‘Farmer, Cheerleader, Hall of Fame Coach’ -- Nancy Fahey Begins Year Two as an Illini
November 6, 2018 | Women's Basketball
By Mike Pearson
FightingIllini.com
This is a tale about a Midwest kid who grew up milking cows … who became a cheerleader … who coached her way into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
It's difficult to fathom a story more implausible than Nancy Fahey's, but that's the road the Fighting Illini women's head basketball coach has traveled.
The youngest of Art and Kate Fahey's four children, Fahey stayed busy. There were plenty of chores to do on the family's dairy farm in Belleville, Wisconsin.
"I had an appreciation for a good work ethic," she said. "My parents were my role models of work ethic, role models of what's right and wrong, role models of how to treat people."
When work ended, Fahey could be found playing basketball with brothers John and Art Jr. and sister Connie on the hoop nailed up to the Fahey's barn.
"My brothers, my sister and I played a lot of basketball," she said. "That was our NBA in the afternoons. I was more being active playing it than really watching it on TV."
As a child of the mid 1970s, organized basketball for girls was a rarity, so Fahey instead tried out for the eighth grade cheerleading squad. She admits that she probably was the worst cheerleader on her team.
"I found myself watching the games instead of cheering," she said.
Finally, as a freshman at Belleville High, she got her first opportunity to play organized basketball. It was a lot different than shooting at the hoop on her dad's barn, so she approached her folks about attending a week-long basketball camp.
"I knew it was a lot of money at that time, but my parents let me go," she said. "It was a pretty special gift."
It was money well spent, as Fahey developed into a top-notch player. More than four decades later—last year to be precise—she and two others were inducted into the Belleville Wildcats Wall of Fame's first class.
Upon graduating from high school in 1977, Fahey went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, 20 miles north up highway 151. She walked on to Coach Edwina Qualls' Badger team. She claims she wasn't all that impressive as a shooter, but had a knack for getting the ball to her teammates, especially Badger scoring star and future UW Hall of Famer Theresa Huff. Qualls rewarded Fahey with a scholarship her junior year and No. 20 set Badger records for assists.
An education major at Wisconsin, Fahey was hired in 1982 as the girls' physical education teacher and basketball coach at Johnsburg High School (near McHenry, Illinois). During her final two years at the program, she led the Lady Skyhawks to consecutive 20-win seasons and regional championships.
"I grew up knowing that just because you play the game doesn't mean you can coach the game," she said.
After four years of coaching high school basketball, Washington University athletic director John Schael hired Fahey to head up the Bears women's team.
Leaning on veteran Bears men's coach Mark Edwards for advice, success quickly ensued in St. Louis. Fahey's first team in 1986-87, an independent at the time, went 16-5.
WashU joined the University Athletic Association the following year and won the league title. That success was duplicated in six of the next seven seasons.
Following a couple of "down" seasons (22-6 and 19-7), Washington hit the mother lode in 1997-98, streaking to a 28-2 record and the NCAA Division III championship. Fahey's next three teams were equally if not more impressive, compiling an 88-2 overall mark and collecting three more D3 titles.
"Our expectations of winning championships became routine," she told a reporter in 2017.
In her final 16 seasons, the Bears won and won and won some more, taking trips all the way to the D3 title game four times and claiming a fifth national crown in 2009-10.
Fahey's final 31-year tally at WashU was impressive: 737 wins, 23 conference titles, 29 tournament appearances, 10 Final Fours and an NCAA Division III-record five national championships. In 2012, she became the first NCAA Division III representative inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.
During her final two seasons in St. Louis, Fahey worked for a young up-and-coming athletic director named Josh Whitman.
"I was actually on the search committee (for Whitman)," she said. "My brother, who lives in LaCrosse, knew about Josh because that's where he had worked. Fabulous athletic director, he said. Josh ended up applying."
After two years, the University of Illinois began recruiting Whitman for their AD job. His hiring in Champaign-Urbana caused a chain reaction with Fahey.
"Like anything, when a job comes up, you have conversations with people," Fahey said. "The key for taking a job like Illinois is believing in your leadership. I knew it would be a challenge, but I also believed in the vision of an athletic director like Josh."
She turned to those basic lessons taught long ago to her by her parents: doing it the right way, with integrity and character.
"I'm not going to compromise that," she said. "If you do it the wrong way, it will break. Someone compared it to building the Brooklyn Bridge. If you don't solidly build the part that's under water, it will eventually crumble."
Last year's Illini record (9-22) was disappointing, but Fahey remains undaunted.
"We're making progress, but last year you just couldn't see it," she said. "We're building something special and it's going to take players that want to do something special. If they want to be a part of something that's already built, that's understandable. But we're not going to forget you here. People who come here and make a difference, Illinois will never forget."
Fahey is optimistic that positive steps will be taken by Illinois women's basketball in 2018-19.
"Culture is an important building block and we were doing a lot of that last year," she said. "This year, when I do drills or put in offenses, we're moving at an incredibly different pace. This year, we can talk basketball. There wasn't a lot of that going on last year simply because we weren't ready for it. Now we are. Just the atmosphere in the practice and developing a winning attitude, that's where we're at now."
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When ranked in terms of winning percentage against college men's and women's basketball coaches who have coached 29 or more seasons, only UConn's Geno Auriemma has been more productive than Illinois's Nancy Fahey:
Winning Percentage Coach W-L .883 *Geno Auriemma 1027-136 .828 *Nancy Fahey 746-155 .822 Adolph Rupp 876-190 .811 *Tara VanDerveer 1036-242 .804 John Wooden 664-162 .791 *Barbara Stevens 1000-275 .788 *Roy Williams 842-227 .786 Dave Robbins 713-194 .784 Jerry Tarkanian 721-201 .776 Dean Smith 879-25 *Active coach
