College is a time to sever the paternal bond and live alone. Mom’s in the front seat waving with her tear-streamed face. Dad starts the ignition and hits the gas with a “see you at Christmas.” And just like that – independence. Well, unless you’re the coach’s daughter of course.
Meghan McKeown committed to play basketball at Northwestern because “it just made sense.” Many schools recruited the point guard from Loyola Academy, but the decision to become a Wildcat ultimately came down to her interest in journalism and her “utmost respect for the coach.” It didn’t matter if that coach raised her since birth.
“At first, the thought of him coaching me really freaked me out,” Meghan said. “But it still made sense for me to come here because I knew he was a coach that I could play for.”
Head coach Joe McKeown admits he did not have much influence over his daughter’s decision. “We tried to just give her the flexibility of what she wanted to do.”
With the NCAA notorious for its strict recruiting rules, coach McKeown decided to take a step back and be a parent for Meghan when the time came to make her college choice. “I tried to stay out of the recruiting process. I would encourage her to look at other schools,” coach McKeown said. “As a parent, you don’t want to feel like you have to tell your daughter where to go. I wanted it to be her decision.”
Even without his influence, Meghan still chose Northwestern over her other options, including Yale.
On the court, it’s a strict “player-coach relationship,” Meghan said. “He knows my game better than anyone else.”
Even though coach McKeown watched his daughter play basketball since she first started, this will be the first time he has officially been her coach. “Some days are good and others are bad,” coach McKeown said on his coaching dynamic with Meghan. “I let the assistants coach her during positions drills and I treat her just like everybody else. She has to earn what she gets.”
“My biggest fear was gaining the respect from my teammates. I didn’t want to be just the coach’s daughter,” Meghan said. “Everyone has been so accepting.”
Amy Jaeschke, Northwestern’s first-team All-Big Ten center, sees no difference in the way coach McKeown treats his daughter. “I had no idea what to expect at first, to be honest, but now, I look at her as a teammate and not just the daughter.”
Even in practice, the father-daughter relationship can still slip through.
“My dad is quite the story stretcher so I set him straight,” Meghan said. “My teammates look to me to see if he’s exaggerating something.”