Former Nashua North and DWC standout Ray Farmer has a calm but focused look on the sidelines as the Trinity High School head coach. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

Ray Farmer was as nervous as he’s ever been.

It was a couple of years ago and he was about to meet the Trinity High boys basketball players he was going to be coaching for the first time.

“Honestly, I haven’t been that nervous since maybe my first high school game,” the former Nashua North and Daniel Webster College standout said. “Hands sweating. I had a speech, but you know, you overthink it.

“I was just sweating bullets. I’ve got to talk to these kids, and they’re going to look at me for every answer. What do I do? Where do you start?”

Farmer harkened back to what one of his coaches, former Dartmouth College and DWC coach Dave Faucher said.

“I’ve had so many great coaches,” he said. “Coach Faucher – he’s the best – 20 years at Dartmouth is a plethora of knowledge. He taught me, ‘It’s never about Xs and Os, nothing about basketball. It’s setting the culture. You set the culture, you set the tone. That’s exactly what I did.”

Farmer set his own culture nearly a decade ago. Some may remember that when he was a star for the DWC Eagles, he worked full time as a nurse’s assistant in a local health care facility, was a full-time student getting A’s and B’s and also a single parent raising a young son. You would have thought he’d have set his sights on a coaching career.

Nope.

“You want me to be honest with you? I never wanted to coach,” Farmer said.

So how did this come about? Blame his son, also named Ray, who after the pair had moved to South Carolina said a few years ago “Dad, I want to play basketball.”

“I never pushed him to basketball, so I said, ‘Are you sure?’,” Farmer said. It’ a tough sport, Ray, Dad’s been at this a long time’.”

But young Ray was persistent. So as a sixth grader, Farmer got him a spot on the local middle school team. But the coach was just a parent who was there to supervise, not much more.

“So I’m like, all right, I let it go for about a week or two, and I was ‘I can’t take this any more, Ray, let’s go, I’ll coach.'”

So Farmer coached the middle school team and then got involved in coaching travel team ball, etc. And while young Ray took to playing the game – he now attends and plays at St. Paul’s prep school in Concord – his father took to coaching it.

“It’s funny, you know when you’re good at something and you always loved the game, you share your knowledge,” Farmer said. “You share your passion. Teaching young men to be young men was something I guess I was always meant to do. I happen to be good at it, accidentally.”

Farmer is also currently teaching middle school health and physical education in Lawrence, Mass. But in South Carolina he wasn’t even a teacher, he was working for a tele-health company, his degree being in health care administration.

Fast forward to a couple of years later. Farmer had relocated back to the area, was coaching travel ball, and helping out former DWC teammate Ryan Gauthier at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Nashua when someone asked I he’d be willing to get into teaching, specifically in Lawrence, where they needed help. Then , shortly after, a school administrator Farmer knew mentioned to him that there was a perfect basketball job vacant for him at Trinity.

Head coach.

“He said, ‘I think you’d be great at this opportunity,'” Farmer said.

He went for the interview and as he said, he “white boarded it up” with strategy talk, etc. and spent hours with the administration, including Trinity AD Michael Connell, just talking basketball.

Hired.

Now in his third year, Farmer has kept Trinity in the mix of Division I title contenders after the program won it all in 2022. They Pioneers are 7-2 at the halfway point of this year’s regular season, winners of five straight after Friday’s 67-50 win over Merrimack.

Now that he’s doing it, what does Farmer think of the coaching profession? He played for some good ones, and is learning the lesson they all did:

“You know what I never realized? I was just saying to someone, there’s so much more to coaching than just basketball,” Farmer said. “Basketball is probably the smallest fraction of it. It’s crazy to me. You’re dealing with kids, personality dynamics, team dynamics, getting kids to fit in together and buy in. And dealing with the off-the-court – family lives, home lives, and taking all that into account.”

Farmer’s major coaching lesson is this: Build up, don’t tear down.

“I learned from a player’s standpoint, building confidence, don’t tear it down,” he said. “You see me on the sidelines. I’m never going to own the moment. In that moment (of a player needing advice during a game), we’re not looking to tear down, we’re looking to build up.

“That’s one thing I take from coaching. Kids need motivation and confidence more than anything else. I’ve grown as a man, as a coach astronomically each year by year. It’s great to see. It’s actually fun. Every year is a new challenge with the different groups of kids, who you’re going to get, who you’re not going to get.”

Especially with Trinity being a private school. But Farmer, as he said, set his culture. Workmanlike.

“Guys who play defense are going to work,” he said. “And that’s going to be our offense. And there’s nothing else to it. And you stick by your culture, and hold guys accountable.”

And Faucher also told him another thing, and he relayed it to his players. “Stick to your training,” Farmer said. “You stick to your training, it says that we stick to who we are. Morning, noon, and night. Right now we’re struggling offensively but we know who we are defensively. You know what I mean?”

You’ll see Farmer on the sidelines, very calm, cool, collected. He observes. A player will come over, he’ll point to here or there, or just give a few words of advice. He has an offensive standout in Xander McBournie, a 3-point shooter who like any 3-point shooter relies on his confidence. So Farmer makes sure he has it.

“Growing as a man is realizing what type of kid you have,” Farmer said. “He’s a kid that through adversity, he has to just stay in the moment. You don’t take him out because he messes up a couple of times. You let him go, you build him up. He misses his first four shots – he’ll make his next three.”

Ray Farmer was a force 10 years ago for Daniel Webster, often leading the Eagles in points, rebounds and assists. (File photo)

All of Farmer’s playing experience just comes into focus now, helping to guide him in his relatively new career path in basketball.

“Beyond belief,” Farmer said. “My playing experience is what I feel has made me a better coach. I know how I felt in those moments. I try to recollect that and be a better coach myself.

“And I knew when I was a kid, coaches may not believe in your skill set. But I want them to never be in a box. … Freedom on offense, as long as you give me everything you have on defense. That’s all I can ask.”

Farmer now looks back at the main thing he told his players that first day after being named their head coach.

“Winning plays aren’t made in the stat books,” he said. “They’re made on the hard work, on the effort on the floor, and getting on it. We’re the first to the floor, we’re the first to the 50-50 ball, and I guarantee you we’ll win that game. Effort.”

Farmer also knows it’s a different deal coaching at a private school. While there’s the assumption of recruiting that everyone associates with it, Farmer realizes the hard truth: You have no control over the roster year to year. Players come, they go. There’s no youth level, etc. to build from the ground up.

“One hundred percent,” Farmer said. “I think that was validation after my first year. I didn’t know what I had, we’ve always been undersized. So I coach with what I have. We’re fast and speedy. Let the defense rub in, be on the press guys and be chaotic. Let’s make them turn it over. If we had a traditional (big) lineup, we’d play that way.

“I think being adaptable is my best thing. Just be fluid, just as I was as a basketball layer. Do more than one thing on the court.”

Just as Farmer was as an Eagle. Play, work, class, parenting. On his own. All that real life experience of Ray Farmer the Daniel Webster star has to help Ray Farmer the Trinity High coach.

He relays all that experience to his players in the most timely way.

“I always pull those stories out,” Farmer said with a grin, “when guys give me excuses. Whenever guys give me excuses about what they’re doing at 17 and 18, I let them know what I was doing when I was becoming a man at 20, working overnights, taking my son to school in the mornings, then pick him up, then go to practice, and sleep in between when I can.”

And a guy who never imagined himself as a head coach now knows it’s his calling.

“I love this,” he said of coaching. “I’m all in. I’m all in on this. I’m all in.”

Sweaty palms and all.