coach basketball and assist with football,” Poss recalled. It was in Big Spring that he got his start, coaching for four years before joining the school board for 10 years while raising his three sons, Nathan, Del and Mark. He picked up little league baseball, basketball and football while working for GAMCO industries with friend and Howard College coach Harold Davis. “(Big Spring) always has a special place in my heart because of the peo-
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ple,” Poss said. “It’s a very unique city, the people are wonderful, and it’s just a tremendous place in my eyes.” Poss moved on to coach at Midland in 1977, but it took 30 years of commuting before his wife, Martha, would allow a move to Midland. Martha Poss taught music at Big Spring, and still travels to the area to play bridge. Delnor Poss still banks at State National Bank in Big Spring, and his banker is a former Chap athlete. When Poss came to Midland College in mid-January of 1977, golf was at the back of his mind. He was to be the basketball coach there, and he led the Chaps to a 12-5 record through half a season and a berth in the Region Championship game — which he says he could have won if he were still coaching at that time. Instead, Poss chose to take up golf so he could keep up with his athletic director duties. “I thought if I’m going to be athletic director, with a job like that, I better not coach something as emotionally taxing, so I took golf because I loved golf,” he said. “I played four times a week.” So Poss applied what he had learned as a basketball coach to golf, like starting an exercise program for his golfers. He was one of the first golf coaches to put his players through weight training and conditioning exercises, far ahead
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of the curve. “It still stands to be that in any phase of athletics, the stronger you are, the better you can perform,” he said. “The college and high school players have to carry their own bags. I tell the players that if they are going to play 36 holes of golf and carry that 50-pound bag, they will have to be in pretty good condition.” But aside from the physical aspect of golf, Poss focused on what he considers the most important part of the game. “Being successful at golf is mastering the mental approach to the game,” Poss says. “Conditioning for golf mentally is so important because you have to stay in your self-control, and your self-composition has to be tremendous.” Poss says he has his players “mentally” play the courses before they ever pick up a golf club — seeing the ball right down the middle of the fairway every time out of the tee box. “You try to get them to condition their minds to where they can execute a shot,” he said. “I tell the players, ‘If you can’t visualize yourself, and you can’t visualize a shot, you can’t play golf.” And what happens when they slice it 50 yards into the deep rough? “That’s golf,” he says, smiling.