MeetKevinDeMille, former UConn women's basketball staffer who's now Shea Ralph's Vanderbilt assistant

Jul. 17—The first person to greet him that day in 2009 was then-assistant coach Shea Ralph, now Vanderbilt head coach. DeMille said he was interested in becoming a practice player and Ralph told him to come back a few hours later for a tryout.

Ralph admits now that she really didn't have a plan in mind for DeMille's tryout. She could sense he had talent but wanted to see how he'd hold up against one of the Huskies' best. It just so happened Tina Charles was scheduled to be in the gym at that time.

Of course, Ralph had no idea then that that tryout would turn into a long-lasting working relationship with DeMille becoming one of her current assistant coaches in Nashville.

When DeMille walked into the gym that day 14 years ago, he was greeted by Charles asking him, "Are you here for my workout?"

The two played one-on-one for the next hour. It was physical and intense, but DeMille kept up and challenged Charles — who led the Huskies to the national championship and was named the Final Four MVP just six months prior.

DeMille impressed both Ralph and Charles during the workout and earned the position. And despite being a little beat up, he was hooked and wanted more.

"First, I was like, 'Do they treat bruised ribs at the Student Health Center?' Because Tina was National Player of the Year and still craving getting better," DeMille said. "Tina was impossible to guard. ... I couldn't get enough. I came to practice every day. I came to as many workouts as I could. I couldn't get enough learning from the student-athletes, learning from the coaching staff, seeing the passion and the seriousness with which everybody approached everything."

For seven years, DeMille was a vital part of UConn's support staff. His deep sense of selflessness and determination molded perfectly with the Huskies' system while his loyalty reached far beyond Connecticut as he later worked as an assistant coach for former Huskies Jennifer Rizzotti and now Ralph.

While he's helped countless Huskies grow and succeed on and off the court, the UConn family as a whole has made just as large an impact on DeMille and who he is today.

"When I think back on my collegiate career, working in a support role in a bunch of different ways, which was very thankless, the thanks that I got was watching the team succeed and feeling like I got to be a small part of that," DeMille said.

From New Jersey to Storrs

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DeMille grew up in a basketball household in New Jersey. Both his parents coached the sport while he dreamed of one day winning a national championship for Coach K (Mike Krzyzewski) at Duke.

His mom coached local high school girls' basketball and was well-versed in the women's basketball scene along the East Coast. She always put WNBA and UConn games on TV as DeMille became a big fan of Diana Taurasi. The family even took a trip up to Storrs one year to watch the women's team in an early-round NCAA Tournament game.

"I was mystified by how much taller Diana and Ann Strother were in real life compared to on TV," he said. "UConn was on TV more than anybody else. Jen (Rizzotti) and Rebecca (Lobo) had already flipped the basketball world on its head. And by the early 2000s, I felt like every weekend during the winter UConn was on ESPN or NBC or CBS and it was fun basketball to watch. They were really competitive. They played at a great pace. It was something that my mom's teams aspired to be."

DeMille wanted that college basketball lifestyle for himself, yet too many concussions while playing for Notre Dame High School in Lawrenceville forced him to reevaluate his dream to play in college.

The second heartbreak came when he was later rejected admission by Duke. That meant his college decision came down to the two other basketball schools on his list: Villanova and UConn.

DeMille doesn't remember what ultimately convinced him to become a Husky but regards it as "probably the best decision" he's ever made — even if he felt the opposite once he actually moved to Storrs.

He hated the cold and felt isolated from the world in Connecticut. DeMille begged his parents to come pick him up so he could find another school.

But his parents responded with the most obvious solution: get involved. DeMille's mom had met Chris Dailey through the local high school circuit and told DeMille to reach out to the women's basketball program.

The impromptu workout with Charles showed DeMille not only had the talent to keep up with UConn's top players but the ability to take direction and know when and how to help without being asked.

"He crushed it," Ralph said. "And I think I noticed that day that Kevin was willing to do whatever it took to be part of something bigger than himself. And, you know, when you come across people like that, you just want to have them around. And the beauty of that was that he wanted to be around and that he wanted to do whatever we needed to do to make sure that our program was going in the right direction."

But even in college, DeMille couldn't escape his concussions. Doctors told him to step away from playing after his symptoms resurfaced throughout his first year as a practice player.

The team kept DeMille on staff as a student manager, giving him more responsibility off the court. He helped set up and take down practices, do laundry, move and prep equipment, organize stats and data, and even help cut video highlights and run the team's social media accounts.

If he wasn't on campus in a class, he was at the gym helping the team. He'd often be the first person to arrive each morning and the last to leave each night. To help balance his academics with the workload, DeMille changed his major from English and psychology to social science of sport. In his limited free time, he played intramural basketball at the student gym.

"While it sounds like a lot, it was never that way, never felt that way. Because it was always so meaningful," he said. "It was just these dominoes of trying really hard to learn as much as I could to help as much as I could that ended up leading to every other opportunity that I've ever had."

DeMille considered attending grad school for sports business after he graduated from his undergraduate studies. But UConn insisted he stayed and offered him a full-time position as the team's assistant director of operations to which DeMille couldn't say no to.

As a full-time staffer, he traveled with the team on road trips and helped with in-house recruiting. He became "Mr. Do-It-All" and never shied away from learning new skills to further help the team.

When Geno Auriemma asked how long DeMille would need to become a video coordinator, DeMille gave him an estimated six-month deadline. Auriemma responded, "Awesome, that sounds great. You start in two weeks."

