It was always dark when he woke her up. That, more than anything, is what Alex Kelly remembers. The scenery that lay beyond her bedroom window morphed from the mountains of West Virginia to the streets of the French Quarter to the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, but it may as well have been the same, because when he woke her, it was always dark.
Alex Kelly learned to treasure those early mornings with her father, for often it was the only time she got to spend with him all day. Such was the life for Alex and her brothers Patrick and Ryan, who grew up following the round-the-clock hours and the nomadic career path of their father, Georgetown football’s Head Coach Kevin Kelly. All those early mornings, all those first days at new schools, all those goodbyes to old friends, have led them to where they are today: on the banks of the Potomac River, spending a sun-soaked autumn afternoon watching their father do what he was born to do: coach football.
“He’s not my coach, he’s my dad.”
Alex and her mother Kathy swear they don’t recognize the stoic figure pacing the sidelines of the Multi-Sport Facility before them.
“When I see him on the field, he’s a totally different person,” Alex Kelly says. “Out there on the field, he’s not my father. When he’s off the field, he’s not my coach, he’s my dad.”
While it may seem inconceivable to the players that run the100-yard gassers and listen to the tongue-lashings, there is a softer side to Kevin Kelly. “Everybody asks if he’s as serious at home as he is on the field,” Kathy Kelly says. “He’s pretty fun-loving at home. He jokes around and is real easy going – he’s a great dad.”
Although coaching has allowed him to turn his passion into a profession, Kevin Kelly has always known where to draw the line when it comes to his family. Since his first days as a graduate assistant at Syracuse, Kevin Kelly has been meticulous in his planning so as to make time to be with Kathy and the children.
“Everywhere I’ve been,” Kevin Kelly says, “I’ve always come in extra early on Sunday to watch the tape so I can spend the rest of the day with them.” Since arriving on the Hilltop, Kevin Kelly has structured the work week in a way that enables him and the rest of his staff to leave as soon as practice ends in the evenings. Every minute not spent on the field or in the film room is reserved for Kathy, Alex, Patrick and Ryan.
“He had to make the extra effort, he would run on little sleep, but he was always at my soccer games and tennis matches when I was a little kid.” Alex, now a freshman at Notre Dame, says.
“It wasn’t just sporting events either – plays, anything at school, he was there.” Kathy Kelly adds.
Preseason workouts prevented Kevin Kelly from helping Alex move into her new surroundings this past August. So while many coaches would have spent their team’s lone bye week in October holed up inside a cavernous football office, Kevin Kelly flew to South Bend, Ind. early Saturday morning to spend a day watching the Fighting Irish with his daughter before catching a red-eye back to D.C. in time for team meetings Sunday morning.
Not surprisingly, football is a bond shared by all members of the Kelly clan. When asked what happens on the rare occasion that his family is able to spend time all together, 14-year-old Patrick’s response conjured images of the film “Rudy.”Usually we just watch college football together,” Patrick says. “When Notre Dame is on, we always watch.”
The Traveling Kelly Clan
Alex often laughs when people ask her where she’s from. It’s hard to single out a certain place when you’ve crisscrossed the map more times than Carmen Sandiego.
“Well, I was born in Syracuse, but we’ve definitely moved around a lot,” Alex says as she begins to list locations, sounding more like a middle-school geography teacher than a college freshman. “We’ve lived in Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, New Orleans when he was at Tulane, back to New Hampshire, back to Syracuse when I was in fifth grade, then to West Virginia – we lived in West Virginia twice – that was interesting.”
Kelly’s rise through the ranks of college coaching has called for his family to relocate at a rate rivaled by few others. Through the years, the Kellys have developed a “home is where the heart is” flexibility.
While she is a physical therapist by trade, Kathy has doubled as the family’s real estate agent, selling every house that they have ever lived in. All five family members talk on end about the places they’ve seen and the people they’ve met while feasting on everything from Big Easy beignets in New Orleans to Big aine Lobsters in Brunswick.
“Every where we went, we really experienced the places that we lived,” Alex, who lists current New York Jet and former Marshall quarterback Chad Pennington as her first crush, says. “My mom always made an effort to take us to the zoo, the museums, the aquariums. It’s been great, I wouldn’t change a thing.”
While all members of the Kelly family see their frequent relocations as a positive, they do not deny how trying it has been at times. Each has a personal favorite of all the towns they have lived in, and some locations were harder to part with than others. Patrick remembers how difficult it was to leave Syracuse as a small child, while his little brother was saddened at having to leave his neighborhood friends in Huntington, W.Va.
“When I was younger it was harder, but I have gotten used to it,” Patrick says. “Some places I just got bored with and wanted to leave.”
The Kelly caravan’s last stop in Annapolis prior to arriving on the Hilltop was also its longest, thanks to a pact between father and daughter.
