From Mastic Beach to Michigan: An Underdog's Story
2/18/2019 4:50:00 PM | Women's Basketball, Features
By Steve Kornacki
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Kim Barnes Arico has always gotten the most out of whatever she was given while also making her own breaks with great ambition and determination. That allowed her to become highly successful in basketball, first as a player and now as the women's head coach at the University of Michigan.
She was raised in Mastic Beach, New York, a Long Island beach community located on a peninsula extending into a bay where sailing, swimming and fishing make summers special. Her parents, though divorced when she was young, both stayed actively involved in the life of her and two younger siblings. She "never wanted for anything" but never had many of the finer things in life. When she got something special, a pair of adidas basketball shoes that she coveted, and they were stolen, they weren't replaced.
Kim went to play basketball on the north side of the massive island at Stony Brook University without a scholarship and then transferred across the New York boroughs to Montclair State in New Jersey, again without a scholarship. She took out loans and got a degree in physical education and health in 1993 while also being the team captain as a junior and senior as a star point guard.
She got a job coaching at Fairleigh Dickinson-Madison while teaching at a nearby New Jersey high school in Chatham. She met a football coach there, Larry Arico, who eventually became the school's head coach, and they got married and had three children while she moved on to three other colleges before the Wolverines ever entered their lives.
Life was good, but it was about to get really good when she was named coach here April 20, 2012.
Her mother, Maureen, drove a school bus by day, always had meals ready, and had been there every step of the way in her life. So when Kim called with the good news, she knew it also was bad news.
"I asked her to come meet me for lunch where I was coaching at St. John's," said Barnes Arico. "She said, 'OK, you've been here for 10 years. You're never asked me to meet you for lunch. What's going on?' I told her, and she sobbed in the middle of Chipotle and said I was taking her grandchildren away from her. 'How can I possibly do this move to Michigan?'
"And she didn't understand because they were able to come to every game. I had been coaching at 'home' for 20 years, and this was the first time I was leaving within a two-hour (drive) radius from where I grew up. It was a tough move for her to understand, but now that they've been a part of the Michigan experience, and they come every chance they get, they understand. So, it's really cool."
The lessons Mom and Dad (George) taught her through life -- that you could have a loving family, togetherness and a career despite the trials that always come -- got them through those tears.
They made the transition from the school in Queens, New York, and a home in New Jersey to Michigan and did it their way, with Larry leaving coaching and staying home as "Mr. Mom" with the kids. Kim's teams got better each year, and she cultivated a basketball family while winning the WNIT in 2017 and making the NCAA Tournament and reaching its second round in 2018.
And so the self-proclaimed "beach rat" has come a long, long way.
2012
2018
A Tight-Knit Family
Kim said Larry calls Mastic Beach "the end of the earth because you get on the Long Island Expressway and just keep driving" before stopping short of The Hamptons.
"We grew up on the beach, and our vacation was to Smith Point, about a mile and a half from our house and right on the ocean," she said. "We started with tents, got a camper, and would just park it there in the summer and spend our summers at the beach. Mom had summers off, and so I lived the dream."
Young KBA with father George
KBA's nephew Gabriel (center) with her daughters Cece (left) and Emma
Dad returned from a U.S. Army hitch in Vietnam and took a job at a small airport, working his way up from foreman "to one of the top positions at the airport," and he stayed there from age 22 until retiring a few years ago.
The older of her brothers, Chris, played basketball at Albany. They played one-on-one in the backyard ("a lot of love-hate") and became very close. He was married and had a young son. They were living in London.
"One day he went for a run," said Barnes Arico, "and his heart stopped. He was 30 then and is still alive but in a vegetative state. It's really tragic. I've always made a point of his son, Gabriel, remaining close to our family. He's 15 now, and my daughter, Emma, just flew home with my mom after being with him for five days. He's thinking of coming to college here."
Her younger brother, Brian, is married and has two young daughters. They live in their grandmother's house in Mastic Beach, and their aunt lives next door.
Mom went with the team on its 2017 trip to Italy and Greece, and Kim's sister-in-law and Gabriel flew in to meet them there. "It was like a piece of my brother was there then, too," said Kim.
"It's a real tight-knit family," she added.
They learned not only to love one another but to rely on one another.
"I learned from a young age that we all had to do our part," she said. "And mom would get up at 4:30 every morning, and I would hear the coffee maker going and breakfast getting started and her doing laundry every day. She packed our lunches then and made dinner in between her bus routes.
