Eustachy tells a sobering story
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The first question came from the fifth-grader in the back.
“What influenced you to stop drinking?”
Larry Eustachy, who was Idaho’s head men’s basketball coach for three years in the early ‘90s and was fired in 2003 at Iowa State, stood in front of a cafeteria full of fifth- and sixth-graders at Belinder Elementary in Prairie Village, Mo., and paused for a moment.
“What got me to stop is I got fired,” Eustachy said.
Another hand.
“How did the people who fired you find out you were an alcoholic?”
Eustachy spoke of his night at Missouri, partying with students, some of whom wanted their photo taken with the coach.
“Raise your hand, guys, if you don’t want to put your arm around a pretty girl and have your picture taken,” Eustachy said.
No hands.
The photos showed up on the Internet, and that’s how Eustachy became the ex-coach at Iowa State.
Why he was in Prairie Village, speaking to 11- and 12-year-olds, also has to do with why he’s the Cyclones’ former coach. Eustachy sees the visit, arranged by a friend with children at the school, as part of the 12-step program originally devised by Alcoholics Anonymous.
Eustachy recognizes five years of sobriety. If it sounds strange that he believes he’s better off today as Southern Mississippi’s head coach, in a less prestigious conference and making fewer bucks than the $1.1 million he pulled in annually at Iowa State, then you haven’t walked in his shoes.
“Getting fired was the best thing that could have happened to me,” Eustachy said. “If that didn’t happen, I don’t think I’d have stopped drinking.”
At Iowa State, where he arrived in 1998 after five years at Utah State, Eustachy turned the Cyclones into a monster. They were the only Big 12 team to beat Kansas five straight times.
His Iowa State tenure ended after the 2003 season when the Des Monies Register published the Missouri party scene photographs. Even as he faced the end, Eustachy tried to scheme his way into saving his skin. He agreed to call himself an alcoholic, even attend some AA meetings.
“I was trying to create a reason not to be fired,” Eustachy said. “Even then I didn’t think I was an alcoholic. This life I led that seemed so normal to me – after practice go to a bar, hook up with my favorite coaches – was so abnormal.”
This revelation came during a 28-day rehabilitation stint at Hazelton in Minnesota.
“That’s when I realized I had a disease,” he said.
His marriage didn’t survive.
And when Eustachy was drinking, he avoided his mother, Helen, who lived in Los Angeles.
After his rehab, Eustachy reconnected. He traveled from Mississippi over the winter to see her. She died in January. Wednesday is her birthday, the anniversary of Eustachy’s sobriety.