In retrospect, Rodney Walker’s original plan to leave coaching, and just be a dad watching his daughter play basketball, was probably not a great idea.
Four years ago, Walker had just finished coaching the Muskegon girls basketball team to a berth in the Division 1 state semifinals, but left that job when the season ended.
That was because his daughter, Ariel Walker, was about to become a freshman at Reeths-Puffer and was penciled in to join the varsity right away.
He didn’t want to miss any of her games, and the R-P girls basketball team had a longtime successful head coach in Brandon Barry.
“I just wanted to be a fan and sit in the stands and watch her play,” Coach Walker said.
Coach Rodney Walker discusses a call with a referee. Photo/Jeremy Clark
He insists he would have been just fine sitting and cheering, like any other parent, even after many years of coaching.
“I did not want to be that helicopter parent who had to have my hands on everything,” he said.
Ariel smiled and shook her head in disagreement when she heard her dad say that.
She remembers her youth basketball days, when her father was supposed to be “just a fan,” but still managed to do some unofficial coaching from the fringes. She said that happened quite a bit, because he’s a coach at heart and really could not help himself.
“I think he was coaching from the side a lot, more than he should have,” she said with a grin.
As circumstances played out, Coach Walker never had the challenge of trying to be a quiet parent in the bleachers.
Coach Barry resigned just a few weeks before the start of Ariel’s freshman season, her dad was asked to take over the team, and he quickly accepted.
Ariel Walker gets ready to shoot a free throw. Photo/Jeremy Clark
So the Walkers began a four-year odyssey in a father-daughter, coach-player relationship, even though that was never the plan.
“I said yes, I would take it, because it was a great opportunity,” Coach Walker said about the offer to coach at R-P. “I knew they had some talent there.”
Ariel remembers having mixed feelings at the time, because her dad made a conscious decision not to be her official coach in youth basketball, and that seemed to work out fine.
“When Coach Barry left, a lot of the girls were saying ‘Please get your dad to coach,’” she said. “I didn’t really think it was going to happen.
“I feel like I was on both sides at the time. I was happy, and I was also kind of like, eh, I kind of wanted him to be a dad in the stands. But I have been around him coaching for so long, and I grew into the idea.”
An exciting four-year ride
The past four years have provided an exciting ride for the Walkers.
In their first season, 2019-20, the Rockets, led by All-Stater Lauren Ross, won a conference and district championship and advanced to the Division 1 regionals while posting a 21-3 record. Ariel won honorable mention All-Conference honors as a freshman.
The second season, played in the throes of the COVID pandemic, was not nearly as fun.
“Before the season started the whole team caught COVID and for two weeks we had to shut everything down,” said Coach Walker, whose team finished 7-8 in the shortened season and did not win a conference or district title. “When we came back a lot of teams in our conference had already played two or three games. That season was a little crazy.”
The team bounced back in a big way last season, posting a 16-6 record and finishing in a three-way tie with Mona Shores and Muskegon for the O-K Green conference title. Ariel averaged 13 points per game and earned full All-Conference honors for the second time, as well as honorable mention All-State honors.
Coach Walker reacts to a play on the court. Photo/Jeremy Clark
The only bad part was the way the season ended, with a painful 70-56 loss to Mona Shores in the Division 1 district finals on the Rockets’ home court.
“Losing that game was really, really hard,” Ariel said. “We loved the seniors on the team last year. I took it pretty hard. We knew we could beat them, but they were just on from the beginning of the game. They just kept coming down and knocking down threes.”
The current season started out with high expectations, based on the return of three standouts - Ariel, fellow senior Sophia Hekkema and junior Brooklynn Tornes.
The Rockets got off to a surprisingly slow start, posting a 3-5 record after eight games while playing a very challenging non-conference schedule.
The team’s slump extended through its first conference game of the season, a disappointing 57-43 loss to Muskegon on Jan. 12 – but the Rockets have not lost since then.
They currently have an eight-game winning streak, they’ve improved their overall record to 11-5, and they’re tied for first place in the O-K Green conference with Muskegon with a 7-1 mark.
There have been two highlight victories in recent weeks – a 52-43 win over Mona Shores at home on Jan. 24, and an exciting 56-52 win over Muskegon at home last Friday.
The memory of last year’s loss in the district championship game motivated the Rockets against Mona Shores, according to the Walkers.
“I kind of prefaced that before the game – remember what happened last year when they came in here,” Coach Walker said. “We used that feeling to build up some momentum.”
“You can sort of tell how a game is going to go from the environment in the locker room, and we just had that confidence,” Ariel said.
Ariel Walker launches a jump shot. Photo/Jeremy Clark
Last Friday’s big win over Muskegon couldn’t have been more exciting. The Rockets trailed by 10 points with six minutes remaining, then exploded down the stretch and claimed the four-point win.
The Walkers say the team has come a long way since the loss to the Big Reds in early January.
One reason is that a lot of important role players on the team, like Ashlynn Anderson, Irelyn Niklasch, Megan Barmes, Billie Tryska and others, have picked up their games in recent weeks, so the Rockets have more than just a three-player attack.
The other part is simple – sometimes it helps to get knocked down, so you can get back up and start fighting again with even more passion.
“It was a wake-up call,” Ariel said about the Muskegon loss. “For sure it had a positive impact on us. We are not the same team.”
