In his years coaching AAU and Cave Spring Middle School basketball, David Carter has seen the entire parade of Redicks.
A family at the beach. From right: Abby, Catie, David, Jason and Alyssa Light, J.J., Ken and Jeanie Redick.
A family at the beach. From right: Abby, Catie, David, Jason and Alyssa Light, J.J., Ken and Jeanie Redick.
First came the older twins, Catie and Alyssa, who got a late start in hoops but developed quickly enough to earn Division I scholarships to Campbell University.
A few years later came J.J., followed by brother David, who plays football, basketball and baseball at Cave Spring High School. The best of them all, Carter says, may be the last, 13-year-old Abby, who like her older brother at Duke has a propensity for hitting the deep shot.
“She did the same thing her brother used to do,” Carter said of Abby Redick playing on his Middle School team as a seventh grader.
“She won a game for us against Andrew Lewis at the buzzer. She hit a three right at the end.”
“It must be a great pool of genes,” says Dick Oliver, former president of the Roanoke Stars girls AAU basketball club. “I haven’t seen a better player in her age group at her position (forward) than Abby Redick.”
With five children all making a name for themselves at every level of sport, life often spins by for Roanoke County’s Ken and Jeanie Redick. Their only solution is a color-coded calendar. The twins have graduated and moved on to adult life, but the days still roll by in a rainbow for the Redicks. Pink is for Abby, blue for J.J., yellow for David.
“There were only four nights we didn’t have a basketball game in the entire month of January,” says Jeanie with a weary contentment.
The family has pursued a demanding schedule that once included driving J.J. to Hampton for weekly practices with Boo Williams’ prestigious AAU basketball club.
There have been times the Redicks haven’t been able to get to one of their children’s games, but that isn’t because they haven’t tried. “We often say we need one more parent,” Jeanie says with a laugh during an interview in the Southwest County office where she works as a counselor.
“The Redicks are as supportive as any parents I’ve ever been around,” says Dick Oliver. “They support their children equally. As a result their kids are well-rounded.”
J.J. Redick readily agrees. “It’s actually great,” he says, “and I’m glad that my parents had such a big family. We all get to root for each other. At the same time we’re competitive with each other. All of us want to earn each other’s respect and our parents’ admiration, so it’s a competitive thing.”
Ken Redick says that actually he and his wife are amazed at the dedication of other Roanoke-area parents. It’s a non-stop process supporting children in athletics, they say.
And “support” is the key word.
The Redick children are known for pushing themselves to get better. Anyone who works around dedicated athletes knows that it has to come from within. Ken, who played two seasons of college basketball at Ohio Wesleyan, and Jeanie don’t push their children, but they make a point to try to be there for them.
One of the biggest factors in the equation now has become J.J.’s high profile playing for Duke. “With that level of exposure, there’s not much that’s private for J.J.,” Ken Redick says. “There are incredible joys and rewards for playing at that level. At the same time, it’s also created a lot of tension and stress and extra parenting.”
Their son has to change cell phone numbers every two months or so, says Jeanie Redick.
Likewise, the family has moved to a non-published phone number, Ken says. “We’d get these good old boys calling us at 10 o’clock at night and wanting to talk for 45 minutes about how J.J. was their favorite player.”
The callers were obviously well-intentioned, but the family had to move to keep some privacy.
Then there are the magazine and newspaper articles and their “invasive kind of quality,” Ken Redick says. “People know so much more about your family than you want them to know. Thank goodness they don’t know all of it.”
The flip side of such distractions is having those seats behind the bench in Cameron Indoor Stadium where they can witness the spectacle of Duke basketball. “That’s the gold reward,” says Ken, an obvious hoops junkie. “The Cameron Crazies are awesome.”
The Redicks make each of their children a priority. In fact, they once got the news of J.J. hitting a big shot in the national AAU tournament over the phone because they were watching David play AAU baseball in Tidewater.
However, as J.J. works his way through his junior season at Duke, the time grows nearer to contemplate his future. The possibility of one of those multimillion-dollar guaranteed NBA contracts exists.
“I think about it some,” J.J. admits. “I tune in every now and then and watch the league. I don’t think I’ve watched a whole pro basketball game since I was in sixth grade. I’d like to play in the NBA, and I’m going to work hard this year and next year hopefully to put myself in position to where I can make a team after my senior season.”
His mom says any idea of pro basketball “is set aside. We try to live in the present. J.J. will get an education.”
Redick, who studies both history and cultural anthropology at Duke, admits he loves his educational opportunities.
“I think about the possibility of the NBA,” Ken Redick says. “But my focus is what he will want to do if he doesn’t play NBA ball. The degree is important. So we’re not caught up in it.”
On the other hand, Ken Redick admits that if two years down the road they find themselves waiting anxiously on NBA draft night, they’ll treat it just like every other phase of their family’s athletic journey.
They’ll have a big smile and enjoy the scenery.
Originally published in the March/April 2005 issue of The Roanoker