“He made me a promise that I would get to go to one high school for four years,” Alex recalls. “He kept it – Annapolis was my favorite.”
Kathy admits she has worried at times about whether the instability would eventually take its toll on her children. “I always tried to look at [Hoyas’ Assistant Coach] Kevin Gilbride as an example that they would turn out alright,” Kathy Kelly says, referring to Gilbride’s childhood spent following his own coaching father around the country. “Alex is off at college and doing fine, so I think it will work out.”
Father Knows Best
The walls of Kevin Kelly’s office in the bowels of cDonough Gymnasium are barren save for two framed black-and-white images that hang on the wall behind his desk. Both show the man who was the defining influence of Kelly’s life – his father. It was his father, a high school football coach and biology teacher, who provided Kevin Kelly with an idea of what he wanted to do. “I knew exactly what I wanted to do from a very young age,” he recalls. “My mom tells stories about how when I was in kindergarten, I led the class in calisthenics.”
The elder Kelly provided his son with a model of how to balance tackling drills and play calling with caring for his wife and bed time stories. All members of the Kelly family have fond memories of Kevin’s father. Alex remembers her grandfather taking her on fossil hunts as a young girl, while Kathy recalls his affable manner.
“He never met a person he didn’t like – it didn’t matter if it was a janitor or the President,” Kathy Kelly recalls. “And he always kissed his sons. It was the sweetest thing. I wish he were here to see Kevin as a head coach,” Kathy Kelly says of her father in law, who died in 1997 of a heart attack. “He would be so proud of him.”
Now that Kevin Kelly has football-playing sons of his own, he is careful to let them play their own game. While he has made a point of attending every one of Patrick’s junior varsity games for Langley (Va.) High this season, he keeps a low profile in the stands and rarely even comments on his son’s performance after the game.
“Everybody thinks he cares so much about my games,” Patrick, who plays quarterback and safety, says. “He gives me pointers every once in a while, but he really doesn’t care how I play.”
Kevin Kelly learned to stay out of it from his father, who quit coaching before his son began his career at Rockport (N.Y.) High School. The younger Kelly says that it would be fine with him should either Patrick or Ryan, who is a defensive lineman for his peewee team, decide to give up football. Kevin Kelly does say, however, that it would “be an honor” to coach either of his sons on the Hilltop.
Playing for pops doesn’t seem that wild to either of the Kelly sons, who grew up playing catch with such stars as former arshall quarterback Byron Leftwich and spending their Christmas vacations at big-time bowl games.
“It’d be so weird. How would he recruit me?” Ryan Kelly says. “But yeah – I would definitely play for him.”
His Own Personal Support Group
The sun has set on an unseasonably cold fall evening and Kevin Kelly is preparing to leave the office for the night. Although his Hoyas are riding a five-game losing streak into a matchup with undefeated Charleston Southern, Kelly remains chipper. A smug smile creeps across his face as he roots through his file drawer, searching for the source of his contentment.
“I want to show you something that Alex wrote when we were at Syracuse,” Kelly says, pulling a wrinkled piece of paper from his desk. “She has never been afraid to speak her mind.”
It is a letter to the editor of the Syracuse Post Standard in which Alex, then a sixth grader, responds to an article criticizing her father and the rest of the Orangemen coaching staff. The letter explains how hard her father works, all the while making time to spend at home with his family. The letter ends with her own opinion of her father’s job: “If I were grading the coaches, I’d give them all an `A+’.”
Seven years and multiple cities later, Alex’s belief in her father hasn’t changed.
“I see it playing out really well,” Alex Kelly says of her father’s future on the Hilltop. “Sometimes we have to remind him that it’s just a game and that rebuilding a program has its ups and downs.”
Although hundreds of miles now separate father and daughter, they still spend their early mornings together. Alex sets her dorm room alarm for 5 o’clock each morning, rising early to call her dad, who she knows will be awake and at the office, before going back to sleep.
The stillness of the pre-dawn hours is a stark contrast to the scene that surrounds the Kelly family on this sun-soaked fall afternoon at the Multi-Sport Field. The raucous cheers of football fans have replaced the hushed whispers of a father waking his children, the crisp clarity of a cloudless sky has taken the place of the faint fog of early morning.
Yet the moment is just as precious to the five family members. Kathy, Alex, Patrick, and Ryan stand patiently and watch as the stranger disguised as Kevin Kelly sternly addresses his team, who has just lost a tough one to Bucknell.
Soon the stands will empty, soon the team will leave the field, and soon the stinging pain of the loss will fade. Although they all share the same disappointment in the outcome of the game, the feeling won’t last long. For they know well, after all the changes, all the unfamiliar settings, all the hours spent separated from one another, a loss will not ruin a rare Kelly family evening all together.
Besides, the Fighting Irish are on tonight.
