University of Houston men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson chuckles at the memory of his young son, Kellen, putting tape down for the sidelines, baseline and halfcourt in their Pullman, Wash. Home. Then, donning a dress shirt and clip-on tie, he paced up and down the sidelines of the makeshift court in the basement as he had seen his father do most nights as the head coach at Washington State.
But five-year-old Kellen wasn’t done emulating his father just yet. Kelvin and his wife Karen saw Kellen yank off his suit jacket and slam it to the ground in frustration, as his father made a habit of doing, usually within the first two minutes of every game.
“I told Karen then: We have no choice. There is no chance that boy is not going to coach,” Kelvin recalled recently to the Defender. “He has figured out that his dad throws his coat off at the start of games, whether he is mad or not. He is going to take the coat off.
“He’s taking his coat off, stalking the sidelines, pointing and saying stuff.”
Kelvin couldn’t have been more prophetic.
For 12 years, Kellen has been an assistant coach at UH, supporting his father. Kelvin’s daughter, Lauren, has also supported her dad as the Cougars’ basketball team’s chief of staff.
UH hoops a family affair
The UH basketball program has become a true family affair with both of Kelvin’s kids playing instrumental roles in elevating the Cougars back to national prominence.
“Honestly, the best. He has done this at a really high level,” said Kellen, now a father of two young children. “He was around as much as he possibly could growing up. But the job took him at times.
“So, 12 years to be able to rub shoulder to shoulder with him physically… 12 years we have been connected emotionally, we’ve been connected mentally, 12 years our thoughts have been collectively linked together. How do we elevate the program? How do we keep chasing down the titans of college basketball? To do that shoulder to shoulder with your hero, it’s a storybook. We are living in Camelot. I just never took it for granted.”
Lauren, who proudly refers to herself as the bulldog of the program, agrees with her brother. But she takes it a step further and says that coming to work every day with her father feels like the natural progression of the lives they have lived all of their lives as a coach’s kids.
“It’s so much a continuation of how Kellen and I grew up. Half of family dinners would be salt and pepper shakers dissecting a play, and the other half was how do we get people to a game? We have this former player, and how do we help him look for a job? So much of what we do now is how we grew up,” Lauren recalled. “My dad was a coach’s kid, so his memories were of going to his dad’s practices and being around his dad’s players. That is very much how Kellen and I grew up, and that’s how Kellen’s kids are growing up.
“So, it’s just so much a continuation of our formative years.”
Kelvin’s kids are his inspiration
For Kelvin, coming to work and having his kids be part of it has given him even more inspiration to do what he does.
“It’s been the highlight of my career,” Kelvin told the Defender. “I’m not sure I’d still be coaching if it weren’t for my son and daughter.”
That sounds great to Kellen, but he isn’t quite buying it because he sees the energy and excitement his 69-year-old father still holds for the game, the competitiveness he harbors, and the love for coaching and preparing his teams after 44 years working the sidelines as an assistant and head coach.
“That is so wrong. So wrong. It’s so amazing,” Kellen says with a big chuckle. “I think that he has got a lot of love for coaching. That fire still burns hot, it still burns bright. He still has a crazy, crazy intensity and excitement for doing what we are doing.
“Does he enjoy that Lauren and I are here? Yes. But that’s not the reason he is still coaching. He still loves to take his group, you take your group and `I’m going to do everything I can from June 1 to April 7 to kick your ass.’”
Kelvin was always the cool dad
Despite a demanding career as head basketball coach of big-time programs like Washington State, Oklahoma, Indiana and now UH, both Lauren and Kellen say Kelvin was always there and was everything they needed in a father.
Lauren remembers Kelvin as the fun dad who drove her and her friends to school as part of the carpool, giving her friends advice when their boyfriends acted up and creating an environment around the house that made it the hangout spot.
“That’s really who he was. He was the fun dad… Our house was the meeting ground house,” Lauren said. “Me and my friends would come in after team film and eat the remaining food or after a recruiting visit, we would grab the barbecue that was left over. It was such a meeting place.”
