Garden City’s Jeff Sims gets beyond his skeletons to build a championship team

You want to know why Jeff Sims is a successful football coach? You really want to know?

It’s because Sims had a tough childhood, admittedly made more difficult by some of the choices he made. It’s because Sims’ father, a convicted drug dealer in St. Louis and estranged from his family, went to jail for conspiracy to commit murder when Sims was starting college. It’s because Sims, a wide receiver, flunked out of Tulsa because he was too lazy and out of sorts to get to class. It’s because he pushed away the only person who loved him, his mother, out of sheer stubbornness and rebellion.

It’s because of hardships — some of the same hardships his current players face — that Sims eventually found his way. He reconnected with his mom, found a path to success, started a family and loves what he does. One of the highlights came last weekend, when the Broncbusters won the NJCAA championship in the final 30 seconds to beat Arizona Western 25-22 in Yuma, Ariz.

“I was meant for junior-college football,” the 44-year-old Sims said. “I got 10 guys here, at least, who have a very similar story to mine and that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing.

“I tell them to push their problems and push them to the middle of the table. And I’ll bet you look at another person’s problems and take yours back. All we do here is try to work through and get our lives right. It’s amazing what a college education will do for you. All these guys can graduate from college, they just don’t know they can.”

Along his many coaching stops, Sims was a Division I assistant at Indiana and Florida Atlantic and there might be a day when he returns to that level. But he is driven by trying to do what he can for junior-college players who, for whatever reason, have to bide their time for the biggest opportunity.

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Sims’ mother, Carol, kept pulling him out of high schools in St. Louis because he could not rid himself of the label of being the son of a drug dealer.

His father, Kenneth, was always in trouble, Carol Sims said.

“He was unreliable for Jeff,” said Carol Sims, a hairdresser who worked two other jobs, she said, to provide for her only child. “He said he would be at Jeff’s games and never showed up. And I saw that look on Jeff’s face.”

Carol said she left Jeff’s father, a rugby player, when Jeff was 6 months old, realizing Ken was never going to straighten out his life.

“He could be a good person, there was good in him,” Carol said. “But I knew leaving was something I needed to do so Jeff didn’t feel the struggle.”

Raising Jeff, she said, was a joy. He never caused problems.

“It was easy as could be,” she said.

But as Jeff got older, he became torn by the good parent who was always there for him and the bad parent who rarely was. He rebelled as a teenager and eventually Carol pulled him out of school before he returned to finish.

Jeff felt a need to get away and, practically on a whim, went to Tulsa to play football, not realizing you don’t just “go somewhere” to play football.

“I loved football and I gave it everything I had,” Sims said. “I was one of the hardest workers and stayed extra for film. But when practice ended, I wasn’t going to study. I was going to hang out with friends and do whatever. School wasn’t important to me.”

Being young and dumb — although Sims was anything but dumb — led him to getting on academic probation. And once there, Sims’ academic issues only got worse. He eventually flunked out of Tulsa, he said, with a 1.5 grade-point average.

“I called my mother and totally blamed Tulsa — it was all their fault,” Sims said. “They should have figured out a way to make it work, the coaches let me down.”

Only this time, his supportive mother told him to let her know when he knew what he was going to be doing and hung up. When he went back to St. Louis for Thanksgiving, Carol had moved from a two-bedroom apartment into a one-bedroom place in the same complex. There wasn’t a place for him.

“I never even really knew what he was doing at Tulsa,” Carol Sims said. “I told him that just because he was mad at his dad, don’t screw up your life. He stormed out and left.”

It wasn’t the first time.

After finding out he no longer had a room in his mother’s apartment, Jeff went to Bakersfield, Calif., to play for Bakersfield College and coach Carl Bowser. It’s a school that has produced many outstanding players, including late Hall of Famer Frank Gifford and current Oakland Raiders quarterback Derek Carr.

Bowser, now retired for 20 years, had to scratch his head to remember Sims, although Sims gives him credit as being the first person who ever told him he could graduate from college.

“I do remember him,” Bowser said after a few seconds of recollection. “He was kind of in La-La Land for us, but he developed into a pretty good player. He wasn’t a guy giving us 100 percent early on, but then he got into the routine of college football. And the competition here has always been really good.”

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Sims did get that college degree, from Baker University in Baldwin City. He started on a coaching career that has taken him to 11 places already, including Fort Scott Community College, where he led his team to the national championship game in 2009.

