HillGuy Posted January 12, 2009 Report Share Posted January 12, 2009 This is the hidden content, please Sign In or Sign Up Chancellors bring intensity to sidelines John and Van share a passion that benefits both men By JENNY DIAL Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle You won’t catch Van Chancellor or his son John sitting much when they coach basketball. In 2004, when Van was coach of the Comets, John was coaching the Houston Stealth, a National Women’s Basketball League team that played during the WNBA offseason. John drew up the plays and ran the practices and his righthand man was his assistant coach, Van. During a game in Houston, John stood to call out to a player. He saw out of the corner of his eye that Van, too, was on his feet hollering at a player. A referee came by and told John that one of the coaches needed to sit. “The ref told me, ‘Can you tell him to sit down?’ I don’t want to tell Van Chancellor to sit down,†John said. “I don’t think Dad liked having to stay seated during the game. It was quite a role reversal.†But that is what you can expect from the Chancellors. Van, 65, now women’s coach at LSU, is on his feet during every game; at Barbers Hill High School, John coaches every possession. “We are both intense coaches,†Van said. “We are both very passionate about the game and about our teams.†John, 43, wasn’t always this passionate. When he graduated from Mississippi, where he was Van’s manager for the women’s basketball team, he tried to ignore the coaching bug. “I tried to do everything in my power not to coach,†John said. “I didn’t want to be a coach. I wasn’t sure what else I wanted to do. I just didn’t want to be a coach.†Then he was offered a job at Neosho County Community College in Kansas. The job — coaching basketball. John took the position with the idea it was temporary and he just needed a job to get on his feet. But it didn’t take long for John to realize there was nothing temporary about it. “We made the playoffs for the first time ever in my first year,†he said. “And I knew that it was my calling and that I wanted to be a coach. It’s what I was born to do.†Van was more than happy with the decision. “I had hoped he would coach, because I always thought he would just really be good at it,†Van said. “I knew he had a love for it all along and I told him he would make a great coach.†Learn from a master Van came to Houston to coach the Comets for a decade and John continued to watch his father and grow as a leader. There is no denying the similarities between the two, but there are also glaring differences in their styles. “He is a lot more patient,†Van said. “He can take a loss a lot easier than I can.†John said he is just a lot more laid-back than his dad. The competitiveness isn’t just in basketball, he said. “The family can’t even play Monopoly together anymore because everyone is so competitive,†John said. “It’s really funny when my dad is playing checkers or dominoes. He has to win. Or if we are playing golf and he is losing, he comes up with some rule out of nowhere or something. I just play to play.†But give John a basketball court and a clipboard, and he suddenly channels Van’s nature. “I like to win, but I like the small victories too — knowing that my team controlled everything it could and played the best possible basketball game they could,†John said. “If we do all of that and still lose, it is hard for me to complain.†John’s becoming a basketball coach has strengthened the bond between father and son. After every game either of them coaches, the cell phones ring. It’s become a tradition to call each other after every win and every loss to talk about the game. John said he and Van speak four or five times a week. “We talk more now than we did when I was living in the house with him 20 years ago,†John said. “It’s just a special connection we have. We can talk as friends.†The phone conversations might be about a big win, a player emerging or a tough loss full of questionable calls. “We each understand what the other one is going through,†Van said. Van and John take their roles as coach seriously. During the season, they eat, sleep and breathe basketball. During the offseason, both spend time working with their churches, youth groups and in the community. “That is one big thing I really took from being around my father,†John said. “We have a responsibility to our community. We are teachers more than we are coaches.†Joining forces Van and John have coached together on a few occasions — with the Stealth, at Mississippi when John was a student and at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Van was coach of the U.S. women’s basketball team and John was a scout. They hope to coach together again, but they have never coached against each other. John thinks the Chancellor coaching tradition might continue. He has two sons — Jacob, 9 and Joseph, 7. He said that in Little Dribblers Basketball, Jacob is starting to tell his teammates where they need to be and is directing traffic on the floor. “You can’t count it out,†John said. “We may have another coach on our hands.†[email protected] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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