Ben McCollum is 0-1 as a coach in Carver-Hawkeye Arena. At the time, his mother hoped he would get more chances to win there.
McCollum’s Northwest Missouri State men’s basketball team played at Iowa in an exhibition game in November 2011. It was his third season as the Bearcats’ coach. They would go on to a 22-7 record and the first of 13 straight winning seasons that included four NCAA Division II national-championships.
But that day in Carver, Northwest succumbed to Fran McCaffery’s second Iowa team, 79-59. The loss doesn’t count in childhood Hawkeye fan McCollum’s 426-95 career record.
Mary Timko, McCollum’s mother, said “He came out and I could just see he was looking around like ‘This is so cool.’ And I thought to myself ‘I hope someday he can walk out as (Iowa’s) head coach.’
She got her undergraduate, master’s and law degrees at Iowa, and was Johnson County’s assistant county attorney from 1982 to 1988. It’s where Ben and her other son, Joe, were born.
Then, she was appointed an Associate Juvenile Judge in the Third Judicial District, in northwest Iowa. She moved her family to Storm Lake as a single mother. Ben was in second-grade.
“If you listen to him talk, it’s more about a way of life,” she said. “It’s teaching kids to be become the best person they are, teaching them to be leaders, teaching them to be better citizens. If you're coaching males, it’s better fathers, brothers, sons, husbands. It's more than basketball.”
The Full Story:
McCollum’s Northwest Missouri State men’s basketball team played at Iowa in an exhibition game in November 2011. It was his third season as the Bearcats’ coach. They would go on to a 22-7 record and the first of 13 straight winning seasons that included four NCAA Division II national-championships.
But that day in Carver, Northwest succumbed to Fran McCaffery’s second Iowa team, 79-59. The loss doesn’t count in childhood Hawkeye fan McCollum’s 426-95 career record.
Mary Timko, McCollum’s mother, said “He came out and I could just see he was looking around like ‘This is so cool.’ And I thought to myself ‘I hope someday he can walk out as (Iowa’s) head coach.’
She got her undergraduate, master’s and law degrees at Iowa, and was Johnson County’s assistant county attorney from 1982 to 1988. It’s where Ben and her other son, Joe, were born.
Then, she was appointed an Associate Juvenile Judge in the Third Judicial District, in northwest Iowa. She moved her family to Storm Lake as a single mother. Ben was in second-grade.
“If you listen to him talk, it’s more about a way of life,” she said. “It’s teaching kids to be become the best person they are, teaching them to be leaders, teaching them to be better citizens. If you're coaching males, it’s better fathers, brothers, sons, husbands. It's more than basketball.”
The Full Story:
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