He is outspoken about his beliefs and created waves in the summer when he pleaded for the Jayhawk Conference to ease its scholarship rules for football and basketball.

Sims pushed for larger out-of-state scholarship limits, saying that the old rule was antiquated, had racial overtones, and led to disadvantages for several schools in the conference. After a lengthy fight, Sims and others who supported his battle won. Conference restrictions will be lifted

But Sims’ image was tarnished, especially with some high school football coaches in Kansas who think the new rule will hurt high school players in the state because the opportunities they once received will instead go to out-of-state players.

“To me, this was never an out-of-state issue, never a scholarship issue,” Sims said. “It’s a student issue. It wasn’t about winning football games because we won when there was a 12-player out-of-state limit and a 20-player out-of state limit. I started doing research on the rule and it just didn’t make sense.”

Sims said the out-of-state limit rule applied to only football and basketball. What about the other sports, he wondered.

“If the rule was athletic-department wide, that’s a philosophy,” Sims said. “But when it’s only two sports, that’s not a philosophy. That’s discrimination. It’s just obvious. I will tell you that if they want to put an out-of-state limit in for football I’ll support it. As long as they put it in for every other sport.”

Sims doesn’t hold back, doesn’t pull punches. And he doesn’t conform. He does like to point out that those who think he’s anti-Kansas when it comes to high school players should recognize it was a Kansan, quarterback Peyton Huslig (Andover Central) throwing the game-winning, 1-yard touchdown pass to another Kansan, Harley Hazlett (Abilene).

“I’m always going to recruit Kansas,” Sims said. “I will tell you, though, that because of the rule change I’ve been pushed out of certain high schools. I’m not going to beg to go back in there, but why would I go 1,000 miles away to recruit a kid when I can get that kid 100 miles away?”

Sims could talk all day about this subject and probably has. Numerous times. Junior college football is his passion and he’s turned Garden City around in a ridiculously short amount of time — from 3-8 last season, his first, to 11-0 this season.

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How is Sims so successful?

Well, he can take an offensive lineman like Jonathan Jensen, who didn’t start at Hutchinson, and turn him into one of the best in the Jayhawk Conference.

Jensen was 350 pounds when he arrived at Garden City, but Sims saw what he could be by getting into shape.

“I wasn’t athletic,” Jensen said. “I was playing football in spite of myself. Getting that weight off was a huge confidence builder for me. Coach Sims believed in me.”

Sims never writes off a player. It goes back to his background, to his struggles, to those feelings of hopelessness that are fresh more than 20 years later.

“Coach Sims puts a culture in place,” Jensen said. “He always tells us there are dudes who can do Xs and Os better than him, who can coach technique better than he does. But he’s going to get us right. He makes sure our classes are straight and that we’re at meetings on time. He doesn’t let us do anything less than what we should do. He tells us we shouldn’t take dimes when we deserve dollars. No matter what we’re doing in our lives, made sure we get everything out of it.”

Sims says it’s simple: Organization and hard work.

“What I told our team the night before the national championship game was that if people talk about who has the most talent, it’s going to be Arizona Western,” Sims said. “But we have a quote that we really believe in here. Working hard is a talent.”

Sims has instituted a policy of night practices that begin at 6:30. He has assistant coaches who support that practice and players who buy in.

Garden City’s players attend study hall before practice, not after. They’re fresher for the academic side of being a student athlete, Sims said.

“If they’re having a problem with math, then they can walk into the math department when the instructors are still in the building,” he said.

Sure, practicing at night can be a stress on the families of coaches and support personnel. But Sims strives for what is best for his players.

“My son snaps balls at our practices, my wife helps tutor, my daughter is there,” Sims said. “This is our lifestyle. And if I hired you tomorrow, you would be expected to answer the phone 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. I get text messages at 1 in the morning and that’s just what it is. I love it.”

Sims said he got tired of struggling. He got tired of being mad at the world because he was mad at one man.

“Intelligence,” he said, “was never the issue for me. It was focus.”

Now he has that focus, has it like few others. He’s out to make a difference in the lives of college kids who might also be angry or disillusioned and might not understand everything about why.

“My mother is awesome,” Sims said. “And she’s ridiculously proud. When I was a kid, I remember we had a picture hung in our house. It was our motivation. It was of two tigers swimming, their heads just above the water. What it told us is that we would always make it together.”

This story was originally published December 9, 2016 at 2:30 PM with the headline "Garden City’s Jeff Sims gets beyond his skeletons to build a championship team."