Pat Welter goes one on one with Hurricanes head coach to reflect on his career and preview the season ahead.

It’s hard for me to envision just doing this anywhere else. That’s the really the bottom line. It’s hard not to imagine having you here as the head coach, but even going back to your contract negotiation as you resigned. At least that’s how it was reported. It seemed like it was a little contested. Was there ever a point where you thought you might not come back? Well, I mean, if you’re, you know, truth be told, yeah, I mean you don’t know. I mean it takes two sides to want this to go. I, I think there really wasn’t much threat of that. But uh we all know that coaches have a shelf life and um you know my time’s coming for sure at some point but hopefully not anytime soon. Well we’ve we’ve lost some great coaches to retirement here and other sports like Roy Williams, Coach K. Which kind of makes you the face of Raleigh sports as a coach. Has that sunk in at all? Well, I’m not that old yet, so, uh, you know, but 22 legends, right? Like, and those guys are, that’s another notch up and that’s, you know, someday I’d love to be able to be in that group, but we gotta, we gotta win one. We gotta, we gotta get to that next level and I gotta find a way to, you know, push these guys to, to get through to that. It’s awesome that you, you really truly have become a part of the community. I mean you’re raising your family here and we see Skyler, you know, in the organization now, and that was a big story last year at camp and now he’s kind of part of the team, part of the organization. What has that been like the last year? It’s exciting, you know, for him, for us as a family, just we know what he’s gone through his whole life to, to get to that stage. So to see him around has been great, um, still forging his way, but. Um, yeah, that’s, that’s special, and, um, you know, it, it’s a special place we we know that’s we wouldn’t be here this long and doing what I’m doing if, if it wasn’t. I think what, what makes us go uh and be successful as a group is that I, I really believe we’re a family in there. I, I got two young boys myself. The youngest is 1, and I’m out there yesterday just rolling a baseball to them. And it’s an absolute joy, right? I see you out there sometimes with your son Brooks. How do you kind of manage expectations for him when he’s so young? Yeah, that’s tough. I mean, first of all, you know, it’s the other part that’s great about my job is I’ve seen uh guys grow up here and now they have their kids, right? They were kids when they showed up, you know, he’s Sebastian and you know, he, he, he didn’t, he was a kid when he showed up and now he’s a dad. We’re a family and, uh, it’s a special group.