"She was so strict on us, and we never really understood where it was coming from. Now, when I'm in her shoes, I have a real appreciation of the sacrifices she made to give us what we had. I think my work ethic comes from her, and a little bit of it was wanting to make it out and provide a better life for my children and my mom and my dad.
"Going to college was a major priority, and basketball provided that opportunity for me. I went to Stony Brook because it was the least expensive and took out student loans. My grandma made a little bit of a dent in the costs. I transferred to Montclair because I wanted to be a teacher."
She was the team captain as both a junior and senior, and her coach, Alice De Fazio, is now right down the hall from her as Michigan's director of player personnel. De Fazio helped her get her first high school coaching and teaching job 25 years ago at the Academy of Saint Aloysius in Jersey City, New Jersey.
"I thought I had made the big time," Barnes Arico recalled.
Kim Barnes Arico (back right) with her 1999-2000 Adelphi team
Four years later, De Fazio connected her to a head coaching job at Fairleigh Dickinson-Madison, an NCAA Division III school in New Jersey. She was only 26 and kept a high school teaching position, in essence working two full-time jobs. Then it was on to the New Jersey Institute of Technology before heading to Adelphi. Her small-college teams kept winning, and St. John's gave her a Division I shot in 2002-03.
Kim and Larry have been married 20 years now, going through it all together and raising Trevor, 17, Emma, 13, and Cecelia, 10.
"I wasn't a big-time player or from a big-time school," said Barnes Arico. "You can be an underdog and do it, though. Nobody could've written that script to my path to Michigan, but I took advantage of opportunities and now I'm at the best university in the world.
"Who would've ever thought a kid from Mastic Beach would be here?"
Inside Michigan Basketball profiled KBA as she neared the program's career wins record
A Role Model for Strong Women
Barnes Arico created the Powerful Women's Club along the way to share with those in her professional circle of friends.
"It's not formally a club," Barnes Arico said with a chuckle. "I think it's something we've invented in our own minds. 'We' being me, (director of operations) Amy Mulligan, (assistant coach) Melanie Moore -- people who started with me here -- Megan Duffy (now the head coach at Miami of Ohio), Joy McCorvey (now at Florida State). And we've taken on the responsibility and the role that when you become coaches to be mentors and role models to young women.
KBA celebrates a 2017 WNIT win with assistant coach Melanie Moore (right) and former assistants Joy McCorvey (left) and Megan Duffy
"Women are leaving big-time banking jobs because they don't believe they can do it with all the hours it entails, to have a family, to have the best of everything. One story I use is that when Trevor was born and I was working and Larry was coaching, I had to go over two bridges to get home. Trevor was a couple months old and got sick for the first time, and I was sobbing. Larry asked, 'Why are you crying? I'll make sure I'm home to do this.' But I said, 'You don't understand. I want to be the best coach and be at work. But I want to be the best mom and I want to be home.' I think that's the hardest thing for women to go through.
"How are we going to help them conquer the world in whatever they do? If that means President of the United States, if that means being the president of the University of Michigan, that's what our job is, not only to help them be strong basketball players but to be strong women who can do whatever they want to do. But you have to be surrounded by people who embrace that. Trevor's 17 years old now, and I've done it. We've done it. We moved here and Larry stayed home. That changed our lives. Now, I make sure that Mel (Moore) can do the same things and be there for her family."
KBA with mother Maureen
Barnes Arico, 48, is a great example of what the Powerful Women's Club can accomplish. She's won 422 games in her 23-season career, averaging better than 18 wins per season, going to six NCAA tourneys and reaching the Sweet 16 in 2012. She's the winningest women's basketball coach at both Michigan (152) and St. John's (176), and the 28 wins with the 2016-17 Wolverines are a school single-season record.
She says she never could've imagined any of this as a kid.
"My mom was a single mom with three children at about 25 years old," said Barnes Arico, whose father has remained a very big part of her life. "So, my life could've probably gone in many different directions. But the one thing I'm most thankful for is the discipline and work ethic they instilled in me. They both worked extremely hard. We didn't have a lot of money, but I never wanted for anything. They always demanded excellence in the classroom as well as in sports and pretty much everything I did.
"The running joke in our house is that I'm demanding as a mom, but I just think that I have high expectations. My parents instilled that in me."
Next week read about how Kim Barnes Arico has navigated being both a devoted mother and wife as well as coach of the Wolverines. » Story
