Crossing over from player to coach to parent of elite athletes
Former Drake basketball star Kristi Kinne Hayes reflects on experiencing sports in nearly every possible way
This is the debut of a new feature, The Crossover Conversation. Chats might be with newsmakers, well-known sports figures past or present or those who might have intriguing insights into what’s going on in sports. Have a suggestion for a Crossover Conversation? Email crossover.iowa@gmail.com
For many top-level athletes, sports can follow them their whole life.
For Kristi (Kinne) Hayes, it’s not just that sports have followed her since she was a star basketball player at Drake. Sports have blanketed her in just about every possible way.
She was a Division I athlete, the Missouri Valley Conference player of the year in 1995, and then became a coach at Southern Illinois, Iowa and Oklahoma. Her husband was a college football all-American and an NFL player and coach. Her oldest son plays in the NBA. Her daughter plays Division I basketball. Her two younger sons are a Division I football player and a Division I football recruit. And if that isn’t enough, Hayes has switched sports and works at a tennis center.
When it came time to launch The Crossover Conversation, Kristi had to be the first conversation. It’s not just a “where are they now?” moment for a former star athlete in Iowa, but a chance to get perspective from someone who has seen sports from every angle. And if that weren’t enough, she was known as “Kristi Crossover” when she played at Drake because her signature move was the crossover – a move to the basket that involves such intricate footwork and was unfamiliar enough in Hayes’ 1990s playing era that opponents (and often officials) were certain she was traveling.
Hayes now lives in Cincinnati, where the family moved when her husband, Jonathan, was an assistant coach for the Cincinnati Bengals. Jonathan Hayes was an all-American football player at Iowa and also played for the Kansas City Chiefs. Kristi coached at Southern Illinois, Iowa and Oklahoma until leaving the profession to start a family.
The oldest Hayes son, Jaxson, was a first-round draft pick of the Atlanta Hawks in 2019 and now plays for the Los Angeles Lakers. Daughter Jillian will be a fifth-year senior at Cincinnati. Son Jewett is a freshman on Virginia’s football team and youngest son Jonah will play football for Northwestern next year.
Because Mom doesn’t have to give them all rides to practice and games anymore, she had some time to chat on a recent Sunday afternoon.
You had plans for a different career, but what drew you back to sports?
Physical therapy was going to be my avenue but I missed sports so much I got back into coaching. Then my husband and I got married. He coached football at Oklahoma, I coached basketball, but then we got pregnant with our first. Turns out childcare pays better than women’s basketball and I thought, “You know what? I want our kids to know their parents. I’ll give it up.” There’s nothing more important to me than family, so I got out of coaching. And little did I know, I’d get right back into it by coaching my kiddos. I’ve coached more sports than I’ve played, so that’s been fun, too.
It’s unusual to find anyone with such connections to all parts of sports – you’re an athlete, a coach, a coach’s spouse, your kids are elite athletes … that’s kind of nuts.
It really is. And it’s so fun at the same time.
Overall I love it, but it’s frustrating at times because I see things that are not right and it’s not my position to say that. There are times when I see parents get upset and go about it the wrong way, but it’s not my position to say anything. My tongue is probably the strongest flesh on me because I’ve bitten it so many times. But if you ask me, I am 100% all in to tell you my opinion.
My life experience has granted me what I consider a really good knowledge base. Not everybody has that, so everybody is doing the best that they can.
What role have sports played in your family’s life as your kids have grown up?
It’s funny because there are a lot of people who think you play sports to get a college scholarship and that was never my intention with my kids. We did everything: My kids did ballet, they did gymnastics, lacrosse, soccer. My belief is you do sports for reasons of physical activity, meeting people, learning teamwork, dedication, hard work.
I’ve recently joined forces with a group called Champion Forward, and they work with parents, athletes, coaches on kind of work-life balance things. Being an elite athlete comes with side effects and how do you handle those side effects?
Do you and Jonathan share your experiences with your kids or just let them discover things on their own? Because kids don’t listen anyway.
They do not listen to me and I’ve had to accept that. Rather than try to coach, I just sit back and cheer and that has been very hard. But I do enjoy being their cheerleader. My daughter is probably the hardest on herself and she’ll say, “Mom, what can I do better?” And I’ll say, “Jillian, you’re doing great, you’ve exceeded my abilities. I got nothing, I can sit here and admire you.” And then I’d add, “What you can do is smile more when you’re out there.”
Boy, that’s totally a mom thing.
It is, I didn’t know I had that in me.
Sports have played a very big role for our family but it’s just a platform where my kids can be successful. That’s what you want as a parent, to teach your kids that if there’s something they want they should work for it, they should fight for it. I think sports teaches you that.
Were you the official coach for your kids’ teams?
Yeah. I’ve coached football. I’ve coached soccer. I’ve coached basketball. I’ve coached baseball. My husband did the lacrosse. There are not a lot of volunteers because there are a lot of people with opinions who like to make themselves known, same with officials. When my kids complained about the officials, I’d say, “Did you get everything right? Did you make every shot? No? Well move on then.”
Did you teach them the crossover?
Every one of them, yes. My daughter perfected it and she uses it a lot. That and the spin move. It took her a while. I’d say, “This is the move you’ve got to do.” And when she started scoring buckets with it, she was like, “OK.”
Ironically, that and the Euro step (a similar move) don’t get called for traveling anymore. You’re welcome, everybody.
I remember Lisa (Bluder, then Drake’s coach) would go ballistic if you got called for traveling, and then the opposing coaches would go ballistic if you weren’t.
Oh yeah.
The funny thing is in my freshman year, I’d go up to the officials when the captains went before the game and I would explain that with a layup you get a step and a half. I’d say, “When I do this move, I stop and take a step and a half and it’s not traveling, correct?” And they’d say, “Correct.” And then they always called it traveling anyway.
You wrote an article about this in the Des Moines Register, do you remember?
No, I have no memory of that.
You wrote it the day of a game and I got called for traveling in that game. And one of the officials came up to me and said, “I saw the article. Just for the record, it was not me that called that.” I said, “Well, OK, thanks.” (The story ran Feb. 26, 1994.)
With four kids in sports, how did you juggle all the schedules?
As a coach, my husband would leave the house at sometimes 5:30 in the morning and not get home until around 11, so he was not around. I was coaching Jillian’s team, but I had to get Jaxson to practice and I also had Jewett and Jonah. I scheduled our practices at a facility where I could put the two boys in a tumbling/gymnastics class while I coached, and then when I got done it was perfect timing to go get Jaxson.
I had a huge village to help me with rides and other things. I remember I had Crock-Pots. I would make a meal in the morning and have it in a Crock-Pot, take the Crock-Pot with me to the gym and then we’d eat out of the Crock-Pot because that’s the only time we could eat. It was crazy.
If child #2 and child #3 had games that were close to each other, I’d go to theirs because I could do two. If it was all kind of different, all far, I’d choose the oldest one because they have less time left in school.
You find ways. I am blessed. I can’t say it enough: I am blessed.
This summer, Kristi (Kinne) Hayes was featured in six episodes of the Champion Forward podcast. The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. She’s a past winner of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Mel Greenberg Award for her coverage of women’s basketball. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese and Basketball: Stories From a Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”
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