When Bill Morningstar joined the Elon University basketball coaching staff in 1972, there was a caveat that doesn't exist today: The assistant basketball coach had to also coach golf.

Morningstar had played basketball for the Fighting Christians from 1961-1964 and had returned to his alma mater to coach. After eight years as assistant coach and seven years as head coach of the basketball team, his tenure ended.

But this spring, Morningstar will begin his 40th year as the men's golf coach.

"They hired me as an assistant professor, assistant basketball coach and then they said, 'Oh, by the way, you've got the golf team,'" he said. "I don't know anything about it. I don't play golf. Well, that comes along with the job."

In his first five years as the golf coach, his record was 91-14. In 1982, 10 years after he took the job, he was named the NAIA National Coach of the Year.

In 1988, Morningstar was inducted into the Elon Sports Hall of Fame for his time on the basketball team as well as his time coaching both basketball and golf.

This all came after taking a job as the assistant basketball coach. "It just worked out," Morningstar said. "We had great success. We were winning. The second year we won the conference and district and finished seventh in the country, and it just snowballed."

That success then spread when then-Director of Athletics Alan White asked Morningstar to start a cross -country program at Elon.

"Dr. White asked me if I would just get it started, since I coached cross- country in high school," Morningstar said. "I guess it took 12 years to get it started."

Morningstar is a coach at heart, having coached basketball, tennis and cross country at his former high school for seven years before coming to Elon. It doesn't matter what sport he is coaching; he loves winning and figuring out how to win.

But that translates a little differently into his coaching style.

"He'll be the first to tell you that he's the van driver," sophomore golfer John Somers said. "His teaching style is pretty laid back. He wants us to do it on our own."

There aren't mandatory practices, but instead Morningstar expects the team to want to spend time practicing and getting better, Somers said.

He lets the players take control of their own golf games, senior golfer Tanner Norton said. Instead of having a designated practice schedule, Morningstar allows the players to work on what they individually need to work on.

"When I get on the golf course, I like the fact that I'm in control of that," Norton said. "If I'm hitting it bad, it's nice to be able to do what I need to do to get better."

Morningstar's philosophy is that the player is the only one that can beat the golf course, and therefore it is up to them to do so. He helps them when he can, but he can only do so much.

"I just have to hope the kids love it enough," he said. "Because I love it."

That passion comes through Morningstar's voice and laugh, something Norton said he'll never forget about the coach.

"You can tell he loves what he does," Norton said.

Coaching is what Morningstar has wanted to do all his life. Since he was a young boy, he said he's thought of nothing else.

To this day, he's never wished he could do anything differently.

"My occupation is like I've been on break all these years," he said. "If you love what you do, it's not a job. Mine's not a job."

Even still, like an old coaching mantra, Morningstar takes it one year at a time, never signing more than a one-year contract in all his years of coaching.

Morningstar said he's unsure as to whether he will sign yet another contract at the end of this coming season.

"When you get a little age on you, you start thinking. 'You're running out of years, he said. "Forty years has been a great run, so will it be 41­"