Sometimes you just need Dad
Just because he had basketball in common with his father, the dynamics between Kelvin and Kellen were, at times, a little bit different. Kellen initially played basketball before becoming a third-generation coach, following the paths of his father and grandfather, John W. “Ned” Sampson.
Kelvin was pretty much hands-off as Kellen grew up playing basketball in middle school and high school. But that changed once Kellen went on to play at the University of Oklahoma and the person who he was used to being his sounding board was now his head coach.
“That was an awesome process. I was a little boy that loved his father and worshiped everything that he said. Then as I grew older, I fell in love with who he is as a professional. He is the best college coach in the country and the fact that I get to learn from him every day, you can’t help but be inspired to continue what he has got going.”
Kellen Sampson
During his freshman season, Kellen struggled with the reality that he could no longer turn to dad to vent because dad was the problem. Then one day, things finally came to a head.
“I remember I had had a particularly tough day, and the next day was a day off. I was alone in my thoughts. I was doing an awesome job of kicking myself in the butt,” Kellen said. “I remember I had called, and he was still upset at how I had played, and he kind of answered the phone like, `What do you want?’ I said this isn’t going good. I told him, I need to talk to my dad. He said, `What do you mean?’ I said, ‘I don’t need my coach right now, I need my dad.’
“He asked what was going on. I said, ‘My coach is a real asshole.’ He got the biggest chuckle and biggest laugh. And in that moment, he said exactly what dad needed to tell his son about how to handle a tough coach. He said, ‘If he is on you he has probably seen something in you that you are not getting. Your not getting it because your effort and attitude are not at a high enough threshold to have the success that you want.’
“I needed dad… I needed somebody to still be an advocate for me in that moment.”
It’s bigger than basketball
As many great moments as Lauren and Kellen have shared with their father in basketball, both say their best memories have nothing to do with the game itself.
“It’s more the human side. I grew up wanting to be more like him as a human being,” Kellen said. “He is the most talented individual I’ve ever met. He made bedtime stories come to life. He was the best all-time pitcher in streetball games growing up. He was a fantastic all-time quarterback. I grew up with a healthy admiration because he was my dad, not because of the profession.”
Kelvin dealing with low of 2008 inspired Lauren
Lauren says he has learned the most from her father, not in how he has handled the good times, but in how he has navigated the challenging moments.
One of those moments came in 2008 when Kelvin was forced to resign from the University of Indiana after an NCAA investigation revealed that he had made illegal phone calls to recruits at both Oklahoma and IU and was not honest with the NCAA about his actions.
Indiana was placed on probation, and Sampson, who had moved on to working as an assistant NBA coach with the Milwaukee Bucks, was hit with a five-year show-cause penalty, which effectively prevented him from coaching in college during that period. Sampson left the Bucks and came to Houston to work as an assistant coach with the Rockets before landing the UH job.
Lauren observed her father during that difficult period and was inspired by how he persevered and ultimately came out better than he has ever been as a coach.
“At his lowest, which would be 08, he just sat down and worked, got better,” she said. “I think a lot of people would wallow. I think a lot of people would yell to the sky about the injustice of it all, but he went to work and got better. He developed a new skill set. I think the result is the most epic part of his career is coming now because he got to work.
“The lesson it taught Kellen and I was it’s going to go wrong sometime. I lovingly say to my interns sometimes, life is going to bitch slap you. It’s inevitable. Get back up. Go back and fight. He just showed fight, and that’s the biggest lesson I’ve taken.”
Happy Father’s Day
As Father’s Day approaches, Lauren has the same feeling about her dad that she has every year this time.
“I think sometimes, parents always tell their kids how proud they are, but I’m really proud,” she said while fighting back tears in her office. “I get teary-eyed, but every Father’s Day I say it; I’m so proud to be his daughter for everything that no one else gets to see.”
