Blair Schaefer cherishes playing for dad Vic
Blair Schaefer was just 8-years-old playing Upward Basketball when onlookers discovered she had much of her dad in her.
Blair, now a guard on Mississippi State's women's basketball team and the daughter of MSU head coach Vic Schaefer, was being an absolute pest to that particular night's opponent.
“I had 60 points in a game because people were dribbling in front of me, so I'd just take it from them,” Blair Schaefer said. “Their parents would get so mad, like ‘Oh my gosh, this is not fair.' I'm like, ‘This is the sport.'”
Like father, like daughter. Vic Schaefer is widely known as the Secretary of Defense in basketball circles. One of his most attentive pupils through the years just so happened to grow up inside his home.
Though Blair was only a little girl the night she poured in 60, daddy's aggressive nature was already starting to shine through.
“People hated playing my team,” Blair Schaefer said. “Upward is like the nice, church league. People play good, half-court defense, but I grew up watching my dad's teams play. That was all I knew. They play aggressive. If (the opponent) has the ball in front of you, you take it and you go score, then you get right back in their grill on defense.”
Vic Schaefer has always played a role in Blair's basketball life. From Blair sitting in the
stands cheering on Vic's teams as a little girl, to Blair now playing for her father at MSU, Blair and her dad have always shared hoops.
There have been great moments. Just this past season, the Schaefer's became the first-ever father-daughter combo to ever make the Final Four together.
To get there, Blair had a pair of the biggest games of her life. In the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Blair scored a career-high 21 points against Troy.
“It was special,” Vic Schaefer said at the time. “You watch a kid all your life and work with her and stay in the gym with her countless days and nights, then to see her in that moment, it's pretty special.
“To see her in that moment, obviously our team needed it desperately. To see her respond, it's pretty gratifying as a parent. I think any parent would say that about their kid.”
Blair followed that up with an 18-point showing against DePaul to push the Bulldogs to the Sweet 16 on the way to MSU's first-ever national title game appearance.
There are tough moments too though. They might not be all that frequent, considering Mississippi State's success and a supportive group of fellow Bulldogs that understand the Schaefers' unique situation, but Blair says there is a bit of a balancing act to playing under her father.
“I don't want to say it's easy, because it's not,” Blair Schaefer said. “There definitely are challenges being a player and a daughter. It's hard sometimes when certain people say certain things about the coach when I'm like, ‘Hey that's my dad, but I'm not in the daughter chair right now. I'm a player.' I have to understand there are certain things that come with the job and that's just part of it.”
Such is life when playing for your father. Yet it's pretty much what Blair says she always wanted to do. She could have certainly played elsewhere, but realistically, it probably wasn't going to happen.
“I don't want to say (playing somewhere else) wasn't ever in the picture, but I just feel like it was always in the plan (to play for my dad),” Blair Schaefer said. “It was always in my brain. I wanted to play for my dad. It's something that not everyone wants to do, because not everyone has that relationship with their parents. I've heard a million times, ‘I don't know how you do it. You're crazy.' But it takes a special coach and a special dad and it takes a special player and a special daughter to make it work and to want to make it work.”
The Schaefers have pulled off the trick pretty much seamlessly. On the court, Vic treats Blair as hard or harder than any other Bulldog.
“My dad doesn't show a lot of favoritism,” Blair said. “He treats me harder than anyone else. I know it. The team knows it and there is an understanding. That's just how we do it. It works. He's been hard on me my whole life, so it's nothing new and it's not a problem. It's how we make it work.”
Vic does have moments though where he just gets to be a father.
“There is a time and place for everything,” Blair said. “Sometimes if we're at the house or wherever, he can be like, ‘Yeah, that was the game that Blair hit that shot.' That's coming from like a proud dad aspect.”
After Blair scored 21 against Troy in the NCAA Tournament, he even snuck in a little fatherly praise in one of his press conferences.
“I'm sure her dad is really, really proud,” Vic Schaefer said with a smirk.
Those moments are priceless to Blair, so are the relationships and trips and everything else that has come as a result of always being under the guiding eye of her father.
As a senior-to-be, Blair has only one more season left to play under Vic. From there, Blair plans to move on and possibly pursue a broadcasting career of some kind, or perhaps medical school could be in her future.
No matter where Blair goes or what she does though, she'll always be grateful for the time she spent learning from and playing for her dad.
“Our situation is very unique, but I feel like we've both handled it really well,” Blair Schaefer said.