Connection Between Father And Daughter -- Clem Haskins Bursts With Pride As Clemette Follows In His Footsteps

Klieg lights warmed the conference room in April. Spread through it were sports anchors, newspaper writers, players, school officials and members of the search committee that had selected 28-year-old Clemette Haskins to be the women's basketball coach at the University of Dayton. There, too, were her dad and mom, Clem and Yevett, awash in those feelings known only by proud parents.

The dad, who is also the men's basketball coach at the University of Minnesota, could have been out recruiting this day, but his daughter's introductory press conference was too significant for him to miss. It marked, historically speaking, the first time a father and daughter would head Division I programs concurrently.

"It was," remembers the daughter, "the proudest I've ever seen him.

"One of my assistant coaches said later that they saw his chest literally bursting out. I didn't really realize how much it really meant to him."

It surely did mean that much to Clem Haskins, but as he listened to his daughter answer questions, he maintained his composure. The mother was hardly as self-contained and so viewed all this through happy tears. But the father wore his public mask and so did not break down until he returned to the hotel.

"He was," remembers Yevett Haskins, "just so overjoyed. He had never seen that side of her. He had seen her perform on the basketball court and that was admirable. But to see her handle the press and to be that much of a lady and to do everything so professionally, he'd not seen that side of her. He was so super proud."

"We as males," says Clem Haskins, "sometimes try to show our toughness and not let people know we're human, too. But I couldn't help but shed a few tears of joy for my daughter. It was a great feeling.

"I tell ya. I wouldn't be as happy winning the national championship."

She would, at the age of 4, patiently sit through a Bulls practice at Chicago Stadium, and then the 7-foot Tom Boerwinkle would put her on his shoulders and let her shoot from that lofty perch.

Basketball, then, always had been a part of Clemette Haskins' life, yet never was the game forced on her. No matter that her dad had been an All-American at Western Kentucky and the first-round pick of the Bulls in 1967. He would instead, remembers his daughter, "let me grow to have my own love of the game."

That love grew quickly, as did the skills she honed in constant contests against her dad. He beat on her in these family affairs, refused to let her win their shooting matches, and often she got angry, ran into the house and complained to her mom.

"But my thinking," remembers the dad, "was to keep her motivated, to drive her to beat me. She wouldn't take no. She didn't look at her herself as, well, I'm a girl and I'm supposed to lose. She thought, we're competing and I'm supposed to win."

"And," remembers the mom, "I knew she was strong enough that she wouldn't back down and really cry that much about it."

"My mom," remembers the daughter, "raised two young women (Clemette and younger sister Lori) to be aggressive and assertive and to not take anything less because you're black or because you're a woman. She instilled things in us that she couldn't do in her lifetime. She had the foresight to know she had to raise her daughters a lot differently from the way she was raised."

Those snapshots are Clemette Haskins' roots, and from them came all the other snapshots that now fill this family's album. There is that one from Phoenix, where the dad is playing for the Suns and the daughter is the star of the football games played on their front lawn. She is 6, maybe 7 years old here, the only girl in those games, and this afternoon, she catches a pass and runs face-first into a palm tree.

She is knocked out, carried into the living room and put on the couch, where she remains with an ice pack on her head. Finally, three hours after meeting that palm tree, Clemette Haskins sits bolt upright and declares, "Let's go play."

And there is that snapshot from Bowling Green, Ky., where the dad is an assistant at his alma mater and his daughter is a high-school star. He is out shopping this day, and after his purchases are totaled up, he writes out a check and hands it to the girl behind the counter.

"Oh," that girl says to him, "you're Clemette's dad."

"He never told me about that. He was a little too proud for that," remembers the daughter with a chuckle. "But he came home and told my mom. They kinda laughed about it."

"He was taken aback, really," remembers the mom. It was like, `Bowling Green. This is my place. Don't you know me?' "

And, finally, there is that snapshot from Minneapolis, where the dad is Minnesota's head coach and the daughter is working for a public-relations firm. She had been a three-time All-American and had led Western Kentucky to two straight Final Four appearances. Yet she had taken this job after graduation to see if she could live without the game.

"I think I didn't want to be like dad," she remembers.

But her love of basketball is just too strong. She had, while working for that PR firm, also served as an assistant for the Division III program at nearby St. Thomas, and now the same job is suddenly open at Minnesota.

A career decision must be made now, a decision about a career her dad knows much about, and so here they talk.

"He," says the daughter, "was scared to death. I think he sees me wanting to be a coach, and he's saying to me, `Are you sure you want to do this?'

"We had to make a lot of sacrifices as a family because of coaching, and I think he really tried to give me a lot of the downsides at first to really prepare me for what was in store. Then, of course, he gave me the upside."

"She," says the father, "wasn't really happy with (that PR job). Her heart was still in the game. So in the back of my mind, I knew she was committed (to coaching), but I wanted her to see the big picture and not go into something without knowing all the pitfalls. "I wanted to make sure she wanted to do it, that she wanted to do it because it was in her blood."

She spent two years as an assistant at Minnesota, four years as an assistant at Arizona, and then there is that press conference and her parents beaming and Clem and Clemette Haskins as part of history.

"Hi, dad. How you doing? Mom there?" that is how their phone calls used to go.

"Now," she says, "he asks me, `How's it going? How's recruiting?' "

Finally, and most poignantly, there are his own recruiting trips. And one finds him walking through a gym where a young woman is shooting. She is about 6 feet 4 inches, wearing a Tennessee T-shirt, and here Clem Haskins asks her, "Do you play at the University of Tennessee?"

"No," she replies. "I'm still in high school."

"Oh," a now-excited Clem Haskins says. "What's your name? Where do you live? Can I get your number? Your coach's number? Don't forget my daughter Clemette. She's coaching at the University of Dayton."