead, and to try to get as much as we possibly can get out of them physically to reach their potential.
“I believe it might take a year or two in everybody having complete confidence in my ability to manage my health issues and still be able to coach at the level I want to coach at. But I believe it will happen and that’s how I’ll continue to coach every day.”

Question: After what you’ve been through, do you now see yourself coaching at BYU for a long time?
Rose: “I love the profession and I love to coach, and I want to be in a place where I’m with people who want me to be there. That seems to be way more of my focus than where that is at.
“But the university administration and the athletic administration have been so good and so positive with me on this issue that I’ll always be indebted to them for how they’ve handled this and how they’ve treated me, and hopefully they’ll want me to be their coach for a long time.”

Question: How difficult were those initial hours in the Las Vegas hospital?
Rose: “For me, the experience was physical and I was going through so many things. For my wife (Cheryl) it was an emotional battle, dealing with a lot of uncertainty. She was on a very difficult emotional roller coaster, and I think she’s a champion with how she dealt with it all and continued to be positive and encourage me.”

Question: Did you ever feel, in the hospital, like you were facing a life-or-death situation?
Rose: “When it’s really hard to breath, you don’t know what’s next. But I didn’t know how and I didn’t know what situation I was going to be in, but I didn’t think I was going to die there. But there was a period of time there where I knew I was in a pretty tough spot.”

Question: When was the first time you felt optimistic about your situation?
Rose: “When they took me by ambulance to the airport, I was on the tarmac on a gurney and it was the first time I had been outside in almost a week. That’s when I first thought ‘this is going to turn out OK if I can just hang on.’ “

Question: How hard was that time at the hospital on your family?
Rose: “My wife and I, we’ve been through so many things and we kind of signed up for this. I mean, that’s what we do is help each other get through things. But I did feel bad for her. But my kids and grandkids, not knowing what is going to happen to their dad and their grandpa, knowing they were going through that was really hard for me.”

Question: Are people who meet you in the future going to notice anything different about you because of your experience the past few weeks?
Rose: “I hope that I’m a little more understanding of people and their personalities. It seems like there’s a time when you can really get caught up in yourself and how you feel. I look forward to the opportunity to be with people and deal with people and experience their personality and enjoy their personality. I hope that that’s something I’ll be able to take more advantage of.”