Hailey Van Lith, the star guard of the LSU Tigers, has seen a meteoric rise during the 2023-24 collegiate season. Last season, Caitlin Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes beat Van Lith’s Louisville in the Elite 8. She watched the final from her home and saw her future team win the championship. Now she has the chance to go all the way with the Tigers but she again has to face Iowa in the Elite 8. During the interviews building up to the game, she has given credit to her father, Corey Van Lith, for helping her every step of the way.
Corey has been training Hailey since childhood, juggling between the roles of father and coach. Since her elementary school days, she was supposed to work out close to 5 days a week. One thing that caught his eye was how quick a learner Hailey was. She would repeat the plays that her father taught her the very next game. Thus, he decided to coach her seriously.
Corey played basketball and baseball during his time at the University of Puget Sound. It was not just basketball where Corey pushed her daughter. According to Nola.com, Levi Heyen men’s basketball coach at the time said, “There were the 15-20 goals Van Lith had scored in that soccer game as a second grader. The hurdles record she had broken at her middle school on only her second day in the sport. And the Washington softball scholarship offer she had received in eighth grade, even though her middle school didn’t even have a softball team.”
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“She would have started on my boys varsity team,” Heyen said. “I’ve seen her abuse grown men on the floor.” When the Cashmere girls basketball team lost three state championship games, Hailey would send the coach messages to improve her performance. “Saying that it wasn’t meant to be; that she’d come back next year; that she’d work twice as hard; and that she wouldn’t let winning or losing a state title game define her.”Another person who influenced her majorly was the late, great Kobe Bryant.
Around 2019, before her college basketball career could kick off, she got a call from NBA icon
Kobe Bryant. Hailey recalled how happy she was on receiving that call and getting an invitation to work with the
Los Angeles Lakers legend. Bryant knowing her name and wanting to spend time with her to talk about basketball was like a dream.
Meeting Kobe and his influence
As per the LA Times, Corey stated, “He wanted to help Hailey, but he also wanted to put someone in front of his daughter she could relate to, because Hailey is an incredibly hard worker. Hailey has devoted her life so far to becoming the best person and basketball player she can possibly be, and he wanted to show Gianna, ‘If you do this, you can attain the goals you want to attain.’”
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More importantly, Kobe was also interested in how Corey could juggle between the roles so effortlessly. Kobe would ask him to share training plans to help Gianna train. “He was one of the greatest basketball players of all time … but he was always wanting to learn,” Corey said. “His ego wasn’t too big to ask somebody like me, who is nobody in the basketball world, ‘Hey, how did you find success in getting your daughter to where she’s at?’“
Hailey Van Lith has certainly developed in a leadership role at LSU. With her comments about watching last year’s finals and wanting to be part of the team, and then joining them show a lot of grit and passion. All this was instilled in her from her childhood by her father, Corey.
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