Connors Connection

It was a process that Fred Connors, the head coach of St. Thomas University’s women’s basketball team, has gone through uncounted times, yet this one wasn’t quite the same. It was a recruitment 18 years in the making.

Fred, a former Tommie himself, was appointed the head coaching job in 2001, the same year his twin daughters, Emma and Nikki, were born and this season Emma has traded in her blue and white of Leo Hayes High School for the green and gold of the Tommies.

Naturally, with basketball flowing through the blood of the Connors family, Emma started playing at a young age, and Fred had several opportunities to coach her as she grew up with the Youth Competitive Basketball Club, where Nikki also played, George Street Middle School and the Under 15 and Under 16 Team NB Youth Development Teams. While Connors relished the opportunity to coach his daughters, it certainly didn’t come without its fair share of challenges.

“It was nice to spend time with both Nikki and Emma through coaching as their father,” said Fred. “When Emma was in grade six, she hadn’t had the best practice and I let her know that at the gym. So we got home and we sat down and were eating and I asked her to pass a fork or something and she was upset and grumbling, so I asked her what was wrong, and she told me that I had yelled at her at practice and I came back and said whoa, we aren’t at practice.”

Emma recalls this encounter with her dad just as vividly as he does.

“Learning how to keep the father/daughter and coach/player relationships different was more difficult when he first started coaching me as a young teenager.” said Emma. “I think this was because we didn’t have anything set in place to keep what happens at the gym to stay at the gym and what happens at home stays at home.”

It was after that encounter that Fred had a conversation with his wife, Marcie, about possibly stepping away from coaching Emma.

“I thought maybe it’s time she sees other coaches and perhaps moves forward. We had a talk about me not willing to ruin our father-daughter relationship over being coach and player, so it would be good for her to get out and see what other coaches have to say.”

Fred has always had an eye for players who will mesh well with his group, and he definitely had the inside track on what kind of person Emma was off the court, but it was when she was in grade 11 that he started to see that Emma could one day play for him at St. Thomas.

“I saw her passion for the game and saw how much she really wanted to play when she hurt her knee in grade 11,” said Fred. “I always knew she could defend and that she had had good knowledge for the game. She had been around my teams for so long, she knew what it would take to make my team.”

Emma suffered a serious knee injury when she was in grade 11 that forced her to miss her entire grade 12 year and had her questioning her post-secondary basketball dreams.

“I’ve known ever since I was a little girl that playing at the ACAA level was always what I wanted, said Emma of her personal goals. “I felt so much progress with my game and was beyond excited to have an amazing basketball year for my grad year, however, when my injury happened, I thought it had all gone down the drain as I couldn’t practice or play for my senior year.”

Over his years of coaching Fred has recruited countless athletes and when it came time to talk to Emma about her potentially joining the Tommies, he understood that he could take the easy route and ask her over a casual Wednesday night dinner, but he didn’t want to cheat her out of the experience of being pitched and formally recruited.

“Around Christmas time that year I was looking at who we were losing and recruiting and I wanted us to have someone who is really going to come in and defend and wants to move the ball and is passionate about the game, and I thought to myself why am I looking somewhere else when I have that sitting in my living room. I wanted to take her through the process because she deserves that to happen. We had a little meeting and we sat down and I laid it all out there for her, and I said I would really like for you to come play for us next year.”

Emma didn’t wait long to let Fred know she was interested in playing for the Tommies, and her first official interaction with the team eased any potential anxiety she had about joining the team.

“From the start, the girls on the team knew about my coming back from an injury and they have been nothing but supportive, helpful and encouraging on this journey of my rookie year” said Emma about the support from her teammates.

“It’s just been interesting. It is very different. You can say it’s not and fake it all you want, but when you’re recruiting your own kid it is different” added Fred.

Despite this being Emma’s first year with the Tommies, she has been a member of the Tommies family since the day she was born. The prior relationships with Tommies assistant coaches, Moe Perez and Kathleen Johnson (formerly McCann), has added to her comfortability with the team. Perez coached Emma in her middle school days, while Johnson met her when Emma was eight years old, as Johnson was a former player for the Tommies from 2009-2013, winning three straight ACAA Championships and winning a bronze medal at the 2012 CCAA Championships.

“It's been pretty special to be able to get to know Emma over my time as an athlete and a coach and see her develop into the wonderful young lady she is today,” said Johnson. “During my time as an athlete, Fred and Marcie hosted our team Christmas party and had us over for meals prior to heading to Nationals and the girls were always there and involved.”

The relationship with Johnson has also been special and has had a calming effect on Emma throughout her first season in the ACAA.

“It has been really cool to see her transition from player to coach,” said Emma. “When Kat played, I always admired her work ethic and determination. I’ve always looked up to her and it is really awesome to have her as a nice calm presence in the gym. She really balances out my dad’s intensity.”

Being the coach’s daughter doesn’t come without its share of adversity and challenges, not just for Emma either. Fred and Johnson recalled an encounter earlier this season in a practice between Emma and Johnson that set the stage for the player coach relationship.

“Kat had said something to Emma, and Emma had a little remark back and Kat just dug right in on her,” said Fred about the exchange. “And as she did you could kind of see her look out the corner of her eye as if she was thinking, ‘I’m yelling at Fred’s daughter’, and waiting to see my reaction. I thought to myself ‘good’, because Emma needs to hear that stuff from our other coaches, it can’t just come from me.”

“We push the girls pretty hard because we’re focused on getting to where we want to go this season,” said Johnson. “It was a tense moment, but I wasn’t really worried about Fred’s reaction.”

Fred was also concerned about the perception the team would have of his daughter stepping into the fold.

“We had a team meeting at the start of the year and put all the cards on the table. I told them Emma will not get playing time because she is my daughter, she is going to earn it like everyone else. She will not be contacting me for favours with the team, that will be channeled through the leadership group. That’s how it’s going to work, and we will prove that over time.”

Even after 17 years at the helm of the program, there are still moments that come as a surprise to Fred.

“We have such great people in the program, that as soon as Emma committed, they reached out to her personally. Maddy Owens and Christina Richardson, among others, have all been fantastic in helping Emma with the whole experience.

“It was heartwarming as a parent, but awesome as a coach to know we have people in the program that were just good people. I think my players, and my seniors, have all reached out to incoming players like that before, but I don’t think I really fully understood the impact of it until it was Emma.”