Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 12, 1990 TAG: 9003123002
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL BRILL EXECUTIVE SPORTS EDITOR
DATELINE: CHARLOTTE, N.C. LENGTH: Long
Ann Holland, who began dating Holland when she was in the eighth grade and has been married to him for nearly 24 years, said she and the 47-year-old basketball coach will "re-evaluate the situation next spring."
As soon as Virginia finishes play in the NCAA Tournament, Holland takes over at Davidson, his alma mater.
Meanwhile, Ann and their two daughters will remain until the end of the school year in Charlottesville, where she teaches Latin at St. Anne's-Belfield.
Kate, 16, is a junior. "That's not a good situation, leaving in your senior year," her mother said Sunday before the ACC Tournament final.
Ann-Michael, who turned 14 last week, was born two days after Holland's only ACC championship in 1976.
The Hollands, an extraordinarily supportive family, will give the change of careers their all. But only for so long.
Ann Holland has taught school for 21 years. "I took off nine months each time when the girls were born," she said.
But at Davidson, she will not teach. "I'll try to be an athletic director's wife," she said.
They will make a typical all-out commitment to duty.
Then, next spring, the Hollands will talk. If Terry isn't happy with his new job, "we'll try something else," Ann Holland said.
The coach would like to become a television analyst - "I think he would be really good at that," his wife said - but there have been no offers.
"I'm sorry he's getting out [of coaching after 21 years and 417 victories]," she said. "I think sports needs him."
One of Holland's best friends is C.M. Newton, now the athletic director at Kentucky.
"I really wish he [Terry] had gone to Kentucky," Ann Holland said. "It would have been nice to have made all that money, and to go somewhere where they really support basketball."
Then, laughing, Ann Holland added, "If I didn't like it [at Kentucky], I could have taken the $3 million and gone to the beach."
The Hollands are aware that Newton was the long-time coach at Alabama, then left to become assistant commissioner of the Southeastern Conference. Newton, however, didn't like that job, and one year later returned to coaching at Vanderbilt, where he remained until 1989.
Terry Holland has talked to Newton about that.
"C.M. just told him that Vanderbilt was the ideal situation for him, that he had so much support [from administration] that he couldn't turn it down," Ann Holland said.
Ann Holland said no matter what, her husband wouldn't return to coaching at just any school. "It would have to be a perfect fit," she said.
That's the way the Hollands felt about Virginia as a school and Charlottesville as a place to live.
"But in the last eight years, they did nothing for basketball," Ann Holland said.
A number of stories have been written about that situation, specifically implying a rift between Holland and athletic director Jim Copeland. "People can read between the lines," Ann Holland said.
No matter that he was leaving, having given, in effect, nine months notice, Holland gave UVa his all.
"The players come first," Ann Holland said. "I wish he had left after last year [when UVa went to the Southeast Regional final], but he couldn't leave the players like that. That's the reason he stayed.
"It's almost like he was a graduate [of Virginia]. He's put in his time and effort for them [players]."
Even this season, while Holland has been a lame-duck coach, he has not changed his work style.
Holland recruited hard, against long odds, and succeeded.
"The older daughter [Kate] was a state champion field hockey player," Ann said. "Terry didn't get to see her play one game. He did get to see her practice for 10 minutes one day."
The girls understand, Ann Holland said, but most people don't appreciate what it is to be a coach's family.
"It is not a game," she said. "It's a business, a job, my bread and butter. Compared to life, it's not all that important, but it is more than a sport.
"Doctors are competitive; lawyers are competitive; so are coaches."
It is not easy to be the wife of a coach, where seven-day work-weeks are routine, but Ann Holland says it could be worse.
"I still don't think I'd want to be married to a doctor," she said. "Your personal life is never really your own. I'd hate to be a preacher's wife."
Her father was a minister.
She is a coach's wife. For them, the team has been an extension of the family.
A photographer who used to work the UVa sidelines when the girls were younger, Ann Holland annually fills a den in their home with pictures of the current players. "When they graduate, I give them to the mothers," she said.
Ann Holland has learned to share her lanky husband with his fans. That's part of being a coach's wife.
"I've matured," she said. "I used to resent him belonging to the public, instead of to me. Now, I'm not jealous."
Even if UVa is eliminated early in the NCAA Tournament, Ann Holland says she will accompany her husband to the Final Four. She's gone three times previously, when the Cavaliers qualified in 1981 and 1984, "and one year Ralph Sampson took me to see him get his [player of the year] award," she said.
This time, Ann Holland will be there in her new role as an athletic director's wife.
She said she is eager for her husband to find satisfaction in his new job.
"I don't want him to miss coaching," she said, "and then have to go back."
by CNB