Jan. 19, 2006

Ken Griffin was driving down I-20, along one of those forlorn stretches where the pine trees roll endlessly toward the horizon. He was driving home to Augusta, Ga., from one of the many scouting trips he’ll make as South Carolina’s assistant coach and recruiting coordinator.

Griffin’s first-ever recruit, the one who started him in coaching, was along for the ride. “You know I got you started in all this, right?” April Clyburn said, a trace of impishness in her voice.

Griffin thought for a moment, then laughed. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” he replied to his sister.

“Come On, Ape.”

He doted on her, grated on her, pushed her, prodded her, riled her, reconciled with her, and inspired her. Because, well, that’s what brothers and sisters do. They butt heads, clash wills, and love each other, all in a day’s work.

Ken Griffin and April Clyburn are 13 years apart. April never imagined herself a basketball player like her brother, who starred at Voorhees College in Denmark, S.C. But when April sprouted to 5’10” in the eighth grade, Ken saw a blossoming playmaker in the bedroom next door.

Ken smiles at the memory. He had big dreams for his sister. He thought April could earn a basketball scholarship with the right amount of guidance. Basketball was always Ken’s first love, even as he was living at home and working full-time as a social worker. He wanted to make sure April succeeded – even if April didn’t share his basketball zeal at first.

“‘Come on, Ape.'” April mimics her brother’s low, molasses-thick drawl. “You gotta come out for basketball.” She must have heard that cajolement a hundred times. Eventually, April caved in – with the right motivation.

“He said he’d give me an allowance if I went out and played,” she said.

Training Days

With the question of motivation settled, Ken dived in. It started with the strength shoes. Ken bought April a pair during her 9th grade year, and took her into the street for three-days-a-week conditioning sessions. If she balked at practicing – well, her allowance would be cut off. (For the record, Ken doesn’t remember the amount of the allowance, only that it depended on what training she followed.)

He later persuaded April to join an AAU team, volunteering to chauffeur her 160 miles to Atlanta, three nights a week for six months, to play.

April enjoyed her experiences in Atlanta – her best friend Le’Coe Willingham, a future all-American at Auburn, was a teammate – but the travel and time away from family was too much.

“I was crying a lot because of basketball. I was sad a lot. Ken would make me understand that, okay, you’re crying now, but it’s all going to pay off in the end,” April said.

Ken felt the same stress. “I would get off from one job, take her to Atlanta, let her practice, come back home. She’d get up and go to school the next morning, I’d get up and go to work,” he said.

An idea started to bubble up, a great one too, one that could solve all their problems.

“I finally decided that I could teach her more by coaching her as opposed to having to go to Atlanta,” Ken said.

A high school friend, Kelvin Powell, approached Ken about starting an AAU team in Augusta. Ken jumped at the chance.

Convincing April, a rising sophomore, to join wasn’t as easy. The same day Ken laid out his recruiting pitch in the kitchen, April’s AAU coach called. Practice was starting that weekend.

“I was telling April, ‘You need to tell him that you’re not going to play for him, you’re going to play for me this summer.’ And she would not do it. So she ended up hanging up the phone with her AAU coach, and we had this big argument about who she was going to play for.”

Their mother, Joyce Clyburn, finally stepped in. “She was like, ‘That’s your brother, April. You’re going to play for him, whether you like it or not,'” Ken said, laughing.

Hometown Team

Still moonlighting as a social worker, Griffin put up about a thousand dollars of his own money to form the Augusta Lady Sixers. He and Powell thumbed through newspaper box scores, asking high school coaches for players. They held raffles and car washes to fund their first trips. They rented stuffy middle school gyms for practice. It was Ken’s first crack at coaching, and April, his sister, was one of his first lab subjects.

Coaching and sibling doting, both learned, was a combustible mix.

“I was much harder on her than I was on other kids that played with me,” Ken said. A faraway glance steals his face. He was so intense back then, his mother would walk out of games, embarrassed by his sideline ravings.

Ken smiles wryly. “I guess I wanted to make sure that she succeeded and she didn’t take what was going on for granted. I knew what basketball meant to me. And on those days when she didn’t take it as seriously, it bothered me. And I would give her hell,” he said.

Says April: “I was probably upset after every practice from the way he treated me. It was obvious to me. It was obvious to everyone else,” she said.

How badly do you want this? The question frayed at Ken and April’s relationship. Did April not want a scholarship enough, or did Ken want it too much? It was hard to escape the tension, too, especially when coach and player still drove home together and still lived a room apart.

And then a funny thing happened: before April’s junior year, Ken kicked her off his team.

April recalls the day. She had a stomach bug. Her mother told her to stay home. Ken, though, was getting frustrated at his sister’s lack of commitment.

“She would show up to practice late, she wouldn’t work hard in practice. And I felt like she was doing it because she was my sister,” Ken said.

As he left the house, Ken turned toward April and issued a decree: if you don’t come to practice today, don’t bother coming back.

Says April: “The next day I was preparing to go to practice and he was like, ‘Where are you going, Ape?'”

Her older brother was keeping his word. With no choice but to move on, April took a job at Captain D’s. Ken moved on, too. Except his team started to lose. And lose again. A month passed. His AAU partner, Kelvin Powell, politely suggested he reconcile.

Griffin walked in to Captain D’s during April’s lunch break. The two saw each other. And started laughing.

Love Endures

Brother and sister can laugh a lot now, their ambitions no longer intertwined. In the end, everything worked out. After a decorated prep career, April signed a scholarship with Hampton University in Virginia. A year-and-a-half later she transferred to Georgia State, where she became the Panthers’ school record-holder in career field goal percentage.

With April paving the way, Ken’s Lady Sixers teams won state and national AAU tournaments, attracting players like current Gamecocks Lauren Simms and Melanie Johnson. In August, Griffin parlayed his coaching success into a job as South Carolina’s newest assistant.

Ken reflects on his days coaching his little sister. “When I became her coach, I became more like a father figure. And she didn’t need a father figure in her life, she needed a brother in her life,” he says.

“She taught me a valuable lesson when it came to dealing with my teams in the future. I learned to use positive reinforcement, based on the experience I had with my sister. I carry that with me today, even dealing with the kids at USC,” he says.

Isn’t that ironic. April is now the one coaching Ken.