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Father Figure

Meghan and Joe McKeown

Meghan and Joe McKeown

Throughout her life, people have asked Meghan McKeown if she would one day play for her father. She always said no. But when her dad, third-year Northwestern women’s basketball coach Joe McKeown, asked the Chicago Sun-Times top 50 guard to suit up for the Wildcats, she could not refuse. “It made sense,” said Meghan. But she’s quick to admit it’s tough being the coach’s daughter. “You kind of live under a cloud,” she said. Father and daughter agree that Meghan’s Wildcat teammates have made the transition easy. Joe, a successful recruiter for more than 30 years, including 19 seasons at George Washington University, said it was surreal to be on the other side of the process. Growing up in Washington, D.C., when Joe coached at GW, Meghan saw a lot of the Atlantic Coast Conference basketball powerhouses, the Philadelphia schools and the Ivy League institutions. Yale aggressively recruited the honors student from Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Ill. Ultimately the proximity to her family in Glencoe, Ill., and her interest in the Medill School of Journalism prompted Meghan’s decision to stay and play for the Wildcats. The freshman guard had never before played for her father, one of the winningest coaches in women’s college basketball. It’s easy for her to see why he’s been so successful. “I like how he’s a teacher,” she said. “At the end of the day, he cares about every single member of the team like they’re his own daughters. I just happen to be his own daughter in real life.”