The Real Kate: Profile of Coach Meier
April 2, 2012
By Jennifer Somach
Growing up in a blended family with eight kids, it is easy to get lost in the crowd. This was definitely true for Kate Meier, head coach of the University of Miami’s women’s basketball team.
“One Sunday, we went to church,” her mother Phyllis says, telling one of her favorite stories about her youngest daughter Kate. “We all sat in the third pew. And, at the end of the service, we got up and we left. I guess Kate had gone to the bathroom, but I didn’t know she did.”
Upon returning home from church, the family hung up their coats and the phone rang. It was the priest from church. He asked, “Do you have a Kathleen?” and Phyllis replied, “No, we have a Kate.”
Then the light bulb went off.
“I realized she wasn’t home! I didn’t hang her coat up,” Phyllis continues. “She was only three. She couldn’t reach it, so I always did it. And somebody found her out in the parking lot. We hadn’t even realized she was gone! I thought it was funny because I didn’t even know she knew our phone number.”
When they returned to church to pick her up, they found her sitting with the priest, having breakfast. “She wasn’t a bit upset. She said she knew we’d come back,” Phyllis remembers. “I think she was more worried because she didn’t tell me she was going to go to the bathroom.”
Even at three years old, Kate was wise beyond her years. (Nobody calls her Katie. “It’s just a basketball thing. I was Kate my whole life,” Meier explains.
When she got to kindergarten, her teacher called Phyllis to tell her the school was going to “double promote” Kate to first grade because her reading level was so advanced. It was the first exception in which the school district had allowed a student to jump from kindergarten to first grade mid-year. “And she didn’t have any problem at all,” Phyllis says.
Many years later, Kate attended Duke University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English Literature with Cum Laude honors in 1989. She was also named to the Dean’s List and she received GTE Academic All-America Second Team honors. She then went on to earn her Master of Arts in Teaching English from Duke in 1990.
On top of being incredibly intelligent, Meier was born with a knack for athletics. She was the only girl on the boys little league team as a kid, and was the first girl to win All Star in her hometown of Wheaten, Illinois.
At age six, she started playing basketball and volleyball. One night, during a volleyball game her freshman year of high school, Meier turned her knee and had to be taken to the emergency room. After examining her knee, the doctor told Meier and her parents that she had a huge growth spurt ahead of her.
“Well, how tall are we talking?” Phyllis asked. The doctor said at least 6 feet or 6’1. At that time, Meier was 5’6. “We about died!” Phyllis explains.
Meier continued to grow throughout high school and eventually hit the predicted height. “She used to tell people she was 5’13, because she didn’t want to say she was 6 foot. Now, I think she’s very glad she is.”
As a basketball player, who wouldn’t be happy to be that tall? Meier used that height to her advantage and excelled in basketball. She was a four-year letter winner at Duke, and her name is all over the record books. She currently ranks third overall for all-time scoring average (16.2 points per game), steals (232), free throws made (447) and free throws attempted (624) for the Blue Devils. She earned ACC Rookie of the Year and Basketball Yearbook Freshman All-America honors. Even after missing her junior season due to a knee injury, Meier returned the following season as if she never missed a game. Her senior season, Meier earned Kodak/WBCA District 2 All-America and All ACC First Team awards, and the Blue Devils’ named her MVP.
She continued to receive recognition long after she graduated. In 2002, Duke honored Meier for her efforts as a player by naming her to the inaugural induction class in the Blue Devils’ Hall of Honor. That same year, Meier was named to the ACC’s 50th Anniversary Team.
After completing her master’s program, Meier travelled overseas to play professionally in Belgium. She began teaching conversational English classes, and eventually started coaching a youth team. Meier stayed in Belgium for the next three years and lead her team to three First Division titles and one Belgian Cup championship. Meier never looked back after moving into coaching.
“Do I miss playing? No,” Meier says. “I coached a little team of kids that were the ages of 13-17 and I loved that more than wanting to play. I just loved it. The give and take. Just getting to know people and figuring out how to work and how to get them to play harder and how to feel good about themselves.”
Meier welcomed the transition from player to coach. “Everything I do is an exchange and, when I played, it felt like I was just a player who woke up every day, worked out for myself. There was no growth or exchange.”
When Meier returned to the United States, she pursued a collegiate coaching career, starting as an assistant coach at the University of North Carolina in Asheville from 1993-1994. Then she joined the coaching staff at Tulane for seven years, helping to lead the Green Wave to the highest ranking in school history and a school record of 27 wins the same season.
Before coming to UM, Meier coached at UNC Charlotte. As the fifth head coach in the school’s history, she brought the women’s basketball program to national notoriety. Meier credits her success as a coach from growing up in such a big family.
“That stuff just comes out in coaching,” she says. “I don’t have any background in psychology but I think I learned how to blend.”
Meier’s father died in a plane crash when Phyllis was pregnant with Kate, and they already had a 4-year-old, a 3-year-old and a 2-year-old. A few years later, Phyllis met Howard Skolak, a widower with four children as well.
They have been married for 43 years with their blended family of ten.
“We had the Skolaks and the Meiers, and the Skolaks had a different background than the Meiers. There were eight kids trying to learn how to live together, sharing rooms and everything from day one. And you just have to make it work. Your problems are never bigger than the group.”
She brought that same mentality to Miami when she came to coach the Hurricanes in 2005. “My energy is being put to very good use as a coach. It’s very much give and take. I love the exchange. I love demanding effort, and then people come through for you,” says Meiers. “It’s just a lot of fun.”
She made it clear that her goal was to make Miami one of the best women’s basketball programs in the country. And she has certainly achieved that goal. In her first season, the Hurricanes finished the season with an impressive 17-13 overall record, and came in sixth place in the ACC. Having just finished her seventh season as head coach, she has taken the women’s team leaps and bounds from where she took them her first year. UM finished the 2011-2012 regular season No. 8 in the NCAA, with an overall record of 25-5 and 14-2 in the ACC. The Canes earned a No. 2 seed in the ACC tournament, losing to Wake Forest in the quarterfinal round.
And Meier could not be happier with the success of the team over the years. “I’m just thrilled that I had a vision when I came here. I thought this could be a top-ten program and win championships. I said it in my press conference and I could tell that people in the audience thought I was a little crazy. Because there just wasn’t this real positive energy around the program when I first got here. The expectations weren’t as high as I wanted them to be. And so I went ahead and put the pressure on the program and myself. If you don’t expect things for the women’s basketball program here, get out of my way, because I do.”
Meier recently accomplished a major milestone in her own career: her 200th win. And throughout it all-the awards and recognitions, the wins and losses, the highs and lows, Meier stays grounded.
She still finds 45 minutes before every game to take a nap and clear her mind.
Her parents still come to as many games as they can while they visit Meier every year for six weeks.
She has no regrets and does not believe in quitting.
And Meier still gives her players the same advice. “I just tell them confidence is knowing the next thing that happens will be positive. If you have that expectation, you truly believe. Just live with courage and live large. You can be small if you want; you can shrink. But, you know, I just like to live large.”