“It’s always good to eat humble pie early,” Coach Walker added. “It’s hard to coach a team that thinks its way better than it is and doesn’t know how to handle defeat. We handled it pretty good, the girls remember what it felt like, and now they are playing pretty good ball collectively. We’re starting to see chemistry now, with everyone playing together and trusting each other.”
Ariel’s big games
Ariel Walker has been good all season, but she’s really picked up her offensive game during the winning streak.
The 5-foot-7 shooting guard, who has the ability to knock down three-pointers and drive the lane for layups, has been on a bit of a tear.
She scored 21 points in a victory over Holland. She had 16 points in the win over Mona Shores. She had 18 in a win over Zeeland West and 20 in a win over Wyoming.
She even played a key role in a victory over Zeeland East, when she only scored three points.
Walker played most of the second half with four fouls, but managed to stay in the game and make a huge difference down the stretch. She hit a game-changing three-pointer with just under four minutes left, then added two crucial steals to help the Rockets nail down a 34-27 victory.
Coach Walker encourages his team from the bench. Photo/Jeremy Clark
She’s averaging 11.8 points per game and leads the team in scoring and three-point shooting. She is second on the team in steals and assists and third in rebounding.
Her dad said she added an extra gear to her game by playing last summer for Michigan Crossover, an elite Detroit-based AAU travel program. Her team played in several different states, Ariel competed with and against some great high school players, and she came out of the experience with sharpened skills and more confidence.
“I did see this coming because of all the work she put in last summer,” said Coach Walker, who made the long drive back and forth between Muskegon and Detroit twice a week during the AAU season. “It’s one of the top programs in the state. She had an opportunity to play with some people who are going to be playing Division 1 and 2 college basketball, and I figured playing with them would change her mindset.”
Ariel said the experience got her in great physical shape, and “even though I was not scoring as much, coming back to Muskegon I could tell how much growth I experienced.”
With Ariel and her teammates all clicking on the court, the rest of the season has a lot of exciting possibilities.
The Rockets are in a dog fight with Muskegon for the conference title with six games remaining. They will visit Grand Rapids Union on Tuesday, then will close out the regular season with games against Wyoming, Zeeland East, Zeeland West, Mona Shores and finally Holland on Feb. 24.
They would very much like to win another conference title and district championship, and then who knows what else.
Ariel Walker defends against Mona Shores. Photo/Jeremy Clark
Coach Walker always preaches caution about conference games, and how the Rockets cannot afford to take any opponent for granted.
“Conference play is tough all the way around,” he said. “You can be at Union or Wyoming – on their home court every team is tough.”
On the other hand, he knows how fun it is to win districts, move on to regionals and see how far your team can go. He was disappointed when his 2019-20 squad lost to East Grand Rapids in the first round of regionals and would like another crack at going deeper into the state tournament.
“We want to get back to that same place this year,” he said.
The end of a special era
Both Walkers admit that the dad-daughter, coach-player relationship has been tricky at times.
“It’s hard coaching your own kid,” Coach Walker said. “You always have a high expectations for them that they sometimes don’t understand. Then you have to make sure you’re not showing favoritism or being too hard on them.
“Once we leave the gym I try to shut it off and be a normal parent. When we get home there is no basketball. We don’t sit and watch film or anything like that.”
Ariel said it can be hard to be the coach’s daughter.
“I am with him a lot, but we’ve gotten better about communicating back and forth, knowing when to shut it off, and he’s gotten better about sometimes just letting me play and not being too hard on me,” she said.
Coach Walker congratulates players after a victory. Photo/Jeremy Clark
“I have enjoyed it. I never would have wished for another coach. I’m happy it happened this way.”
There’s actually more to the family basketball story than the father-daughter element.
Keytria Burt-Walker, Coach Walker’s wife and Ariel’s mother, is apparently very enthusiastic at games, and her comments are very easy to hear, because she sits right behind the team bench.
Both Walkers smile and shake their heads when they talk about their biggest fan.
“She gets into the games,” Coach Walker said about his wife. “She’s always a heckler, of the refs and sometimes the other teams. She is that team mom.
“She sits right behind the bench, so we hear all of it, and when I get home I get to hear about what I need to do!”
The end of the season, whenever that occurs, will bring the end of a rare and special experience for the Walker family and the R-P girls basketball program.
Ariel has been playing with a lot of her teammates since they were little girls, she’s very close to them, and the thought of moving on from them makes her sad.
Ariel Walker leaves with her teammates after they beat Mona Shores/ Photo/Jeremy Clark
“I don’t know how I’m going to feel until that day gets here,” said Ariel, who is undecided about where she will play college basketball. “Every game I talk to Sophia (Hekkema) during warm-ups, and I remind her that our Senior Night is coming up soon. It’s definitely going to be hard. I look at all of them as my sisters. We spend a lot of time together, even outside of basketball.”
The end will be extra hard for Coach Walker, who plans to keep coaching R-P into the foreseeable future but will do so without his daughter.
He remembers pushing Ariel around gyms in a baby stroller during his early coaching years, and he can’t believe that she’s already a senior, ready to graduate and head to college.
He describes the past four years as “one shining moment” that will be over soon.
“It’s coming to an end,” Coach Walker said. “It’s going to be tough for me to watch her play her last game, as a coach and as a father. I am happy with what she’s done, and whether she plays college basketball or not, it’s always been about character development and helping her transition into becoming a woman who goes out there and does great things.
“This type of opportunity does not come along very often for a parent. For God to give me the chance to be in front of her and her teammates has been a blessing, and now I’m seeing the process through.”
