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WICHITA, Kan. – Picture this scene from the late 1980s: A Wiffle-ball game unfolding on a residential street in the hills of Pullman. Kelvin Sampson on the mound, John L. Smith behind the plate. Sampson’s children in the batter’s box, peppering grounders and line drives all over the black asphalt. Unforgettable Palouse nights they wish could have gone to extra innings.
“Just kind of idyllic. It was wonderful,” Lauren Sampson said. “We lived on one of the hills. My dad would come home and he was our all-time pitcher and we’d play streetball games. John L. Smith, who was the football coach at Idaho, he was our catcher. … We’d close down the street and play streetball games. You’re just riding bikes and playing hide-and-go-seek and kick the can.
“It was just kind of the idyllic childhood.”
The daughter of Washington State’s former basketball coach, now a director of external operations for her father at Houston, shows impressive retention nearly 40 years later.
There were the WSU caravan rides they took to Colfax. The fence in Colfax decorated with wheels. Lauren hardly skips a beat while replaying the hits of her childhood Friday afternoon from Houston’s locker room at Intrust Bank Arena, one day before Kelvin’s top-seeded Houston takes on eighth-seeded Gonzaga in the NCAA Tournament’s Round of 32.
She remembers everything down to the fried ice cream at Alex’s Restaurant, a Mexican establishment that’s no longer around.
There’s also this flashback, from a Washington State baseball game: “We have a picture at the house and it’s (Kelvin) at a baseball game and they were like milking a cow as a promotion.”
The family spent nine years in Pullman from 1985-94 – a formidable time for Sampson as a first-time Division I coach and his two children who now serve…
Source link : http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2025/mar/21/wiffle-ball-fried-ice-cream-and-idyllic-times-on-t/
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Publish date : 2025-03-22 03:59:00
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