Chicago native ‘Coach K’ shares his mother’s wisdom and other lessons during UIC Chair Chats 

After amassing the most NCAA Division I wins in men’s college basketball history and coaching Hall of Fame players to three consecutive Olympic gold medal wins, Mike Krzyzewski may be one of the greatest basketball coaches ever. 

But for the man better known as “Coach K,” his mother is the reason for his success. 

The former Duke University coach was the guest for UIC’s Chair Chats series on April 14 at the Dorin Forum. The series, which kicked off last year with Dr. Anthony Fauci, brings well-known leaders to campus to share ideas and inspiration.

For this talk, Krzyzewski spoke with his friend and former team manager, UIC Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda, about sports, leadership and growing up in Chicago. He said he was impressed with the students, faculty and campus and noted it was his first visit to the UIC campus. 

“This is a treasure for our city; I didn’t realize how big and how beautiful it is,” Krzyzewski said. 

Miranda kicked off the conversation by asking Krzyzewski about his roots in Chicago’s Ukranian Village neighborhood. 

“Tell us a little bit about the Chicago of your youth,” Miranda prompted. 

Krzyzewski attended St. Helen Catholic School and Archbishop Weber High School. His parents were Polish immigrants who taught him the value of hard work. His mother, Emily, was a cleaning lady at the Chicago Athletic Club and his father, William, was an elevator operator.  

“I grew up with a level of support and love that made me feel like I was going to be something, and I never worried about failure because I had this enormous net ready to catch me if something happened,” Krzyzewski said. 

Even though neither of his parents finished high school, it was important that their children, Krzyzewski and his brother, William, got an education. Somehow, he recalled, they scraped together enough money to send their sons to parochial school. In the Catholic leagues, Krzyzewski stood out as a star player, which led to the chance to play college basketball.  

When the time came to decide where to attend school, it was his parents who decided he would play basketball at the U.S. Military Academy of West Point because “that’s where presidents go.”  

“I call it the best decision I never made,” Krzyzewski said. 

At West Point, he played for legendary coach Bobby Knight and served as team captain during his senior season. He later coached there after his military obligation. However, when he was a student, his humble mother would chide him for being overly proud when he wore his uniform in public during visits home from West Point. 

“She’d say, ‘Mike, you think you’re a hot ticket,’” he said.  “My mom had two dresses.  That’s it, and she’d say, ‘Why do I need more?’”  

Photos: Jenny Fontaine/UIC

No one tougher  

In 2001, Krzyzewski was voted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2022, he retired from coaching college basketball after 42 years. He is a co-founder of the Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics and a professor of leadership practice at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business.  

At one point in the conversation Miranda asked how he managed to stay positive, especially early in his career when his teams were floundering. He answered that it was important to believe in yourself. 

“Maybe I was naive, but it didn’t make any difference to me what other people thought. It’s what I thought,” he said. 

Krzyzewski pinned his professional success to the “love and support” his parents showed him and William, who he called his hero. William, a captain of the Chicago Fire Department, died in 2013. 

Over the years, he’s even relied on his mother’s example to push players to reach their full potential. They needed to be as tough as their mothers, he’d tell them. 

“They would see my mom, and I’d say, ‘You aren’t tougher than her,’” said Krzyzewski. “She was never tired or sick, and I never knew of my mom having a day off.” 

Miranda also asked him to explain his leadership technique. The key, he said, is to have people adhere to standards rather than rules. 

At West Point, he realized a person cannot “own” a rule because they can either obey or disobey it. But a standard is a way to do things consistently and to hold each other accountable, he said. 

“So, with every one of my teams, including the U.S. teams, we would have standards meetings as the first meeting every year, and say how do you want to live together,” said Krzyzewski.  

He has two non-negotiable standards: when people talk to each other, they must look each other in the eye, and, secondly, honesty always, no matter what. 

“I call it the speed to trust,” Krzyzewski said. “Imagine when I say something that you believe it, and you can believe what I say when I say something back. Just that little thing, it costs nothing.”  

Sharing life lessons 

Before the Chair Chat, Krzyzewski met with UIC students and took their questions. When asked what he’s most proud of besides his legendary career, Krzyzewski said he was proudest of his family – his wife of 55 years, his three daughters and 10 grandchildren – and growing up with “faith, family and work.” 

He told the students that the day before his first day of high school, his mother gave him advice – in the form of an analogy — which has been the basis for every decision he has since made.  

“She said, ‘Tomorrow, you’re going to start driving your own bus,’” Krzyzewski remembered. Only put good people on your bus, she told him. “Then she said, ‘Those buses will take you to places that you could never get to alone.’” 

Quinn Ruiz, a UIC soccer player, graduate student and vice president of the UIC Student-Athletic Advisory Committee, said as a student-athlete, she connected with Krzyzewski’s message of how teams must sustain a culture to reach success. She took Krzyzewski’s focus on personal excellence to heart, such as when athletes must overcome injuries. 

“The will to put in the work to win is really important and is something I hold of great importance,” said Ruiz. “I’m really grateful for him to come to UIC.” 

Ezra Gussin, a first-year student studying accounting and finance, said that although he doesn’t know much about sports, Krzyzewski’s talk impacted him. 

“Coach K didn’t come here to talk about sports; he came here to talk about life lessons and how to succeed in anything that you are doing any day of the week,” said Gussin. “It’s not like he’s coming and saying, ‘This is how you win the game.’ He’s coming in and saying, ‘This is how you win life.’” 

Gussin pointed to the Chair Chats as one reason he’s enjoyed his first year at UIC and felt he made the right choice by coming here. 

“Everybody works together to build everyone up at UIC,” said Gussin. “Everybody is included in all the events, like this chat with Coach K. It’s accessible to everyone, easily.” 

Asa Asad, a fourth-year neuroscience major, said on his graduation day next month, he’ll be thinking about Krzyzewski’s bus-driver analogy.  

“Like Coach K said, getting on the right bus and surrounding yourself with the right people is how you move forward,” said Asad, who serves as UIC’s student body president.  

“I’m where I am because of the people around me, and I will continue to push others forward as well,” he added. 

The Chair Chat series is free for UIC students, staff and faculty to attend. For others, the $20 contribution per ticket benefits UIC Aspire, which covers 100% of tuition and mandatory fees for incoming first-year and transfer students from Illinois families with a household income of $75,000 or less. 

Photos: Jenny Fontaine/UIC