The players were also fans of DeMille. He'd push them in practices, challenging them to do drills again and again until they had it perfect just like any other coach. Off the court, he was their peer as he was often in the same classes and hung out with them outside of Gampel Pavilion.

"It was different because he was a manager, so I had a lot more to say back to him." Former Husky Stefanie Dolson said with a laugh. "He knew what he was talking about. We all respected him; I think that's what was so incredible. He was a manager and a practice player, but we respected him like he was a coach because he was there for so long. He's been around the coaches for so long and we knew that he knew what he was talking about."

DeMille is still friends with Dolson and other former Huskies such as Breanna Stewart, Kyla Irwin and Katie Lou Samuelson — the latter two work alongside DeMille currently at Vanderbilt.

"I've always sort of been mesmerized by their level of competitiveness and level of humility, and that these people came from all over the country, in some cases all over the world, to try to pursue what they love at the highest level of doing it," DeMille said. "And that was really special. And I never took that lightly. I never took it for granted. ...

"Their success meant everything to me, just like you would celebrate your friends' success. That was sort of a function of our relationship. And so, it became really important to play whatever role I could in helping them do that since they were doing the same for me."

DeMille was an asset to the UConn staff outside of Storrs too. He traveled with Auriemma and Rizzotti (then a Team USA assistant coach) to Turkey in 2014 as Team USA's video coordinator for the FIBA World Championship. He joined the two again in Rio for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

While he would be the first to say he never planned on becoming a full-time coach, those around him knew it was only a matter of time.

"Anything we asked him to do, he did," Ralph said. "And I remember telling him, 'Listen, at some point, I'm going to be a head coach. And when I am, I have no idea what I'm going to hire you to do but I'm gonna hire you.' Because he's just one of those people that if he doesn't know how to do something, he'll figure it out. And there's nothing beneath him, you know, he'll do whatever you ask him to do. He's just, he's a diamond."

Husky loyalty

DeMille worked at UConn for a total of seven years, but when Rizzotti asked him to join her staff at George Washington University, he knew he couldn't say no.

He was initially hired as the team's assistant director of basketball operations. Rizzotti promoted him to assistant coach — his first official coaching gig — nine months later.

"I never really spent time thinking about it. It (coaching) had never been part of the plan I had for myself. But I would do anything for Jen, six years ago, seven years ago, or today," DeMille said. "Now it's funny because I couldn't imagine myself doing anything else."

DeMille spent five years under Rizzotti at GW. He learned firsthand how sports can impact one's community and how to inspire players to use their platform to help the causes they care about. He led the program's diversity and inclusion efforts and built relationships with local charities. While he's always had a passion for basketball, it was there in Washington D.C. that he fell in love with helping student-athletes find and use their voice.

"Everything that I've done, everything that I've done so far in my career since then, until that point, everything has been about the student-athletes," DeMille said. "I didn't know it at the time when I was walking out of the workout with Tina Charles, but it would become the cornerstone of how I identify myself in the industry as somebody who just works and works and works to try to help the kids as much we can."

In 2021, Ralph followed through on her word and called DeMille. She was leaving UConn after 13 years of being an assistant coach for her first head-coaching role at Vanderbilt. The details weren't quite set, but she knew she had to have DeMille on her staff.

"I knew I could trust him," Ralph said. "I knew that he'd be loyal and that he worked really hard. And for me as a first-time head coach, I needed that more than anything else."

DeMille has brought his same level of drive and passion to Vanderbilt. He's always in the gym or the team's offices helping players and preparing the team for the next practice or game.

Ralph credits DeMille to helping bring the team's collective GPA up from 2.8 to 3.4 within the past two seasons in his role as the program's academic liaison. He's constantly making sure each player feels seen and understood. Ralph says during recruiting visits, she's always impressed at how fast DeMille can make a player, and their parents, feel comfortable.

"He has a servant's heart and he'll do whatever you need him to do. Whatever it is that I need, I know he's gonna have my back," she said. "And you know, you don't find those people a lot in life. You don't — especially in high-pressure, high-intense environments like we have here at Vanderbilt and like we had at UConn.

"It's just it's hard to keep those people loyal. There's always a next best thing. There's always somebody that can pay you more money. But none of that matters to Kevin. He just wants to make a positive impact on the lives of our student-athletes and on the program here at Vanderbilt. And you know that to me is, that's priceless."

DeMille isn't thinking about what's next. The idea of becoming a head coach isn't the priority right now. He's invested in his players at Vanderbilt, and more importantly, in serving Ralph out on the court and continuing to learn from her.

"I don't see myself doing anything other than coaching for Shea. That how special she is," he said. "That's how valuable I find my time with her. That's how instrumental she's been, how magnanimous she is. None of this matters. The basketball stuff doesn't matter. I've got friends in a lot of places who are really, really smart, but don't enjoy what they do. None of it matters if you're not with the right people. And I'm with the right people here."

While he never made it to Duke, DeMille has won at every level on the court because of his time as a Husky. He was on staff at UConn for five national championship titles, on staff for Team USA's 2016 gold-medal victory and coached under two of the greatest players to wear the Husky uniform.

UConn taught him how to apply selflessness to hard work and sacrifice.

And even now, every time he jumps in to play one-on-one against one of Vanderbilt's post players, he can't help but think of that try-out workout with Charles that started it all.

"This is a really fun sport. It's a silly little sport that's taken me to some pretty special places," he said. "I'm really grateful for the people who have helped me do that."