by By Dan Ninham (Oneida)
Coach Kelvin Sampson led the 2018-19 Houston Cougars men’s basketball team to a great season. The ‘Coogs’ had a 33-4 record and won the American Athletic Conference (AAC) regular season title and into the Sweet 16 at the NCAA DI Tournament for the first time in 35 years. This followed a 27-8 record from the season before and Coach Kelvin’s teams won 20+ games in three out of his first four seasons at Houston.
Sampson’s team also had a 33-game home winning streak that ended in late February 2019. Coach Kelvin was honored with the AAC, NABC District 25 for the second straight year and the Clarence “Big House” Gaines National Coach of the Year.
With six seasons in the NBA with the Houston Rockets from 2011-14 and Milwaukee Bucks from 2008-11, Coach Kelvin may have started his last resume’ coaching stop at the University of Houston on April 3, 2014.
Sampson has compiled a 626-325 career record leading his teams to 15 NCAA tournaments as a head coach at Houston, Indiana, Oklahoma, Washington State, and Montana Tech. He also coached at the international level as head coach of the US Junior National Team in 1995, as the head coach of the silver medal winning West Team at the US Olympic Festival, an assistant coach and bronze medalist at the Goodwill Games in 1994, and as an assistant coach for the 2012 Canadian National Team.
The 10-3 Houston Cougars play tonight versus the 9-4 Central Florida Knights. The game will be the first of seven of the next 11 Houston games being nationally televised.
“My connections to my culture to coaching is being Lumbee,” said Coach Kelvin. Being born in Laurinberg, NC and raised in Pembroke, NC in the heart of the Lumbee native people, Coach Kelvin graduated from Pembroke HS and at the UNC Pembroke. “We lived in a segregated society. I started understanding racial equity. The bathrooms had signs on them: white, colored and other. Robeson County, NC was tri-racial: white, black and Lumbee. Everyone had their own society. We were not the ‘other,’” added Coach Kelvin.
“When I was a lil’ boy I started working in a tobacco factory,” said Coach Kelvin. “My dad worked in the tobacco factory in the summer. This was tough. 120 degree’s, smoke and dust.”
“My dad was my hero,” said Coach Kelvin. “He was my influence. He was a high school basketball coach. He was not the ‘other’. Dad worked nine months of the year as a coach. In the summer he worked in the tobacco factory, sold world book encyclopedia’s, sold Lincoln Life Insurance. My mom was a nurse.”
“My culture was work, work, work, hard work. We all had a job to do,” said Coach Kelvin.
“The family was our culture. The people had tremendous pride being Lumbee. It seems we had six names: Sampson, Lowery, Chavis, Oxendine, Jacobs, and Locklear. My wife Karen was a Lowery. We were all related. We were united. The mothers and grandmothers took care of everyone else. You heard of the ‘raised by the village’ words and that is who we are,” added Coach Kelvin.
“I’m 64 years old now,” said Coach Kelvin. “I’ve been blessed in this journey. We have a tremendous family.”
“We’ve been blessed with good players. Our program has a family atmosphere. We help kids. I help them grow. I tell them, ‘I don’t have to be your life, but you’re my life’. Our players grow more after their eligibility is up. While I have them, I teach them tough love. We have great respect for the culture of the program,” added Coach Kelvin.
“My culture connections are being humble, give back, pay that forward, by the way I coach,” said Coach Kelvin.
Kelvin Sampson came to the Red Lake Nation twice. A national video company taped a few DVD’s including this video clip:
Coach Kelvin not only visited the Red Lake Nation to produce instructional DVD’s, but he also was showcased to the youth and community as being a coach, an NBA coach with a solid college resume’ of coaching, and especially a teacher of the game. He was also featured as perhaps the only Native American NCAA DI head coach.
An analysis of the video clip not only includes the “what” of the content of the skills in the drill and the “who” of the native youth demonstrators, but it also shows Coach Kelvin as a teacher of the game. He exemplified the “how” of the way skills are executed and the “why” by questioning and not giving the answers toward critical inquiry of the players.
Coach Kelvin uses the teaching-learning environment as a laboratory to try new tactics, idea’s and techniques, and it doesn’t matter if it’s in the NBA, college, or a native youth basketball clinic at the Red Lake Nation. There is always another way or more than a few ways to execute and to demand execution to learn the right things right.
“As a JH Coach, the drills Coach showed us really helped us work on many things in one drill, and I think they helped those players who worked hard on them to prepare for that next level of HS basketball and for some, beyond,” said Chris Jourdain, Red Lake JH basketball coach. “We were very fortunate to have a coach of NBA caliber come in and work with our staff, who in turn passed them onto our athletes. We started our impressive run of four state tournament appearances with many of those boy players and a few girls’ state tournaments.”
Two of the demonstrator’s were young student-athlete’s who are the first boy and girl Red Lake Warriors who are currently playing NCAA DI basketball: Valparaiso’s Grace White and University of Texas Rio Grande Valley’s Rob McClain, Jr. When told this fact, Coach Kelvin Sampson said, “Wow! How ‘bout that. Proud of those kids.”
There are two phrases in all languages that are significant to tell someone. In Ojibwemowin they are: “Gidebweyenimin” meaning “I believe in you” and “Gidapiitendaagoz” meaning “You are important”.
Speaking on behalf of Indian Country and beyond: “Gidebweyenimin, Gidpiiendaagoz, Coach Kelvin Sampson”.
Photo Credit: Houston Athletics
Truth speaks truth and proud to know him and fortunate to have played while he was coaching in Robeson County..